Valencia’s long-running annual festival calls to dance, to rhythm – and finally to us
Festival Dansa València annually presents the creative bubbling of a mostly Spanish dance scene. During the festival’s 36th edition, more than 30 dance events take over the city’s venues, running from the city theatre into independent performance spaces to parks and the beach. I had the pleasure to visit the festival during a long April weekend, just before the closure.
Suggestive explorations between sound and movement
My path through the festival kicks off in very Spanish style, as the first piece Taranto aleatorio opens with two women on a bench pealing and eating sunflower seeds, a common national pastime. La bailaoraMaría Del Mar Suárez (‘La Chachi’), together with la cantaora Lola Dolores allow these hangout activities slowly to grow from humming into rhythm. Fragments of tarantos (a flamenco style or palo) mingle with sudden everyday gestures that suggest a conversation between these two very charismatic women.
Dressed with controversial elegance in slightly shiny sweatsuits, with a fringe-decorated back that we only discover when the women stand up, the performers construct a deliciously surreal route: physically traversing the space, but above all allowing the most diverse emotions and situations to flow through a conversation between trustees. Ranging from intimacy and confession to gossip and grumble, all expressed through a base of precise dancing and rhythm, the performers skilfully play with time and perception, presenting flamenco contemporised through the lens of working-class women. Bravo!
Choreographer-dancer Aina Alegre’s solo R-A-U-X-A (‘outburst’) proposes a sophisticated and constantly mutating dialogue between body, sound and space. The space is limited with a geometric 5-angled form drawn on the floor, repeated as a sculpture floating close to ceiling, but slightly displaced so that the forms create a dynamic diagonal tension.
Alegre is one of the many Spanish dance artists based in central Europe (in this case, Grenoble) with internationally known work that is sometimes hard to see on national scenes. Her presence is filled with elegant clarity, she’s simultaneously relaxed and very precise, dominating the movement that sculpts the space, then becomes percussive and vibrant. In this workers’ world, each percussive gesture, each hammering, brings the work further. An intriguing mixture of something futuristic and artisanal. Even if the beginning of the piece is dominated by a soft penumbra, her presence and movement always shines through, so that we perfectly perceive her body’s intentions.
The light opens up a new space, altering the geometry we perceive; even the elements exchange roles, as when the percussive movements generate a visual sound that contributes to the rhythmical texture beyond Josep Tutusaus’ soundscape, that itself dares to explore uncomfortably shearing noises. Seen for the third or fourth time, certain movement phrases suddenly become meaningful. The subtle shifting in shades would invite me to move closer or even around the space to contemplate all the textures that appear.
Sound is also a companion in Blanca Tolsá’s solo Ecoica, which begins with the dancer breathing in the audience, then releasing tiny cuts of melodies that generate a sonorous energy. The space gradually opens up when the sound design echoes her from different points, the dancer’s body so transparent – beautifully airy and porous – that a sudden sneeze from the audience literally shakes her presence. The movement piles up when she extends this texture into spatial paths, as in the act of speaking where sounds form first words, then phrases. The dance appears, but meaning remains in an abstract, sonorous poetry. A surprising ending suddenly stuffs this accumulated movement into jazzy music with choreography that somewhat simplifies the act of dancing. Tolsá is working intensively as a dancer for diverse creators in the Catalan and Spanish dance scene, and I’m curious where her choreographic voice leads.
On seeing and not seeing
Paula Serrano’s juicy title, Sexy Suggestion, and an intriguing beginning where the curtain slightly elevates, showing only the dancers’ marching feet, instantly seduce the spectator. A playful voyeurism develops on various levels, when the dancers move inside a cube of Venetian blinds that turn the hidden to completely visible in a second. Chiaroscuro lighting’s mystery allows moving bodies to smoothly draw the space with shadows, before dancers-as-punk-lizards become more visible and gain protagonism. Even if the unision dance with an electronic pulse it sharp, it doesn’t add to the suggestiveness of the choreography, and the mystery fades further because of some imprecisions in the complex set and lighting effects.
An aggressive gaze in our current society confronts us in Aclucalls, a collective creation proposed by Guillem Jiménez. Post-internet aesthetics attack us through an extreme frontality, or characters embodying a virtual ethos, like a stripper-aesthetic presenter mumbling an unrecognisable robotic language. A group of delicious characters, dressed with various references to sports – boxing headgear, white fencing overalls, stripes of red kinesiotape on the skin – suggest a parallelism between extreme physical effort in dance and sports. When they occupy the stage in a stream of compulsive gestures, two screens placed on the back activate a visual commentary to the action, especially interesting towards the end when they reference choreographies bursting from dancers’ bodies ranging from De Keersmaeker to Khan. Aclucalls (the title meaning ‘blinders’), is a dizzying multiaction veil, the simultaneity of action forcing the eye to pick, even as sensations of exhaustion also grow from a certain confusing unfinishedness. Jiménez, habitually re-working virtuality and its effects, presented only a 60-minute version of the two-hour piece, and I wonder where this exorcism of material would end up in the full version.
Screens and dance also cohabit Perseverance, made for young audiences by the company Marroch. After a dynamic beginning of astronauts landing on the stage, they bring out a spaceship. With the ‘president’ of the United States talking on a television, the screen absorbs the eyes while dancer-Martians simultaneously sweat a fully-prepared contemporary variation. The Martians’ extra ‘hands’ (gadgets combining a stick with a circular base) invite further movement exploration – but it’s not followed through. The young audience visibly brightens when a remote-control space car chases the dancers in a snappy choreography between bodies and a machine. The Martians’ perseverance in fighting back leads to a happy ending, but I wonder about the conflicts between dance and visual effect, and the value of dance itself in works for young audiences.
