Date of composition: 2023
Premiere: 16 November 2023 at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel
Duration: 40 minutes
Performances by the Berliner Philharmoniker:
First performed on 18 June 2026, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel
August 2019: at a rally, the head of security of Mexico City is doused with pink glitter dust – a protest following the alleged rape of a teenage girl by four police officers. In the days and weeks that follow, Mexico repeatedly sees demonstrations by thousands of women: the Revolución diamantina forces its way into the public sphere. A cry of outrage against machismo, violence against women and the oppression of women.
Trained in Mexico and London, Gabriela Ortiz took these women’s protests as the starting point for a new work in 2023: Revolución diamantina, a ballet for eight voices and orchestra, which received a Grammy in 2025 for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. According to Ortiz, two further developments played a defining role in its creation: “On March 8, 2022, a contingent of female police officers from the Secretaría de Seguridad Ciudadana marched together with other feminist groups on International Women's Day, raising their right fists and shouting out the following slogan: "Policía consciente se une al contingente," or "Woke police will join the contingent". The empathetic gesture of protestors toward these women in uniform was accompanied by shouts and applauses in recognition of their hard work. In an unprecedented event, police officers and protestors came together in a single cry for justice and respect for women's rights.” Ortiz was also inspired by a protest song by the Chilean collective LasTesis, based on texts by the Argentine writer Rita Segato. “Their objective was to provide visibility to women's marches by taking to the streets with the idea that their message would continue to be sung around the world.”
To bring these various influences together in her ballet, Ortiz turned to the writer Cristina Rivera Garza. Together, they developed ideas for the work’s dramaturgy and musical form: “With enormous sensitivity, Cristina developed a poetic dramaturgy that touches on the utmost essential fibers of feminism, passing through various transformative contexts and tracing a dramatic line to be conveyed from both a corporal and sonorous perspective.”
The ballet version of Revolución diamantina, which runs to around 45 minutes, is divided into six acts. These address, for example, “harassment and a lack of security in public spaces, the confusion between the language of romantic love and practices of manipulation and control”, as well as “solitude and a lack of sense of belongingthe voices of the disappeared”. Ortiz also portrays “the intimate terrorism that goes on between couples; street protests and their cries for justice; and finally, the aspiration that only by walking together will we be able to find a way out, because even though we may have only indirectly experienced much of what has been described here, their cause is also our own: that of all of us, women and men and people.” Musical allusions to Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana reinforce Ortiz’ message, which questions all rituals and seemingly immutable structures of human coexistence.