The Old Huancayo Theater

The old Huancayo theater house, where the dance (Marinera) was to be held was, in Ximena H’s day, and surely is now, a dreary enough place. Perhaps the most unsightly building on that long narrow stretch of road between the Plaza de Arms in downtown Huancayo, and all the way to the old theater house itself. It often appeared to me when I rode by it—those several years—it was always uninhabited and it stared back at me with its curtain-less windows—that looked like pale to dead, dried up eyes.
The building had been purchased by a private university in the city. The second floor, and only floor, of my recollection that the building had, reached out to its stairway, no outside balconies about; it served as an entry way to look down upon the theater—it was a bulky built looking building, larger looking outside than it was actually inside.
Outside, a place of small to large business: a car dealer up the block, some shops painted others unpainted, and a mass of chicken cafés along the roadside, a fruit juice store, framed houses, shops, inhabited by men and women, long serving the community—all open to the fall rain storms.
All summer long it seemed to me, it remained a quiet sleepy place, perchance because it is a distance away from the inner core of the city, some ten-block away from the Shulcas River, although within the city limits.
On special days (and occasions) however, the doors are ready to be opened, and such parties come waiting, and standing in long lines alongside the roadside all the way down to those chicken cafes, all the way up to the door’s entrance, waiting for the guard to open those long closed doors. And there is the screaming of the city’s children, the laughter of parents, and the old rustic, hoarse voices of the elder and grandparents, chewing the fat, chitchatting the evening away with old friends, waiting for the evening events to start. And then afterwards, after the events are over, the once empty and clean floors, reside with the many empty cans and candy wrappers, and bits and pieces of paper left on the floor, that if not cleaned up would remain rotting at the base of the building.
Those events bring life to the building, a little life to the community.
The night Ximena H. danced the Marinera, an adventurous girl of fourteen-years old, daughter to a restaurant owner, I went to walk down those lively isles, it seemed quite clean, it all had a mellow warmth to the many voices crisscrossing the theater, and the dancers touched the audience with their delightful colors and movements—like the wind at twilight. The eyes of the audience moved back and forth as the dancers danced, it all sent a thrill to the audience.

No: 453; 8-21-2009 (SA); Dedicated to Ximena H.

Note to the reader: To those who have spent time at this theater, may not agree with my picture in writing of it, but it is how I see it, and we all have our own versions on how we see and depict things, even the gospels, in the New Testament can verify this. Thus, take no offence, none t was meant.