I-CorDes -Tenth session: Exhausted Bodies

• Day: June 10, 2023
• Time: 11:00-19:00 h
• Venue: Aljub
• Fee-paying activity (€5) with prior registration and limited places
• Participants must wear comfortable clothes

A new proposal for “I-CorDes. Institut de Corpologies Deslocalitzades” comes from Mar Aguiló, Pedro A. Cruz and Miguel Álvarez-Fernández. The tenth session of the programme is entitled “Exhausted Bodies.”

The “exhausted bodies” are not, strictly speaking, those that are physically tired as a consequence of their exposure to a prolonged effort; the «exhausted bodies», on the contrary, are all those that have ontologically collapsed, those that express the exhaustion of a disciplinary model: that of the normative body. Classical dance, in this sense, constitutes one of the privileged expression frameworks of this normative body: in it, the bodies of the dancers are trained, disciplined to perform with precision and accuracy. Their aim is to be light, weightless and, therefore, escape the effects of the weight and gravity of the flesh.

The normative body of classical dance is a body that resists the experience of incarnation. Repressing carnality is repressing the body, subjecting it to the dynamics of representation. A body conceived as an eminently representational structure moves with the sole purpose of obeying the music and the narrative structure that it sustains. And this act of obedience is done through choreography. By choreography it is possible to understand a system of control and submission of the bodies. The choreography exercises control over the bodies in a Foucaultian sense: it operates as an instruction manual that, in the manner of a panopticon, disciplines the bodies through its infallible surveillance.

The purpose of “Exhausted Bodies” is none other than to study those processes in which dance becomes aware of its disciplinary structure in order to deconstruct it from this critical fold. The material that will be used to analyze such deconstruction processes is Swan, the most recent piece by the choreographer Mar Aguiló. In it, classical language is used as a mesh in which, as the performance progresses, cuts -in the Derridian sense of the term- and tears occur until the dancer’s neat execution collapses and, in her exhaustion, reveals the strategies that are behind the cultural construction of her body. Classical regulations are thus questioned through the transparency of their production processes. Swan constitutes a perfect laboratory in which to study the exhaustion of normative bodies, as well as the emergence of alternative bodies that escape the control of disciplined movement.

Mar Aguiló is a choreographer and dancer. Her choreographic projects are nourished, first of all, by her experience as a dancer: trained with Maurice Béjart in Lausanne (Switzerland), she later formed part of the CND (Spanish National Dance Company) for more than fourteen years, which allowed her to working with figures such as William Forsythe, Jiri Kylian, Nacho Duato, Mats Ek or Ohad Naharin, among many others. It is in the very context of the CND that Aguiló presents her first choreographies: Arriaga, Afterlove and Fandangos y tonadillas (the latter in collaboration with the National Classic Theater Company). She has also collaborated, as co-director and choreographer, with the dance production company ELAMOR, developing projects in spaces in Madrid such as the Prado Museum, CentroCentro, CaixaForum and the Enaire Foundation, as well as the MACBA (Barcelona).
In 2021 she enjoyed a “Creation Residence” at the Teatros del Canal to create her first large-format stage piece, STELLA, which was premiered at the Teatros del Canal themselves. In 2022, she directed and choreographed the Max Awards gala held at the Teatre Principal in Maó, as well as the fashion show by designer Juan Duyos for Mercedes Fashion Week in Madrid. In 2023 she presents SWAN, a solo performed by Clémence Gross (a member of the Paris Opera ballet), and co-produced by the Teatros del Canal and the Teatre Principal de Palma.

Pedro A. Cruz Sánchez is a professor of Latest Art Trends at the University of Murcia. A theoretician, art critic and poet, he has produced extensive essays, including titles such as La vigilia del cuerpo. Arte y experiencia corporal en la contemporaneidad (2004), Cartografías del cuerpo: la dimensión corporal en el arte contemporáneo (2004), Cuerpo, ingravidez y enfermedad (2014) o Marcel Duchamp. La sombra y lo femenino (2016). In his latest book Arte y performance. Una historia desde las vanguardias hasta la actualidad (Akal, 2022) develops a historical account of the performance from the experiences that dotted the avant-garde to the most contemporary formulations, also from a postcolonial point of view; trace a wide arcor that goes beyond the narrow conceptions, exclusive to the West, that have frequently shaped the narratives of performance and delves into artistic praxis developed in territories traditionally considered “peripheral”: Latin America, China, India, South Korea or South Africa.

Miguel Álvarez-Fernández works around the idea of ‘listening’ from different perspectives (as a sound artist, musicologist, curator, essayist, playwright, film director, music producer…). In the field of performing arts and performance, he has developed projects together with artists such as Mar Aguiló, Israel Galván, Fernando Millán, Niño de Elche, Jan Rohwedder, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina… He also regularly collaborates with the Espacio de Creación Azala (directed by Idoia Zabaleta). Since 2008 he has directed and presented the Ars Sonora program every week, on Radio Clásica of Radio Nacional de España. At the same time, he coordinates the monthly listening sessions that, under the title “Tales of noise”, are held monthly at the Cineteca de Matadero Madrid. His most recent film, “Jordi Teixidor. Retrospective” —directed in collaboration with Álvaro Oliveros and Bruno Dozza— has been released in 2023; His latest book is “The radio before the microphone: voice, eroticism and mass society” (Consonni, 2021).