BENGALURU: Imagine a world full of tutus. Tutuboys and tutugirls, not judged for wearing tutus. While we consider and reconsider it, Diniz Sanchez, a Lisbon-born performance artiste, performs wearing tutus and heels. He is a man in his 40s performing in a tutu and will give his debut performance ‘Spicy Tutuboy Royale’ in Bengaluru on May 20 at Shoonya.
As the title of the performance suggests, Diniz will perform as a Spicy Tutuboy, which he says is his on-stage alter-ego. ‘Tutuboy’ because he is boy in a ballerina skirt and ‘spicy’ because his heart is Indian.
Diniz has been living in India for the past two years without staying anywhere long enough to call it home. Over the past two years, he lived between cities such as Delhi, Kolkata, Goa and Kerala. He will soon be moving to Kerala for a longer stay to pursue his research in performing arts.
The man underneath the tutu was born in 1974, during the Portuguese revolution. Spicy Tutu, as a rebel, was born in the year 2007. “As human beings we are brought up in a cultural and social environment full of rules that tell us what to do and what not to do. Although I consider myself quite a free spirit I am obliged to follow those rules” says Diniz. “Spicy Tutuboy doesn’t: he is a man wearing a skirt, sometimes high-heel shoes and make up, but he is not a drag, or a hijra. He is still a man and his aim is to make people question people about their judgmental vision over themselves and others,” says the performer who has been dancing since the age of 16.
Although he has performed in Bengaluru twice before, he will be presenting a solo as Spicy Tutuboy for the first time.
Seven Brides
The performance is mainly for the Festival de Dansa Breu of Vila-Real in Spain, where Diniz will be performing on the first weekend of June.
The theme of the festival is “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”, an old musical Hollywood movie. Since Diniz had to perform the piece on short notice, of two months, he incorporated few concepts from his older performances and came up with the idea of seven brides. He has been constantly practising the piece even while watching a movie in the theatre or taking a metro.
In his solo performance, he will enact the seven brides expressing seven different kinds of emotions namely love, happiness, pleasure, lust, sorrow, pain and anger. The brides will also be of different ethnicity. For example the bride of happiness is the Indian bride marrying her lover. The song for this act is Silsila Ye Chaahat Ka. The bride of pleasure is the Japanese concubine. The seven brides maybe seen as seven different brides or the seven aspects of the same bride.
Diniz admits that the choice of music is intuitive. There are few numbers that he wanted to use for his previous dance pieces but he could not because they were a bit too “commercial”. “Since this is meant to entertain, I felt freer to include them and use them in a not-so-orthodox way,” he says. “There is a Bollywood song, some pop-rock, musical theatre and even an opera aria. Quite an explosive cocktail.”
The performance is likely to be for an hour and is curated to suit the spaces at Shoonya. Of course Spicy Tutuboy will be performing in a tutu but be ready for feathers, fans, pistols and perfumes.