DanceIno Moxo, Peruvian choreographer Oscar Naters’s new show, aims to faithfully recreate the ritual experience of taking ayahuasca – so much so the performers took the hallucinogen in rehearsal
How do you imagine a choreographer begins to create a new show? Trying out steps, exploring a chosen theme or taking the cast into the countryside to ingest a powerful hallucinogen?
It was the last approach for Peruvian director Oscar Naters and his company Grupo Integro in the creation of Ino Moxo, a piece of visual theatre inspired by César Calvo’s 1981 novel The Three Halves of Ino Moxo, about a trek into the Amazon to visit a revered ayahuasca shaman. Ayahuasca is an astringent-tasting plant used in traditional healing that has powerful psychoactive effects. All of Naters’ performers had experienced ayahuasca before joining the cast, but they took part in rituals together in preparation for the show, which hopes to go some way to recreating their multisensory experience through a combination of visuals, sound, movement and ritual, making the audience part of the ceremony.
The cast includes Rawa, a shaman, or onaya, as they’re called by his people, the Shipibo-Conibo from eastern Peru. Rawa comes from a family of traditional healers and took ayahuasca for the first time aged 11 with his father and grandfather. In the performance, he provides the medicinal chants (icaros) that are crucial to the ritual. “The chant vibrations are what penetrate and cure the patients’ bodies,” says Naters. “Even at a molecular level such vibrations transform matter.” People go to ayahuasca ceremonies for spiritual as well as physical healing. “The plant knows why you’re drinking ayahuasca, what you’re searching for,” says Naters. “The plant will help you find those emotional knots or bottlenecks that we all have.”
The first response to ingesting ayahuasca is often violent vomiting, but that gives way to changed states of mind. “It’s not exactly hallucination because it’s completely connected with you, your memory, your knowledge, your family,” says Naters. Although visions of huge snakes are also common, he adds. “You can be terrified,” says Naters, “but it’s the way the medicine connects with the spirit of Mother Earth.”
Calvo’s novel is concerned with the exploitation of the Amazon’s resources and the importance of honouring nature. “In some rituals, the plant allows you to connect with animal or plant spirits from the rainforest,” says Naters. “Rawa was mentioning that once he was really in touch with the spirit of water, and the ayahuasca was showing him how important water is for plants, from the inside.” On another occasion, Rawa says he was able to enter a dimension where he was in the presence of his ancestors. “The plant allows you to enter this collective consciousness, allowing you to sort of travel in time and sense things that happened in different eras, for a few seconds,” he says.
Ayahuasca has become a popular activity for backpackers seeking adventure or enlightenment (the comedian Simon Amstell has said it cured his depression) but concerns were raised when a British tourist died after taking ayahuasca in 2014. “It’s very important to give the respect that the plant deserves,” says Rawa. “Preparation in terms of the proper diet is crucial [which involves cutting out salt, sugar and meat]. Then it’s important to be clear of your intentions. I welcome people from all over the world who have this passion and willingness to search for answers, but this is not just another drug experience. If you come thinking that way the plant might feel it is disrespectful and show you things that are too strong for you.
“It’s very important to know with whom you’re planning to have a ceremony,” adds Rawa. “This has become so popular, so commercialised, that now there are a lot of people who are not well prepared, just making a business out of it, they don’t know enough to be leading ceremonies.” Producer Bruno Paino chips in: “There’s no TripAdvisor review of the best shamans in the Amazon.”
Going to see Ino Moxo may be a less risky way of getting an insight into the ayahuasca ritual. “We try to connect the Amazonian history that Calvo writes about with the experience of shamanic agony and healing in which the spectators themselves become characters deeply involved in the transpersonal drama of death and rebirth,” says Naters. It sounds intense. “We hope so!” says Naters. “Here in Peru, even people in the audience who’d never tried ayahuasca, they [felt] really alleviated after the show.” Could catharsis await?
Ino Moxo is at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, 15-16 June, as part of Border Crossings’ Origins festival.
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