Matters of the Heart

On the night of Halloween in South Bend, Indiana, I weave through costumed partygoers as I make my way to a special double bill at the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. Ahead of their performance at the Harris Theater in Chicago, Joffrey Ballet present “Matters of the Heart,” featuring Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Broken Wings,” inspired by Frida Kahlo’s life and art, and Chanel DaSilva’s new work “Wabash & You.”

Performance

Joffrey Ballet: Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Broken Wings” and Chanel DaSilva’s new work “Wabash & You”

Place

DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, South Bend, IN, October 31, 2025

Words

Róisín O'Brien

Joffrey Ballet in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Broken Wings.” Photograph courtesy of the company

How appropriate, then, as the curtain opens on “Broken Wings,” to find two skeletons perched on a large, dark grey cube that takes up the centre of the stage. With whimsical but eerie movements, they pull a young Kahlo, intensely portrayed by Lucia Connolly, out of the cube. From the beginning, death is never far away from Kahlo: she is bound to these creatures, who protect, bother and interfere with her life.

I first saw “Broken Wings” when it premiered with English National Ballet in 2016 as part of Tamara Rojo’s “She Said” programme, a programme showcasing three female choreographers. A three-act version, “Frida,” was subsequently created for Dutch National Ballet in 2020. In this one-act version, Lopez has cleverly distilled Kahlo’s life down to that core duality of beauty and pain; one cannot be found without the other. While images, and vivid colours, have stayed in my mind from 2016, I had a much more emotive reaction to this performance; a nod, perhaps, to me having visited Kahlo’s childhood home in Cayoacán this summer, and a testament, certainly, to the Joffrey performers.

Starting in Kahlo’s young years, we see an early romance with an Alejandro, performed by Maxwell Dawe, as a joyous, light relationship, told through springing jumps and carefree catches. But after the fateful accident that crushes her pelvis and leaves her with debilitating injuries, she is frequently confined to her bed for the rest of her life. How does an able-bodied dancer, at the height of her professional prowess, convey this restriction? Lopez smartly confines Kahlo to dance flat against the cube, now opened on one side to reveal a white backdrop and hanging mirror; we are now viewing Kahlo as though from above, the same reflection she painted in her powerful self-portraits.

Joffrey Ballet in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Broken Wings.” Photograph courtesy of the company

From here, a beautiful cascade of creatures and creations spill from Kahlo’s mind, gesturing to her interest in Mexican indigenous art and culture. A pack of all male dancers, named the Male Fridas, with different brightly coloured torsos, flourishing skirts and uniquely crafted head pieces, teeter around Frida; slow, stately, otherworldly. Olivia Duryea appears as an enchanting Deer throughout, elegantly balancing large antlers on her head as she nimbly prances across the stage.

These moments of Kahlo’s creative inspirations and ambitions intermingle with her famous relationship with painter Diego Rivera, danced by Evan Boersma. Connolly and Boersma convincingly depict a relationship full of passion but fraught with difficulty. Further trauma is visited upon Kahlo when she miscarries; in this striking scene, a bluntly red string is unspooled from between her legs and held for an uncomfortably long time for all to see.

Designed by Dieuweke van Reij, the movable cube allows room for the exuberant creatures to flesh out the stage, while creating new environments when a new facing is opened. The costumes are striking, invoking Kahlo’s strident use of colour, and playing with the dancers’ forms: textured skirts exaggerate their kicks, while blood red lines criss-cross the leotards of the Birds, both decorative and veinlike. Breathy woodwind and percussive instruments resonate throughout Peter Salem’s score, bringing a sense of place to this fantastical realm.

As her health deteriorates, Kahlo becomes increasingly immobile. In the final scene, she is surrounded by her creations as she moves stiffly in the space, sometimes finding a moment to fly. I’m reminded of seeing “Woolf Works” by Wayne McGregor at the Royal Ballet in London in 2015. In that performance, Alessandra Ferri, performing as a Clarissa Dalloway journeying through her memories, jumps into the arms of a younger dancer; in that moment of physical choreography, she, Clarissa Dalloway, is young again. Just as Woolf’s prose moves us back and forth through time, so too does McGregor’s choreography. I feel the same, here, watching Connolly leap unbridled for a few painfully short bursts; in these moments, Kahlo is completely free.

Coco Alvarez-Mena and Davide Oldano in Chanel DaSilva’s “Wabash & You.” Photograph courtesy of the company

It's a tough act to follow, but the programme smartly changes pace into DaSilva’s “Wabash & You,” most notably through the always welcome presence of a live band, the Main Squeeze. Opening in contemporary Chicago, we follow dancer Coco Alvarez-Mena as she portrays a young romantic who’s just arrived in the city, and catches the eye of a local Chicagoan, danced by Davide Oldano. Locals flitter in and out, taking selfies, drinking at cocktail bars, or greeting friends, all smoothly serenaded by the Main Squeeze. Warm brown and silky beige costumes ooze a metropolitan charm.

The show is pitched as a ‘modern twist on the classic girl-meets-boy story,’ and, without ruining the plot, things do indeed take a darker turn. This is accompanied by an enjoyably heavier turn in the music; amps are cranked up, the distortion increases. You can feel the energy of the band ripple through the dancers as they jump higher, roll quicker, and fling their arms out in grand allegro with gusto.

Both Alvarez-Mena and Oldano are believable as two young people falling in love; one particular fantasy scene with nifty costume changes smartly portrays how quickly you can get ahead of yourself imagining possible futures. The energy of “Wabash & You” could easily be transferred beyond the proscenium arch, to fully sense the dancers whirl around you as the band let loose, to sense that addictive rush of possibility that a big city can give. I leave the theatre and head back out into a chilly South Bend evening, jack-o’-lanterns lighting the way home.

Róisín O'Brien

Róisín is a dance artist and writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She regularly writes for Springback Magazine, The Skinny and Seeing Dance, and has contributed to The Guardian and Film Stories. She loves being in the studio working on a new choreography with a group of dancers, or talking to brilliant people in the dance world about their projects and opinions. She tries not to spend too much time obsessing over Crystal Pite.

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