Tristessa’s Cha Cha Cha: A Salsa Opera

Adal Maldonado created a new, multi-disciplinary music and dance performance, Tristessa’s Cha Cha Cha: A Salsa Opera, which unfolds in a Totalitarian state called Silencio that has outlawed all forms of music. Tristessa tells the story of a woman who is arrested and brought to trial for dancing the forbidden cha cha cha and how her efforts at the resulting trial and her escape from the State’s prison bring about the transformation of this oppressed society. Along the way, she embarks on a parallel journey of self-discovery that awakens the creative female spirit within her and that also brings her into existential conflict with her preconceived notion of the intimate meaning of love and of her own renewed purpose in a restricted illusion called life.