At the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, departed loved ones draw near in Spirit Encounters
Mexican-born artist Gerardo Avila helps celebrate the Day of the Dead and highlights the joys of the holiday through the magical migration of monarch butterflies
Spirit Encounters. Photo by Tracy Moromisato
The Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival presents Spirit Encounters at the Russian Hall on November 2 at 7 pm
IN LATE SUMMER and early fall, millions of monarch butterflies migrate from southeastern Canada all the way down to the mountains of Mexico. Once the stunning orange-and-black insects have completed their impressive 4,000-kilometre flight—which takes upwards of two months—they hibernate in oyamel fir trees for the winter.
Like clockwork, the butterflies’ arrival in the southwestern state of Michoacán each year coincides with Day of the Dead celebrations on November 1 and 2. Many folks in Mexico believe these monarchs represent the souls of the departed returning to visit them.
Mexican artist Gerardo Avila, who splits his time between Vancouver and the Sunshine Coast, says that the migration is a magical phenomenon to witness. Having grown up in Mexico, he has many fond memories of celebrating the Day of the Dead.
“I was hired for the Day of the Dead to do clowning for the children in a little town in the state of Mexico,” Avila says. “And it was amazing, because I saw something that doesn’t happen now too much: they had, from the cemetery, roads of flower petals [leading] right into the outdoors of their homes. And the altars were full of these roses, these petals, to tell their family spirits who were coming to visit where the altar was. And the altars were full of food.
“Then, after the show, of course, people wanted me to visit the altars, right?” he recalls. “They gave me bread of the dead from the altar, because they share that food later….It was very beautiful to see the mixture of Indigenous culture and Spanish culture.”
Avila is bringing his production Spirit Encounters, a multidisciplinary celebration of the Day of the Dead, to the Russian Hall on November 2 as part of this year’s Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival. It will feature shadow puppetry, comedy, flamenco, Mexican dancing, and live music revolving around everything from the significance of monarchs to the history of the holiday.
What’s truly special about monarchs is that they usually live for only a few weeks—but every fourth generation, a supergroup called the Methuselah are born. Those butterflies live up to eight times longer than their forebears and can make the entire journey to southwestern Mexico. After hibernating, they begin the long flight home, laying millions of eggs and allowing a new generation to carry on.
Avila has crafted a giant papier-mâché monarch to represent the Methuselah generation; three of the performers carry it during the show. The insects’ development from caterpillars to butterflies, he notes, is also a key theme.
“We believe that life is transformation, and that’s the parallel I want to transmit,” he says. “We transform, right? We go and become another energy.”
Many of those beliefs are explained through a historical lens in Spirit Encounters. Avila says a key figure is Coatlicue, the mother of all Aztec gods, who represents earth, life, and death.
“I talk about what the Indigenous people in Mexico thought about death,” Avila says. “And it’s very, very interesting for me. I point it out in this show, because they do believe in the possibility of coming back to the world of the living.”
Another component of Spirit Encounters, Avila says, is educating folks about the joyful aspects of the Day of the Dead.
“One of the most important things for me is that they say, ‘Why are you so happy on the Day of the Dead?’ Or ‘Why did you make parties or sing?’” he says. “For me, it’s a very easy answer. Because we think our relatives are visiting, right? So we are not going to receive them with a sad face. We receive them with music, with happiness, because they are coming—and the food that they like, the drinks that they like, right? That’s what I learned from when I went to this little town in Mexico.”
Spirit Encounters features puppeteers Hazel Bell-Koski and Dana Wilson, storyteller Steven Schwabl, flamenco dancers Maria Avila (Avila’s daughter) and Isabel Pacheco, and musicians Anna Lumiere, Peter Mole, and Graham Ord. They first performed a short version of the show on the Sunshine Coast, at Hackett Park for the Sechelt Arts Festival; it has since grown into a full-length piece.
Avila will lead a mask-making workshop and community procession to visit local ofrendas, or home altars, during the day leading up to the performance. With so many joyful elements to the production, the artist says that Spirit Encounters is ultimately about imparting one important sentiment to audiences:
“Making death more familiar…instead of being afraid.” 
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