A composition of pleasure
Two choreographies play with a careful composition of materials.
Nicolasito Pertusato, a collaboration between Mar Garcia in movement and Javi Soler in sound, turns out to be a small scenic essay around Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas. The stage is constructed by thee white walls – empty canvases, maybe –, in the middle of which a portrait-sized mirror reflects the audience and a huge porcelain dog gazes at us. It’s already a dynamic crossword of gazes, honouring the painting’s symbolism in asking: who is looking at whom? The performer’s drawing gestures suddenly direct a choir, actually starting to sing seated amongst the spectators, then the painting’s characters cross the stage with the smoothness of a conveyor belt, strictly maintaining the torso’s position in the painting. The phrases they rhythmically whisper gracefully amplify the painting’s visual information or comment on the performance situation. The festival was my second viewing of the piece, and I enjoyed the multisensorial fabric enveloping the spectator, where whispering becomes music, words are image, gesture is rhythm and character. The result: an enjoyable and surprising tableaux vivant miniature.
Another performance, by Societat Doctor Alonso aka choreographer Sofia Ascensio and dramaturg Tomas Aragay, provoked a similar satisfactory and subtle intelligence. We take off our shoes, leave bags and coats on the seats, and free of burden enter the white cube built on Teatro Principal’s main stage. A communal space, something between a cathedral and an assembly, this ritual environment immediately inserts a harmony in the body, prepares the flesh for a sensorial purification that Hammamturgia carries out. Four white walls, four door-holes, four dancers, each of them holding one of the huge tarpaulin’s four corners, helps to enter a meditative symmetry for the eye to rest. The singular performers delicately manipulate plastics of different sizes, sometimes extending them on the floor, in other moments making them flow in the air – or playing with our expectation when the symmetry is challenged with a sudden opposite action, a contradiction that provokes lightness and laughs.
Actions develop at a delicate pace, and an asmr-like sonority gains ground against sight: the sonority of different size plastics caress our senses, offering changing visions of colour, thickness and size, the air touches us, massaging the skin, then tarpaulins mingle into sculptural bundles. Red lights bathe the white walls, colour surrounds us with warmth. We sense both the doing and the becoming, as when a performer starts to draw on a metal easel and the sound of a scratching trace describes the picture. Sound is material is touch is image, and our bodies receive this sensorial bath in a pressureless environment, usually hard to achieve in a non-conventional performance site. I exit the space with a profound relaxation and calm, with the sensation of being stimulated and taken care of, as after a well-prepared sauna.
Exploring folklore
I was lucky to catch some of the few international collaborations of the festival, all very welcome in Valencia where, according to artistic director María Jose Mora, dance performances from outside Spain are rarely part of the theatrical season. The visitors Moya Michael and Milo Slayers shared a workshop for local professionals, including a small outside presentation in a park, ending up with the dancers and spectators jamming together.
A fully packed theatre awaited Portuguese choreographer Marco da Silva Ferreira, whose piece Carcaça brings together Portuguese folklore and urban dance. In a trajectory that passes through moments of playful footwork, landscapes suggesting animal presence and tribal moments that accentuate the community, the piece emanates a beauty of being together, forming the most interesting unison and solo combinations I have seen in a while. This community is initiated carefull when, audience lights still on, drumming captures our attention and one dancer in black lycra begins an articulate solo combining malleable movement with precise accents. Another dancer appears, the sound grows, until the sensorial landscape evoked by ten performers covers the entire stage. We calmly discover the performers in all their richness, extremely diverse and interesting to watch, ranging from a pregnant woman to different body types and ethnicities, each individual with a highly personal movement language.
A progressive transformation to pastel clothing, with a variety of fabrics and patterns, introduces a more human environment, then the performers suddenly lift the linoleum floor to reduce the space, and a wall behind the performers brings an urban ambience. Chant a rousing collective song, the performers now beome an active political community, while pink t-shirts worn in different ways inhibit movement, cover faces, expose breasts. The powerful images almost don’t need the projected translations of the lyrics (I’m reminded of the more in-your-face-aesthetics in Ferreira’s previous works Brother or Bisonte). The closing group dance, the dancers’ bodies dyed bronze by the lighting, makes for an ambiguously sacred image of the community’s willpower as revolutionary fighters: a perfect scene to finish, the audience in ecstasy and repeating the rhythmic steps when leaving the theatre.
A site-specific version of Sudar folklore (‘Sweating folklore’), by Madrid collective Laimperfecta (Alberto Alonso and Clara Pampyn), takes place in Valencia’s sunny beach boulevard. This étude for four dancers applies folkloric elements, but also searches a cross-pollination with live electronic music by José Pablo Polo. The composition gradually develops from simple repetitive hops, brushes and turns into small choreographic encounters between facing couples (the feel is folkloric) then smoothly generate lines to exhibit steps in unison formations. The dancers change front in respect to the audience grouped around them on three sides, and the movement’s mechanical ease is pleasurable to watch, even if a little awkwardly overly ritualistic in the easy-going environment of a Saturday morning beach. When a dog barks, children laugh or a police motorbike passes by, the environment beautifully interferes in the performance, creating wholeness – something that site-specific performance urgently demands. Towards the end, music and movement gradually speed up, blasting into a casual rave where the audience eagerly participates in a collective being-together: festival audience, passers-by, beach-goers all dancing.
I end up with the feeling that several Dansa València’s performances seem to finish with a high energy, as if calling out the rhythm in our bodies, calling out the dance. Maybe our new international electronic folklore is dancing together in public space? Maybe we actually need to experience a liberation from codified ceremonial steps, from hierarchical and bureaucratic procedures, in the form of energetic dancing? ●
València, Spain
Riikka Laakso’s trip to Valencia was provided by Dansa València
