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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina. Under a beige overcoat, plaid scarf, shoes and a very short, gradient haircut, Ivo Colonna debuts his new facet as a dissident heartthrob.

The musician, who identifies as a sensitive, non-binary trans man, will present the show “Mis Romances” in early August. In the context of Non-Binary Visibility Day, celebrated this Thursday, Presentes spoke with him about this new artistic phase in his life and his return to the stage after having conceived and given birth to Malva, his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter.

Ivo loves to "talk about love and relationships" and comes from other musical experiences such as Pimentón, Bife, and Alto Bondi. However, he found in Mis Romances the opportunity to sing his "favorite songs" from childhood to the present day, in a repertoire of tangos, boleros, and "other surprises."

This August 7th will mark the premiere of his first solo show at 8 PM at Café Berlín, located in the Devoto neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Tickets are available through livepass.com.ar .

Ivo arrives punctually at the Simik photo museum-café in the Chacarita neighborhood, dressed in fluorescent colored pants and a black vest that his mother gave him for Father's Day.

“My Romances is kind of the show my dad would have liked to see. Without feminism (laughs). Feminism is inevitable, but, I mean, it's a list of romantic songs that I've always liked, from adolescence until now. I've always liked tango, since I was 16. My dad used to ask me why I liked that sad music. I don't know, something about tango calls to me. Then, when I moved to the capital, I liked it even more. I'm not from Buenos Aires, but I feel pretty much like one,” says Ivo, originally from the Buenos Aires town of San Miguel.

-Besides being a musician, you excelled in many other areas.

-Yes… I've always loved words. I started Literature at UCA, I did quite a bit of Communication at UADE… in other lives. In between, I took the entrance exam for Translation Studies at the University of Belgrano. All private universities. My parents had this idea that if I went to UBA I'd become politicized… Sooner or later it happened. UBA wasn't to blame.

I never finished my degree. With the support of my partner at the time, I ended up dedicating myself to art, I published a book of poems, and I started making music more seriously.

I also did online radio for many years, acted in some plays, films, music videos, and did performance art… I even managed BIFE! This year I acted in Martín Shanly's upcoming film, which is coming out soon, and in Rodrigo Arena's play, "Art is Love"—very funny—where I played the Devil.

-You said you love words. What messages, discussions, or questions do you like to generate through writing?

"I didn't write the lyrics for Bife. Javiera wrote them all. And that was also a turning point for me in my life. I withdrew quite a bit. I observed, and I was also going through a kind of personal transformation—of my body, my gender expression, my voice. I felt a lot of freedom in that sense, and little freedom in terms of speaking out."

Later, I focused more on physical training, taking dance classes and acting lessons. I began to think more about the "how," about being a performer, rather than being an author or composer. Just now, I wrote the lyrics for a song on Nuestrans Canciones II for Malva, a 93-year-old trans woman who passed away in 2020. Her story resonated with me just as I decided to name my baby Malva.

– Didn't you know the story before? I thought you had chosen her name after her…

-No, it was precisely at that moment that her story reached me. I had a lot of similar experiences with Malva Solís. There was a connection. That story had to reach me. Because Malva was a very unique trans woman. Susy (Shock)'s challenge for Nuestrans was to write a story based on the biography of a leading trans figure in history.

– How did you hear their story?

A friend sent me a link to the news story when she passed away, which was three days after I dreamt that my daughter should be named Malva. That's when I started investigating. She was an amazing writer, a costume designer, a cook, she did a ton of things, she was a real workaholic, very discreet. She was born in Chile, crossed the Andes at 17, and came here. A story of a survivor who lived to be 93. I was also drawn to her non-binary identity… in the end, she came to see herself as a trans woman, as Malva, but she had a kind of resistance to something, a resistance to being simplified. You can see that in the documentary "With the Name of a Flower," that strength of not conforming to a stereotype resonated with me.

The question that changed everything

Ivo's 12-year-old niece calls him uncle. When she was four, during a meal, she asked him: "Auntie, are you a boy?"

“I hadn’t asked myself that question so clearly. I am eternally grateful to my niece who asked me the most important question of my life,” says Colonna.

-With this idea of ​​not simplifying it, how do you think about your identity?

