Sacred Hidden Symbols: The Most Ancient Religion.
Jay Duckworth
Jay Duckworth explores theater’s sacred origins, tracing how performance began as ritual and endures as humanity’s oldest art.
Jay Duckworth explores theater’s sacred origins, tracing how performance began as ritual and endures as humanity’s oldest art.
In-depth interview with director Rebecca Miller Kratzer on collaboration, intuitive process, and redefining leadership in theatre.
Composer Jaimie Pangan on discipline, indie storytelling, and creating music that connects emotionally across film and games.
Explore how meditation and mindfulness can support theatre artists with focus, presence, emotional regulation, and creative sustainability.
Mexican artistic director Rebeca Garro reflects on theatre as a tool for social change community engagement and ethical storytelling.
There is a striking purity in the way Martina Bakst moves through the air, a presence shaped by years of discipline, deep intuition, and an unshakable devotion to sensitivity as a guiding force. As a hair aerialist and circus artist from Argentina, Martina embraces an art form that demands strength, vulnerability, and a rare kind of trust in the invisible. Her work rises from a childhood filled with music, dance, and a family who treated passion as a way of life. What began as the simple freedom to express herself became a lifelong mission to connect, uplift, and expand what the body can communicate.
Martina’s creative world is built from daily training, openness to artistic direction, and a commitment to transforming inner landscapes into movement. She approaches circus as a space where theatre, dance, music, and acrobatics coexist, not as separate disciplines but as a unified channel of storytelling. Her process seeks connection, her inspiration comes from life in all its contrasts, and her presence invites audiences into a shared emotional current.
Her journey is one of roots, resilience, and elevation in this edition of PROFILES.
Fue permitirme ser libremente en expresión y dejar ser esa pulsión de baile actuación que estaba allí dentro mío . Con los años, esa chispa creció en misión: conectar, elevar y expandir sensibilidad a través del arte.
It was allowing myself to express freely and letting that impulse for dance and performance that was inside me come alive. Over the years, that spark grew into a mission: to connect, uplift, and expand sensitivity through art.
Que hermosa pregunta, si mis obras favoritas de niña eran los musicales, Mary Poppins fue un gran motor y su capacidad de volar, y ese mundo de fantasía que me llevaba a soñar. Ver acróbatas como deshollinadores también me acercaban a este mundo, cantar y bailar, pero el gran estímulo fue mi familia rodeada de baile siempre y de canto alrededor, mis padres, hermano, primos, tías, tías abuelas, abuelas… la pasión como motor!
Podríamos decir que mi obra favorita nace del aire. Volar es mi metáfora: confiar en lo invisible que me sostiene.
What a beautiful question. If my favorite works as a child were musicals, Mary Poppins was a huge spark, with her ability to fly and that world of fantasy that made me dream. Watching acrobats move like chimney sweepers also brought me closer to this world, singing and dancing. But the biggest influence was my family, always surrounded by dance and singing — my parents, my brother, cousins, aunts, great-aunts, grandmothers. Passion was the driving force.
We could say that my favorite work is born from the air. Flying is my metaphor: trusting in the invisible that holds me.
Mi proceso une disciplina e intuición. Entreno todos los días, amo hacerlo y llevo un entrenamiento de alto rendimiento desde hace ya más de 22 años y es parte de mi vida !
En los procesos de creación dejo que la sensibilidad marque el ritmo. La inspiración llega cuando escucho mi interior. Y también en caso de estar trabajando bajo una dirección artística, estar abierta y permeable a cada director artístico para ser fiel a su imaginación y poder traducir eso con mucha apertura y transparencia para lograr juntos lo soñado y hacerlo crecer más y más .
Siento que entrenar diario y entrenar escénicamente esa permeabilidad en el instrumento “cuerpo” me permite construir personajes o estados con profundidad y pureza .. y ser un medio transmisor (capaz de abrir mi corazón-ser para también así llegar los corazones-seres) de cada espectador.
My process blends discipline and intuition. I train every day, I love doing it, and I have followed high-performance training for more than 22 years — it is part of my life.
In creative processes, I let sensitivity set the pace. Inspiration arrives when I listen to my inner self. And when I am working under an artistic direction, I stay open and permeable to each director in order to honor their imagination and translate it with openness and transparency so we can build what is dreamed together and help it grow more and more.
I feel that training daily and training my stage presence — that permeability in the instrument of the “body” — allows me to build characters or emotional states with depth and purity, and to be a medium of transmission capable of opening my heart-self so that, in turn, it reaches the hearts-beings of every spectator.
Desafío: trascender mis propios límites emocionales y físicos. Me hizo más fuerte, más sensible y más consciente del poder de mis raíces internas.
Challenge: to transcend my own emotional and physical limits. It made me stronger, more sensitive, and more aware of the power of my inner roots.
Me inspira la vida, el descubrir, y aprender de cada desafío lo ilimitado de la capacidad del ser . Su luz, sus sombras y su resiliencia. Esa inspiración aparece en cada movimiento, buscando conectar y elevar la energía entre todos.
Life inspires me, the act of discovering, and learning from each challenge the limitless capacity of being. Its light, its shadows, and its resilience. That inspiration appears in every movement, seeking to connect and elevate the energy among all of us.
La fusión de disciplinas y la libertad creativa. Siento que estamos en una hermosa época vanguardista capaz de conectar y hacer de las artes escénicas, en este caso a través del “circo teatro o circo nuevo” un canal de expresión sin límites de conexión, y sentir donde hoy el teatro, la danza, la música, luces, acrobacias etc, se conjugan en un juego de canales de transmisión donde no están separadas por ejemplo: la técnica de una acrobacia, con el estado del personaje, con la musicalidad que fortalece ese momento y lo hace único.
Hoy la interpretación y la grandeza de fusionar y afinar nuestro estado escénico como artistas nos da la posibilidad de estar permeables para conectar con lo puro y profundo de una idea capaz de inyectar o tocar a esas miles de personas que están allí viendo o viviendo el mismo momento a la hora de ver el show por ejemplo a la par. Ser una unidad despertarnos y enriquecernos .
Hoy el arte aéreo se vuelve más humano, más narrativo y más conectado a la emoción real.
The fusion of disciplines and creative freedom. I feel we are in a beautiful avant-garde moment capable of connecting and turning the performing arts—in this case through “circo teatro” or “new circus”—into a channel of expression without limits, a place where theatre, dance, music, lights, acrobatics and more merge into a single flow of transmission. They are no longer separated, for example: the technique of an acrobatic move, the state of the character, and the musicality that strengthens that moment and makes it unique.
Today, interpretation and the power of refining our stage presence as artists give us the possibility of staying open and permeable, able to connect with the purest and deepest part of an idea capable of touching the thousands of people who are there seeing or living the same moment together during a show. Becoming one, awakening and enriching each other.
Today aerial art becomes more human, more narrative, and more connected to real emotion.
Escuchen su raíz y su ritmo. Pongan el corazón al 100% y abracen cada color interior. La sensibilidad es fuerza; la pasión, guía.
Listen to your root and your rhythm. Put your heart in at 100 percent and embrace every color within you. Sensitivity is strength; passion is a guide.
Deseo que mi arte recuerde que todos tenemos raíces internas que nos sostienen. Que inspire a mirar hacia adentro y a transformar sensibilidad en luz. Y que todo lo que pueble nuestro ser es posible, con amor, determinación, confianza y dedicación
I want my art to remind us that we all have inner roots that hold us up. That it inspires us to look within and to transform sensitivity into light. And that everything that lives within us is possible with love, determination, trust, and dedication.
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