DEAR STUDENTS:
EVEN IF YOU ONLY READ THIS SUMMARY, MAKE SURE YOU VISIT ALL THE OTHER PAGES OF THIS WEB SITE AND LOOK AT THE PICTURES.
ALSO MAKE SURE TO LISTEN TO THE INSTRUMENT SOUNDS BY CLICKING ON THE INSTRUMENTS SHOWN ON THE "MUSIC" PAGE!
About The Show
"¡Entusiasmo!" is an acrobatics and theatre show performed by Portland's "Do Jump!" group.
"¡Entusiasmo!" tells the story of a place in Colombia, South America, called "Las Gaviotas."
Las Gaviotas
At "Las Gaviotas," which is a small village surrounded by a hundreds of acres of land, engineers, teachers, scientists, volunteers, and others have developed sustainable farming techniques and sustainable technology for the last 35 years. "Sustainable" means it won't deplete the environment. Many of the sustainable technologies invented at "Las Gaviotas" are being used in poor regions all over the world.
"Las Gaviotas" has persisted over the decades despite huge financial and political obstacles, always finding new ways to survive and continue with new projects.
The main character in "¡Entusiasmo!" plays the role of Paolo Lugari, the Colombian inventor who founded "Las Gaviotas." The acrobats in the show play the role of community members at "Las Gaviotas" as they go about setting up the village and creating inventions. The acrobats also play the role of monkeys that return to "Las Gaviotas" after a native forest spontaneously regenerates under pine trees planted on the land at "Las Gaviotas."
The forests that have sprung up on their own under these pine plantations over the last 25 years were an unexpected miracle, because the soil at "Las Gaviotas" is of bad quality and no forests had grown on that land for thousands of years.
The regeneration of the forest is an important theme in the show "Entusiasmo!" The forests that have been growing at "Las Gaviotas" for the last 25 years have gotten their seeds mostly from forest patches that grow along river beds in the region. The seeds get carried or "dispersed" to "Las Gaviotas" by birds and mammals. They disperse them in their beaks or in their droppings.
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Los Llanos
Las Gaviotas is located in a remote region of the "Llanos" (YAH-nos) in Colombia. It takes many, many hours to get there from the nearest town by jeep or any other vehicle that can handle the bad roads that lead there.
The Llanos is an extensive area of grasslands, seasonally-flooded plains, and forests shared by Venezuela and Colombia. The open grassland areas of the Llanos look much like the Great Plains of the United States and Canada in summer. The Llanos are located to the north and west of the Orinoco River, and they border the Amazon rainforest along their entire southern edge. In all, the Llanos cover an area somewhat larger than California.
The Llanos are mostly covered by grasses of low nutritional value. However, some areas with deeper and richer soils have relatively large patches of dry forest.
In the Llanos there are two strong seasons that are very different from one another: a wet season with torrential rains that often cause rivers to flood much of the Llanos, and a dry season with no rain.
The fauna in the Llanos is both abundant and diverse. Particularly spectacular are the birds that gather in large numbers during the dry season to feed in the drying wetlands.
The people of the Llanos are mostly cattle ranchers and cowboys of Spanish and Indian origin, along with their families. There are also rice, cotton, oil palm, pine tree, and sugar cane farmers and their families. Today there are 11 Indian groups in the Colombian Llanos. Generally speaking, the Llanos are a very sparsely populated region, with a population roughly equivalent to that of the State of Wyoming (second least densely populated state in the U.S.).
STUDY QUESTIONS:
What is the show "¡Entusiasmo!" about?
Where is "Las Gaviotas" located?
What do people do at "Las Gaviotas?"
How has "Las Gaviotas" been important to the rest of the world?
What are the Llanos?
Which two countries share the Llanos?
The Llanos are about the size of what U.S. state?
Who lives in the Llanos?
Under the pine plantations at "Las Gaviotas," new forest plants are growing. Where do the seeds for these new plants come from?
What causes the flooding of the Llanos during the wet season?
Bonus research question: is there a winter season with freezing temperatures in the Llanos?
A Note about the " ¡ ! " of ¡Entusiasmo!
In Spanish, exclamations are always opened with an upside-down exclamation mark, and closed with a regular exclamation mark.
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