Escarleth Romo Pozo offers three in one
La Mala
Escarleth Romo Pozo
September 24–25 and 27, 2026
MDT Moderna Dansteatern, Stockholm
Following last year’s Yielding, a duet for Robert Malmborg and Victor Pérez Armero with an accompanying zine, Escarleth Romo Pozo returned to Moderna Dansteatern and took the stage by herself in La Mala. Well, not exactly “by herself.” Pozo appeared to be pregnant throughout the three-show run and a third entity — a spiritual force — seemed to be with us in the room as well. Pozo is a soloist whose presence hits you with the force of an ensemble. Her powerfully mercurial nature is reminiscent of Okwui Okpokwasili or Courtney May Robertson, presented earlier this year by STHLM DANS.
La Mala is itself a kind of triptych. Its bookend scenes are dimly lit and cloaked in haze. The opening act is given almost entirely to Pozo’s gradual emergence from a floorbound cloud, stage right. We see first one arm reach upward, then a heavily sequenced transition to standing positions, with the pace and intensity of a Butoh performance. Pozo is the Ur-mother being born of Earth before giving birth herself. She shifts shapes in near darkness as if deciding which form to take. It is about ten minutes before we first see Pozo’s face clearly. It is about five minutes later that Pozo is on her two feet. Meanwhile, thanks to a small microphone taped to one cheek, we hear all of her breathing, chanting, and moaning while long, unbroken synth washes flesh out the murky mood. (The score’s various contributors include DJ and producer Deria Rumina Yenidogan and sound artists Olivier Di Placido and Jassem Hindi, soon part of Sun Eaters at Weld.)
La Mala’s third act occurs back in that same universe, still ominous and weighted. Between two short, textile mounds stage left is a third, tall peak of fabric into which Pozo crawls. Having turned around inside, she then extrudes it toward the center of the space with only her face uncovered. Pozo’s laborious crowning encourages us to imagine that this colorful blanket — styled as if it were woven in her native Nicaragua — is a kind of cosmic birth canal, a portal from another realm into ours.
This epilogue mirrors the show’s opening moments. (Or does it repeat the same moments, seen now from inside?) As before, she is coming from, passing through, developing into, and leaving behind, all at once. As before, she finally arrives. Once free, she holds the blanket’s loose end in her fist, walks around and around, and twists the fabric into a hefty coil. In the end, does it resemble a giant bowel movement? It could, but that doesn’t make it vulgar. It could also be a Boa imperator preparing to strike. The indelible images in those first and third acts, perhaps symbolizing the body’s most elemental, biological functions, remind us who we are. We are animals who consume, excrete, reproduce, die, and decompose. As described by the program notes, La Mala “opens a dark and seductive universe where motherhood, resilience, ancestry, and survival coexist.” In both the beginning and the end, the work reaches for eternality.
The show’s middle act is something else. Bright lights overhead suddenly illuminate the entire stage, Christoffer Lloyd’s design unveiling theretofore shadowed scenography by Morgana Machado Marques, comprising the tipico textiles as well as store-bought garments pinned to long, red clotheslines. Pozo runs and leaps around the stage, urgently assigning tasks to audience members with a kind of manic glee that seems imported from a different show entirely. She hurriedly tells a story about an insensitive date who asked if she would mind pretending to be Pocahontas. She washes clothing by hand in a tub. Casually and unceremoniously, with a large dry mop, she erases the circular, triangular, and square spiral glyphs drawn carefully with sand or sawdust on the floor. She is now as birdlike and fleet in her hypermobile body as she was leaden and ancient before. She speaks, sings, and lip-synchs in English, Spanish, and Swedish. As a tonal shift, this second act is extremely ambitious but it also mostly works through sheer force of Pozo’s commitment. She contains multitudes, as well as a being about to enter this maddening world. Quizás el mundo sea “la mala.”
Zachary Whittenburg
Zachary Whittenburg has been a journalist, administrator, photographer, and grantmaker in arts and culture since 2008. A regular contributor to Dance Magazine and former dance editor at Time Out Chicago magazine, he has written for numerous additional publications including Critical Correspondence, Critical Read, Dance International, Flavorwire, Pointe, and Total Theatre UK.