The Julio Mario Santo Domingo Teatro Mayor Dance Company will premiere this piece with choreography by the British Sarah Storer. The montage is set in the 1940s.
The dance could be traced to the rituals that were done in different cultures to commemorate important events. These expressions were then linked to feelings and moods, turning these rituals into a personal and intimate expression. But over time, dance has also become a tool to talk about the body as a whole, as a territory where life happens. Dance is much more than dance, it is a philosophy of life. It is the innate form of expression and communication, it is community and art, exploration and society. It is freedom.
For the members of the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Teatro Mayor Dance Company, during these times of pandemic dance has been that, their way of telling the world what is going through their heads and bodies. The dance has given you freedom within this involuntary confinement. This is how Even the night itself is here was born , the group’s new work, which is choreographed and directed by Sarah Storer and will premiere next Saturday, May 15 at 11 am, at the Teatro Mayor.
This piece was born last year during the quarantine, when the British choreographer and director realized that the involuntary restriction of space shaped the way of relating to others and to oneself. “The restrictions during the past year affected our relationships, as they began to depend on the size of the space, on whether it is small or very large; It depends on who you are with, if you are in a group, with another person or if you are alone. So this piece is about how space affects relationships, including your relationship with yourself, ”says Storer.
However, this was only the initial idea. The creative process that the company went through was full of teamwork and socialization of what each of its members felt and composed with their body. The sharing began with a photograph that the director gave of her dancers. Based on it, each created a dance solo and observations of the movements and performances of each dancer resulted in the union of their different body languages. Storer included a bit of everyone and then mixed it with his own dance and that’s how the choreography started to take shape.
After months of preparation and rehearsal, this piece will premiere at the Teatro Mayor. On stage, the audience will be able to enjoy a choreography that plays with the space through different scenic resources. The lights, for example, will play an important role as they are the ones that will define the space, larger or smaller, as well as an acrylic cube that, in addition to delimiting the space, will also be used for the members to dance inside, outside or on it.
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There is no direct narrative in this piece, says Storer. This choreography, set in the 1940s in a psychiatric hospital, becomes a metaphor for what the involuntary restriction of space represents. The characters are inhabiting a space in which they do not necessarily want to be.
The protagonists of this story are five patients, a doctor, a surgeon and a nurse, who coexist within a limited space and face delicate encounters through solos, duets or group interactions.
“The music is very important, it is in fact one of the most significant parts of the whole choreography for me. In this piece I particularly wanted the cinematic influence to be felt, ”reveals Storer.
As part of the repertoire of the dance piece there will be music that has been present in productions by directors such as Sergio Leone or Tim Burton, which, according to the director, gives the montage a surreal and strange atmosphere.
Starting from aesthetics and music, two important resources in choreography, certain contrasts are exposed on stage, since the music is not limited to the 1940s in which the story is set. This is how the repertoire covers a wide spectrum of compositions ranging from Henry Purcell, through Beethoven and Vivaldi, to sound creations that appeared in renowned films such as A Clockwork Orange or Once Upon a Time in the West .
“For me, in my work, it is very important to do something that everyone likes. Not only to a small percentage of people related to contemporary dance. I want to do contemporary dance and for this expression to form audiences and build a community that enjoys it ”, stresses Sarah Storer, who with each piece aims to offer the public an art accessible to all.
The creative process of the Teatro Mayor Dance Company during 2020 and 2021 has resulted in the creation of different pieces and programs that have been presented both on face-to-face stages and on virtual platforms.
In December of last year his works Lilith el Awakening and Return were premiered, with which the company copied the capacity allowed by the biosafety protocol of the main hall of the Teatro Mayor.
