Hildegard Elisabeth Keller spent seven years traveling South America and Europe, learning everything she could about Alfonsina Storni.
After that time, Keller brought her knowledge of the early 20th century writer back to Bloomington.
Bringing music, text, film and more to the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, Keller and her team are presenting “Un viaje con Alfonsina — A Journey with Alfonsina” tonight.
The multimedia, bilingual production came together through the work of directors Keller and Francisco Cortés-Álvarez, a graduate composer in the Jacobs School of Music, along with several team members, Keller said.
“Things fell into place very quickly,” she said. “I felt a little bit like a spider in a web.”
“Un viaje con Alfonsina — A Journey with Alfonsina” takes the audience on a musical and literary journey through Storni’s life, which covers Europe, South America and the sea in between.
Storni was born in Switzerland in 1892 and later moved to Argentina. Upon arriving in Buenos Aires, she began writing and soon became one of the most influential feminist voices of her time.
Due to Europeans immigrating to South America, Keller said Storni was swept up in the period’s rising political activism.
“It was certainly not an easy life,” she said. “The world wasn’t ready for a woman like her.”
Working in journalism, poetry, teaching, playwriting and more, Storni lived an eclectic life before committing suicide in 1938.
As a result, Keller said the general public has since riddled Storni’s life with legends and rumors.
“Alfonsina is an iceberg figure,” Keller said. “We hope to bring out nine-tenths of the iceberg.”
Because of Storni’s multi-faceted life, Keller said she intentionally made her production cover so many fields of the arts.
Keller said she wants to reveal as much of Storni as she can in a single evening.
“She’s definitely a very artistically talented person from many perspectives,” she said. “I think had she had the possibility to do more, to be freer, I’m sure she would have done even more.”
The production features both old and new songs performed by the Jacobs Latin American Music Ensemble, including the famous song about Storni, “Alfonsina y el mar.”
Additionally, Keller said the production will feature a new song about Storni, composed by Cortés-Álvarez.
Beyond the production’s musical component, Keller is also screening four of her short experimental films.
The films are part of her larger series “Alfonsina’s Blue Moments,” which are all based on poems and aphorisms of Storni’s.
“I would call them experimental poetry films,” she said. “Your eye travels through a strange landscape, because it’s all miniatures.”
The production is not entirely new, she said. Keller has made productions surrounding Storni in the past in other parts of the world.
However, she said this is the richest, most varied production she’s made.
“I think this is very telling that this production happens in Bloomington,” she said. “For a multi-lingual and multi-layered production, it’s so easy to find people at IU and in this community. I couldn’t imagine a better community than Bloomington.”
Despite having prior experience with filmmaking and writing, Keller said she knew very little about making a production like “Un viaje con Alfonsina — A Journey with Alfonsina.”
With her lack of experience, she said the most important thing she learned through her process was embracing her fear.
“All of this had a deep, deep learning curve for me,” she said. “It was a pleasure and a joy, but it was also a lot of work. Sometimes you fear if you can manage and learn these things. But let go of that, and just do it.”
