Primero Sueño was performed by Jesusa Rodríguez as a part of the 6th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, celebrated in June of 2007 in Buenos Aires, Argentina under the title CORPOLÍTICAS en las Ámericas / Body Politics in the Americas: Formations of Race, Class and Gender. Rodríguez performs a fragment of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruzs 17th century poem, Primero Sueño, which the poet confesses was the only poem she ever wrote for pleasure and for herself. As she strips away the levels of the poem, she also strips away her clothes. (The initial version of the piece, performed at the 2002 Encuentro in Lima, Perú, had been titled Striptease de Sor Juana [Sor Juana Striptease]).
Script
Primero Sueño (esp) (108.92 kB)
Excerpt
Piramidal, funesta, de la tierra
nacida sombra, al Cielo encaminaba
de vanos obeliscos punta altiva,
escalar pretendiendo las Estrellas;
si bien sus luces bellas
--exentas siempre, siempre rutilantes--
la tenebrosa guerra
que con negros vapores le intimaba
la pavorosa sombra fugitiva
burlaban tan distantes,
que su atezado ceño
al superior convexo aun no llegaba
del orbe de la Diosa
que tres veces hermosa
con tres hermosos rostros ser ostenta,
quedando sólo o dueño
del aire que empañaba
con el aliento denso que exhalaba;
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