“Large wire puppets, pillowy cotton figures, sculpted faces and hands, and even a large puppet horse all dance in “9 Windows,” the newest dance/multimedia creation of Federico Restrepo, a Colombian-born dancer and auteur of dance puppetry. The piece, which offers nine windows into the immigrant’s mind, will be presented by La MaMa E.T.C. in its First Floor Theater for three weeks, October 3 to 20. The show was enthusiastically hailed for its honesty and beauty in its world premiere August 11 and 14 at the Spoletina 2002 Festival in Italy and was lauded by the Italian press. Being a stranger in a strange land in an eternal theme of the avantgarde. Restrepo, who was born in Bogota, Colombia, can speak of it as well as anybody else. As a maker of puppet dance theater, he has always allowed himself to dream epic thoughts. It’s not surprising, then, that one of the strongest images at the beginning of his immigrant dream, “9 Windows,” is one of being chased by a Conquistador. The overall idea isautobiographical, but one that is probably shared by most immigrants in America today: being a stranger in a strange land, and since 9/11, having come from a place of violence to another place of violence. The piece goes inside the emotions of the émigré: the feeling of expatriation, the new perspective posed by distance, the clarity of those who look from far away, as well as the loneliness that distance imposes upon them. (…) This living collage is replete with wild rhythm and frenetic energy. Each new window opens a new revelation, and this is the structure of the piece. It opens with the arrival of the immigrant (Restrepo) as a puppet carrying a big trunk into >” Village Voice, 2002