*Takes a sip of coffee* (jokingly). -I don't know. I think I'm trying to inhabit a sensitive, non-binary masculinity. The first few years of coming out as trans were more like warriors, defensive. And now I'm more relaxed, seeing what it's like to be a trans dad. I had a lot of ups and downs during the pregnancy, and the pandemic in the middle of it all made the situation quite unusual. But social media has saved me many times.

– How did you experience the process of your pregnancy?

“I came out as trans, and then I realized I wanted to have children. Before, I didn’t. I didn’t want to be a mother. I had a resistance to it and to my own personal history. When it dawned on me that I could be who I am and also have children—it seems obvious, but it isn’t—suddenly it was like, ‘Okay, I can.’ I started researching, meeting people on Instagram with the hashtag #nonbinary, and I came across @selfmadecade , who lives in the United States. A wonderful person. I followed her pregnancy on Instagram. I told her, ‘You’re so inspiring, thank you for sharing.’ Suddenly, in the same way, lesbians and non-binary people from other countries started writing to me. It was really hard for me to post pregnancy photos on Instagram, but suddenly a network formed.” On his fingers, Ivo has his birth chart tattooed: sun in Libra, rising in Aries, and moon in Leo. He gets along well with his daughter’s sign, which is Scorpio.

– And the birth?

-Abortion was legalized and I had just given birth. Listening to the debates in Congress, I realized a lot of things I hadn't thought about. Pregnant bodies are the ones who suffer, who go through pregnancy. It's crazy how cisgender people resist the term 'pregnant body'; they're uncomfortable with it.

The pregnancy happened during the pandemic, and my friends were there for me. I went to all the ultrasounds alone because it was during the pandemic. But I went to give birth with a friend. A whole family network... I'm coming to terms with the word "family," I'm redefining it. I'm Malva's dad, but Malvi also has a half-sister who is the daughter of her other parent, who is her dad. My friends are very close; they're all her aunts. My niece, my mom, and my sister are also there. We're the same network we always were, but now there's a new baby, who's actually a year and a half old, talks, and walks. You could say we're a diverse family because it's both single-parent and extended; we're a polyfamily.

– How did being a father fit in with your artistic career?

"I was away from the stage for a long time because of the pandemic and this situation. It's a lot of work to get on stage; it doesn't feel so natural to me now. I have to get back into the swing of things. Being in the public eye, being photographed every two weeks, things that happen when you're performing all the time, is exhausting. And now suddenly the center of my life is my baby, and I can't stop taking pictures of her."

How I'll manage to juggle it all remains to be seen. In August, I'm performing in Buenos Aires, and in September, I've already booked a date to present the show at a festival in Mar del Plata. I'll be traveling with Malva; they took her into account when they invited me. It's wonderful and very enriching. It seems other dates are coming up after the Mar del Plata show. I'm thrilled.

– Why did you decide to do something solo?

"I wanted to put together a show... I'm putting it together. It's time to choose the repertoire and hit the stage. This time I'm the face of it, but it's always a team effort. We're working a lot on the nuances with Lautaro Matute, and now, in addition, I'm getting acting coaching from Rodrigo Arena, who thinks the show 'is already freakish because you're singing it, so any playlist that passes through your body will be another kind of performance.'"

As a preview, we recorded “Fuimos,” a beautiful music video directed by Giselle Hauscarriaga. It was initially going to be just a video of a live acoustic performance of a traditional tango, but then a romance between two transvestite gay men was added. It turned out beautifully, but in the end, it's subversive. Will I ever be able to do something 'normal'? No, obviously not ( laughs ).

-You said you were silent for a long time, has that changed today?

-More or less. I've been doing writing workshops and I still can't write. I'm thinking, rehearsing, developing something. For the moment, I prefer to sing classics. I think the very act of choosing those songs says something. Maybe I'll sing one of my own songs on stage too. I don't know. I also struggle with the idea of ​​"mine," the possessiveness in things and in songs. On the other hand, I don't know if there are any trans men who sing tangos and boleros. So it's about seeing what it would be like to be one of them.

-Now you're presenting yourself as the dissident heartthrob. How does that role suit you?

"It's like inhabiting another role: I enjoy it. I'm always telling stories. I'm like an old man. When and how I fell in love with this person or that person. I love love stories, stories of heartbreak, stories where relationships evolve. I have many of those. My exes love me. I don't know how much of it is to seduce people and how much is to tell stories, to keep talking about it, to raise questions."

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