Performance: "El Circo Anahuac: An Aztec Opera"

El Circo Anahuac is an Aztec opera presented with a modern circus troupe that tells the classic Nahuatl tale of the birth of the twin volcanoes outside Mexico City: Popocatepetl, the “Smoky Mountain,” and Ixtlacihuatl, the “Sleeping Woman.”

The composer David Reyes and the librettist Maria Elena Yepes wrote, produced and created this one-hour and fifteen-minute opera. It is an original, independent artistic endeavor that tells a well-known Mexican and Mexican American cultural tale, a story approximately six hundred years old. Written primarily in English and Spanish, with several Nahuatl names and references, the opera production includes stage props, film, dancers, five actors with voices, stagehands, seven musicians, a narrator dressed as a circus ringmaster and indigenous breath and percussion instruments of Mesoamerica and Mexico played by Christopher Garcia.

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Executive Producers:
Steven Loza
MariaElena Yepes
Director: Steven Loza

Producer: David Reyes
Composer: David Reyes
Librettist: Maria Elena Yepes
Choreographer: Janelle Gonzalez

Presented by Brown Fist Productions, LLC 2022

This event is made possible thanks to support from the UCLA Center for Latino Arts (CLA), the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies, and a grant from the UCLA Chancellor's Arts Initiative. The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) is a promotional partner for this event.