Dance is also a reflection of our time. Despite how difficult it may sometimes be to prove this, for different reasons: those related to the support it receives, insufficient in regular theater programming and which continues to keep it unknown to most, and those related to the artistic act itself, which requires that commitment between artist and society. “When art connects us with something greater than ourselves,” as John Berger affirmed, or “when the cause is bigger than me,” as Dua Lipa recently said, referring to her public support for Palestine.
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The history of contemporary dance, like that of any other art, treasures a handful of examples of proposals that speak of the time in which the choreography was created. In a concrete or general way, of seemingly personal approaches that transcend to the universal, like the best poetry. Since last year, to that handful of works, which are a pulse meter of an era, we must add We (Us), the latest creation by Mal Pelo, a Catalan company with more than thirty years of experience, which has been signing, with a voice as unique as it is solid, the recent history of creation.
Discursively, We is based on two fundamental ideas, which in turn support each other: on the one hand, the work is an existential portrait without moralizing or prescriptions (one of its many successes). A social treatise that probably doesn’t want to be one (and that’s why it works as such) in which questioning hovers over dance, music, texts, projections and the entire stage apparatus, which functions with overwhelming beauty, as a whole or individually. It is a visual testimony or poetic chronicle of genocides and their normalization that chooses to pose questions instead of making definitive statements. The other key idea on which this work rests is that of legacy, transmission and coexistence between generations, with the focus on everything that remains unalterable over time and whose common denominator is not usually hopeful: error, suffering and supremacy for ever and ever. But without a valid “Amen”. “God is supposed to be here,” is heard in the work.
The performers of We are twelve. Something that is also not usual in contemporary dance, due to the impossibility of sustaining such a structure with the available support. And the youngest, among whom are the three children of María Muñoz and Pep Ramis, directors and creators of Mal Pelo, have faced a major creation for the first time with this work. Not only is it not noticeable, but the forcefulness of their interpretations, especially in the solo moments, would say just the opposite. Several stand out, both solos and dancers. Like the one performed by Martí Ramis Muñoz, which condenses all that pain and coherence that runs through We.
Physically, the idea of walking on stage, as a collective, as individuals, inherited from choreographer Steve Paxton, the first to incorporate it into the scenic seventy years ago, articulates the narration and spatial composition. Forward, diagonally, backward, or nowhere, the displacement of the performers carries both sorrow and caress. Always from what is contained, almost from what is unsaid, or with small gestures. Like that arm that rests for a couple of seconds on the shoulder of the person walking next to them. Like a subtle reminder of the collective.
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Phrases are heard, questions are asked, in English and Spanish, live, on one side of the stage with a standing microphone, or while dancing and the voice receives the bodily information of the movement, which confronts the identity of the twelve as a group and as individuals, in which both age and gender are diluted (another great success). With the same subtlety that runs through We, in the opposite of the obvious or predictable, spectators are also summoned and reminded that we are part of that “we”: that the mirror is in front of us and encompasses us.
The craft of knowing the stage and being masters and connoisseurs of their own language also emerges from this latest creation by Mal Pelo, which leaves a residue of sadness and silence, also a social reflection in any conscious mind. And alongside the music and projections, dance multiplies meanings in this captivating mosaic.
For what it represents artistically and also politically and socially, an X-ray of universal and personal stories, We manifested last night at the Gran Teatro Falla as a perfectly pertinent show to inaugurate the twenty-fourth edition of the Cádiz en Danza Festival. As will its closing, next Sunday, June 13, with Calentamiento, by Rocío Molina and Pablo Messiez.
For many editions, this dance exhibition has gathered some of the most recognized proposals in contemporary dance, which, in this inauguration, has also been a manifesto of our time. Next November and December, We, which since its premiere in 2025 has garnered important nominations and recognitions, will travel to different theaters across the country. Do not miss seeing it at the slightest opportunity. You will be able to experience, among other things, dance as a trace and revelation.
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