Dance

On saturday I went to see my contemp teacher perform with her dance company "Tarde y Temprano Danza". In honor of the occation ("I go out of the house! On a saturday! And it is not grocery shopping!") I put on a dress. And subsecuently freezed my legs and fingers and head off, trying to find the darned place. Boy, it was windy and cold. Hello Winter!

They performed two pieces, the first "Acabado en A", two dancers in red dresses, two vanity tables with makeup and mirrors, and that is about it, because just as they began small movements to quiet music I had a cough attack and almost popped my eyes out trying to supress the coughing. We are talking turning heads in the rows in front of me..

But about halfway into it, my coughing stilled, and just then they started a part I liked, playing with weight, fighting, pushing eachother, lifting eachother, powerbalance..

The second piece was "Tacones y Naranjas" And I liked that one the most. Four women, in dresses and high heels, exploring movement with oranges, dancing together in couples, sometimes playful, sometimes in jerking almost robotic movements. Then a segment where all four hold on to eachother, creaping through legs and between eachother. Fluid, continous, connected.

Then I had to cough a bit more.

They ended the piece standing in the center, toing twisting motions with their upper bodies, to a rythmic sound, slowly turning little by little, going lower and lower..

And then I froze my legs off again going home.

the end

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.

Contemporary dance and other stuff

I went to see "Hombres, Mujeres y otros animales", (contemporary dance) yesterday. Alone. It is kind of liberating and sucks at the same time.

I am not a social butterfly, and when living with someone I get a huge part of my social-cup filled by just having to deal with someone at home. Add to that a splash of timid and a dollop of only being with his friends, and the end result is Hvitveis having a very small social circle. All my own fault I freely admit. So now I am doing things about it. But it takes time.

And so I do not have a huge list of people that a) have no other plans for a saturday night and b) want to go see contemp dancing..

And so I say to myself: Hvitveis, I say, do you want to go to the ball? I want to go, so I will jolly well go on my own. Witch is really cool! Except for the 15 minutes before the show starts and it turns out I have entered into a small world where all the other spectators know eachother, the dancers on the stage and the people that works in the theatre. I had my neighbour kissing the person sitting across behind me, (spanish people give two kisses in greeting. I am fed up with it. Depending on the number of persons it can take forever.) OVER MY HEAD. If I was lesbian/a man I would have been in tit-heaven. Sadly I am not and only had my Personal Space Intrusion Alarm going off.

Witch brings me over to the dancing. It consisted of three solos. First: The male solo, staring with him standing naked in the back of the stage. Lights turn off and he puts on clothes; the title is in english "Men, Women and other animals" At one point he takes off a trouser and a skirt like he is shedding, sometimes I think to recognize the stance of a flamingo..

It is really hard to describe dancing.

The second solo, female, starts with the dancer coming on the stage holding a bowl of water, and for a while she does not move, and I have a vision of us sitting there for 20 minutes looking at a woman holding a bowl of water... but she starts to dance, takes of her top, and the guy sitting beside me has to widen his legs....for a while I had some inner discussion about the use of nudity and tits and why did not the male dancer do some movement in the buff, is it really necesary as a choreographic tool? Especially since her movements vere very sensual, think strip tease dancing. But then her movements, doing much the same, transformed into some sort of insect/gekko thing stopping between each movement and the sensuality dissapeared. Is overt female sensuality uncomfortable to me? Or do I feel like it is a much overused and cheap tool in "modern" dance, art? I cannot say I have seen much of modern anything, so it might just be my prejudice speaking. But I liked the way her body was sensual or not depending on how she did the movements.

The third solo, also female, was with grain on the stage, serpent like movements and some whiplash, hair tossing stuff. The sound when she rolled through the grain, or passed a foot, spreading the grain out, reminded of the desert. But a bit repetetive and with more frenetic energy. For some reason she changed dress near the end, no idea why and it stopped the continuity of the piece.

So that was my saturday night: tits and well hung male dancer. ;) And thoughts of female sexuality and how small the contemporary dance milleu in Zaragoza must be.