Norte

So, amidst all emotional drama, I managed to put on some clothes and go and see "Norte", a dance performance by a local company called "Tarde y Temprano Danza". (One of the dancers/coreographers is my contemp teacher. )

They had a fragment of a novel? Poem? read as part of the music, and also wrote it in the leaflet:

"Yo no sé, mira, es terrible cómo llueve. Llueve todo el tiempo, afuera tupido y gris, aqui contra el balcón con goterones cuajados y duros que hacen plaf y se aplastan como bofetadas uno detras de otro. Qué hastío. Ahora aparece una gotita en lo alto del marco de la ventana. Se queda temblequeando contra el cielo que la triza en mil brillos apagados. Va creciendo y se tambalea, ya va a caer y no se cae, todavía no se cae, está prendida con todas las uñas. No quiere caerse y se la ve que se agarra con los dientes mientras le crece la barriga. Y es una gotaza que cuelga majestuosa y de pronto... schuppa y va, plaf, deshecha, nada, una viscosidad en el mármol.
Pero las hay que se suicidan y se entregan enseguida. Brotan en el marco y ahí mismo se tiran. Me parece ver la vibración del salto, sus piernecitas desprendiéndose y el grito que las emborracha en esa nada del caer y aniquilarse.
Tristes gotas, redondas, inocentes gotas. Adiós gotas. Adiós."
"Aplastamiento de las gotas", de Julio Cortazar

I am not going to translate all that, sorry. I'd do a pitiful job of it.

Anyway, back to the dancing:
I liked it. I like their corporal language, how they explore movements, the choice of music. Three of them was dancing, and they are all excellent dancers with good expression, an hour flew by and we could have sat there an hour more.

First there was the sound of water trickling and a video on the wall, while one dancer danced on the floor wrapped in plastic, fighting to get out, rising and falling down, twisting on the floor. After a while she was accompanied by the two others wrapped in one same plastic. They break through, now dancing together, now not.

Water, ending with it, spraying it, melting it, in a secuence where one dancer is melting a big ice block with a hairdryer, and no music, full power: the other dancers dance quickly, medium power, and they go slower, and turned off: still. water trickling down from the ice block and into a container on the floor. Images from underwater on the back wall. Playing with water in the end segment, where they throw a couple of buckets of water on a special canvas rolled out, and glide, spin and play. (that was the only segment that I thought lacked something, it felt flat somehow.)

music in the tinkling from a small mountain stream, melancoly pop music, pumping disco?, instrumental happy...

One of the parts I liked the best was when they explored brushing movements, as in getting the dust of my arms, I have a leaf in my hair sort of thing. They coupled that mundane movement with a quick, pulsing rythm/music.

There was lots more, all in the space of one hour, maybe too much? Or maybe not, it is not bad to be left with wanting more.