Video Premiere: Another Town (Ballet)

Another Town for dancer and orchestra (2026)
based on The Trial by Franz Kafka

Music Composed by Kenneth Lieberson
Dance and Choreography by Heikos Miguel González Muñoz

Audiovisual Production: Chris Erland
Assistant: Enrique Bejerano

About the Dancer
Heikos Miguel González Muñoz is a Cuban contemporary dancer and teaching artist currently studying at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana. He trained at the Escuela Profesional de Artes Pedro Raúl Sánchez Rodríguez and the Escuela Nacional de Arte (ENA). He has performed with Danza Contemporánea de Cuba and is currently a member of Danza Teatro Retazos, appearing in the Havana Biennial, Festival Habana Vieja, and international festivals in Mexico and Germany. González Muñoz also teaches dance workshops for youth and adults and has received recognition in Cuba's Impulsos choreography competition and the Habitando Espacios online performance competition.

SYNOPSIS
The Dancer is a man around age 30.
He is athletic, determined, highly intelligent and resourceful.
He is a seeker of truth and wisdom.

He has worked in an unfulfilling job, has known many an 
unhappiness, setbacks... His inner strengths: extraordinary resilience and curiosity drive him to continuous improvement.

That he mimes and dances rather than speaks
is symbolic of an individual having 
no voice in a nation in the grips of tyranny.

***
Franz awakens to his alarm playing the jazz of Max Roach. 

On his way to the bank, he felt, while walking on
the street, loneliness and melancholy especially so
because today is his 29th birthday. 

Odd, he remarked to himself, 
why in broad daylight are nighthawks patrolling the sky?

(And why on earth did the composer use a 
different font on the first few pages of his score?

I asked Charles Ives. 
He said, "Sonny, there are some things in heaven
and earth which will forever remain
an unanswered question." 

***
The arrest: On his 29th birthday, 
Franz, the bank clerk, is arrested by two masked agents 
for an unspecified crime. 
A bag is placed over his head. 

He is thrown in the trunk of a car. 
After many hours, he is unceremoniously thrown onto 
a street corner in another town. 

The agents take off without saying a word. 
Before they leave, they throw a document at Franz with the date of 
his trial. Franz is thankful that he at least will have his day in court. 

Franz grieves his friends who 
disappeared never to be heard from again, 
no trial, just gone.

Franz is increasingly confused by often 
contradictory government policies. 

***
Meanwhile Franz sees posters of him around 
the new town describing him as 
an enemy of the people
but that the government is so fair, so magnanimous, 
the most just government of all time, 
the only government in history which has 
never made a mistake, 
never done anything wrong, 
will grant even him, 
who they refer to as vermin 
polluting the blood of all the good people— 
they will grant even this vile criminal a day in court. 

Franz, wandering in the mostly deserted town, sees a library. 

Franz spends most of his time at the library researching 
legal history in all forms of government from democratic to fascist. 

The few people Franz does meet in this unnervingly
quiet city either shun him, run off
in terror or call the police, all believing the Big Lie that he is
an Enemy of the People.

***
The ending
Franz, while reading about court proceedings in 
ancient China and Japan, consistently sees 
references to philosophical works.
These include titles about Confucian and Zen thought. 

His curiosity piqued, with nothing else to do, 
he reads these works. 

Franz learns to meditate. 
After years of practice, one day seemingly out of the blue 
he visualizes being chased by a voracious lion. 

He falls off a cliff. 
A few meters down there is a tiny cave.
He enters. 
There, he waits. 
Days pass. 
The lion having grown impatient went off to seek his dinner elsewhere. 
So Franz thought. 
He climbs almost to the top, 
cautiously peering up. 

***
Franz sees the lion waiting. 
He scrambles back to his cave. 
A torrential monsoon dislodges him. 
The skies clear. 
The cave is no longer. 
Franz holds onto a branch. 

He notices a huge, delicious looking strawberry. 

Franz hears the lion approaching as 
the branch begins to tear away from the tree. 

In a state of complete acceptance for what cannot be changed, 
his fears disappear. 

He decides to enjoy the strawberry.