This work is an exploration of gender inequality, of the harsh nature of inequality, reflected in the abuse of women’s bodies, the use of stereotypes in bringing up and educating children, and the symbolic violence that is increasingly present in our lives. With five impressive dancers, live music performed by Yamila Ríos (voice, cello and electronic) and a mobile geometrical structure in a ‘naked’ space, the choreographer brings a burning topic to the stage: equal rights for women and men.
It could be said that flamenco expresses itself best in its most genuine version. The flamenco a tres (flamenco trio) is the fundamental format, the one that points us from the knowledge of today back to the origin of the genre. It is simplicity: one who sings, one who plays and one who dances what he or she hears to make it his or her own. This is what the flamenco community call bailar el cante y el toque (dancing the singing and guitar playing).
This is a delicate yet forthright piece, an intimate yet dark and disturbing show. In it, its creator, Daina Ashbee, explores the vulnerability and strength of women. Thus, the solo performer of the work goes through various states of mind—pain, hope and loneliness—expressed in introspective, cathartic dancing with precise and almost hypnotic movements. Her nakedness conveys a sense of fragility but above all of liberation.
Pour is an ode to the female body and its nature, a work that expresses a discreet denunciation of its position in the world.
The winner of three 2017 Max awards for the best dance show, cast and wardrobe design, Oskara is the happy conjunction of two choreographic universes and two visions of dance that could have proved hostile to each other—one looks back to the more popular roots of the discipline, while the other focuses on avant-garde trends—but which instead feed into each other.
The collaboration between the choreographer Antonio Ruz and the musician Pablo Martín Caminero has resulted in a captivating work in which Bach’s Cello Suites 1 and 2 are adapted for the double bass. With the dancing of Melania Olcina, the work proposes an inner and intimate space that the performers share: a void and a state of non-thinking, solitude in company, an ocean desert; a blank canvas on which the music, movement and light (or its absence) evoke fragility, depth and imbalance. The return to simplicity.
A statement by the philosopher and writer María Zambrano provides us with the key into the world of Sacra: “man/woman is the being who suffers his/her own transcendence”. This is because Sacra is a journey through life, human existence, that posits the need to transcend it if we are to vanquish oblivion and death.
Surrounded by time-worn, threadbare sequin dresses, fantasy shoes and other objects that point to a prosperous past, a woman of uncertain age opens her heart to us from an inhospitable spot under a bridge. Through confession after confession, the protagonist reveals herself to be a lost, emotionally weary and destitute woman struggling to survive by using the weapons of fiction.
