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This episode is a conversation between Catalina Insignares and Maria Jerez. Catalina is a choreographer and dancer based in Brussels, interested in how to use the sensorial and fictional means of the body, and of touch, to develop ways to communicate with the invisible. Maria's work lies 'between' choreography, cinema and the visual arts. Her work attempts to escape logocentric and anthropocentric logics, where human knowledge itself becomes vulnerable in the face of other enigmatic and complex ecosystems. In this episode, Catalina Insignares and Maria Jerez discuss the fluidity of their artistic practices and their work with the body and identity. The concept of "wonder" is explored in relation to their processes, and they talk about how it can act to counter cynicism and escape the restrictions of conventional knowledge.

Find out more about Catalina and Maria on our People page.

To the Glossary Catalina donates Asombro Asombro can be translated to "wonder", but where "wonder" has a brightness or a spark, asombro is to be astonished by a shadow (sombra). and Maria donates Impossible " If you illuminate the shadow, you kill the shadow." - -Leticia Skrycky and Hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present..

This episode, is part of a series of a sharp prickled growth on flower stems, found on roses. thorns a sharp prickled growth on flower stems, found on roses. called Dreaming Communities. It is curated by Victoria Pérez Royo and hosts invited artists who work with ‘dreaming substance.’ Here the adjective “dreaming” does not refer solely to nighttime sleep, but serves as an umbrella term for a whole series of images that have been conceived in a fragmentary and scattered way in various disciplines and practices: memories, anticipations, daydreams and night dreams, ghosts and specters, visions, and hallucinations, among others.

Here you can read a full text about the series, written by Victoria.

This series is produced and edited by Hester Cant. The series is curated by Victoria Pérez Royo with additional concept and direction by Martin Hargreaves and Izzy Galbraith.

Transcript:

Martin:

Hello and welcome to Thorns, a podcast where we bring you conversations in relation to concepts of the choreographic the choreographic can refer to choreography, and to the writing of dancing bodies, but it can also refer to modes of generating and circumscribing movement that do not register as dance, or as art works.. Thorns is produced as part of the Rose Choreographic School Gathering places for teaching and learning. Also, a school of thought is an idiom that suggests the sharing of traditions of philosophical and intellectual practices. at Sadlers Wells. I'm Martin Hargreaves, Head of the Choreographic School and we are compiling a glossary of words donated by people that collaborate with us. You can find this glossary on our website. I've invited performing arts researcher Victoria Pérez Royo, to curate a miniseries of the podcast, and this is how Victoria frames the ideas behind her curation.

Victoria:

This miniseries called Dreaming Communities; we are a group of people having conversations around what we call the dreaming substance, meaning all the work developed around images that do not appear on a material surface outside of the body.

Martin:

This episode is a conversation between artist Maria Jerez and choreographer Catalina Insignares. They discuss the fluidity of their artistic practices and their work with the body and identity. The concept of “wonder” is explored in relation to their processes, and they talk about how it can act to counter cynicism and escape the restrictions of conventional knowledge. The conversation was recorded with Maria in a studio in Madrid and Catalina in Brussels. The transition sounds you will hear in this episode are field recordings and contact mic recordings from Catalina and Maria's joint research, With the Dead recorded by Eddie Giraldo.

Maria:

Hola Cata!

Catalina:

Do you want to- Oh! Ola! Do you want to start or?

Maria:

Okay. You want me to start?

Catalina:

Yeah. Yeah.

Maria:

Okay. My name is Maria Jerez. I'm an artist. My practice is a little bit blurry, in-between different languages or disciplines, because I move between performing arts and visual arts, cinema, curatorial projects as well. And sometimes even publications or pedagogy. But I have the feeling that my work is never really established in any specific context because I move between all these different expressions, let's say. But my feeling is that each time I do something, I'm doing the same, whatever the form it takes. This is sometimes not easy to communicate. It'll be easier to say, I am a choreographer, or I am a painter, or I am a sculpture. Um, but I am in between and I think what stays, always is this idea of a work with the body, whatever the body is, the human or the non-human or the object. And how through my work, I can expand the boundaries of what the identity of the body is. So, this is what my work is about, what the expression is. It really depends on with whom I am working or which body I am trying to reach. I am interested as well, in putting human knowledge into crisis. And I think I use the relation between the spectator and the artwork as a place to put this idea in question or in crisis.

Catalina:

Well then, I go. That's beautiful. I'm Catalina Insignares and I do use the word choreographer to present what I am do. In the sense of choreography being the material of the relations that are established between different bodies. And that is the matter that I'm busy with. Whether it takes the shape of teaching, workshops, writing, performances, then that is still the form that I call it is choreography. But I think it's also more of historic. I come from dance. I really come from dance is really what constitutes me as an artist. So, I think dance as a form of attention and choreography as a form of relation, in this very expanded way, I still like to insist on defining the work in inside that world. Even though it brings a lot of confusion, more often than not. So it, for me, it feels also, it would be easier to call myself an artist in general and not try to define it. Because when you say dance, then people have a very specific idea in their minds. And then I have to explain that it's dance, but not that dance. And choreography, but not that choreography. So, it creates a little bit of a confusion. But I think sometimes I'm tired by it, and sometimes I'm very, I find the confusion helpful because it allows me to present my history with art. Which starts from a trained body in movement. And then from there, even if I make performances that might entail like two people in relation, or that the performance might be for a sleeping audience, and we are just reading, it's still a choreographic mindset or approach into that form of relation. Even if it's the dreams that we are addressing the dreams in their movement, it's, I think what I still, what we are trying to organize in our approach to the text. We organize the dreams of the audience through our text and it's still some sort of choreographic to present myself. I do need to present that. I often work with others, which is also your case, but mainly with Carolina Mendonça, which is my main collaborator since 15 years. And also with Myriam Lefkowitz, just to place also these two names that are often accompanying my practice. Um, yeah. That's what I would say for an introduction.

Maria:

Nice.

Catalina:

Should we start with the little plan we have?

Maria:

Yes, please. Yeah.

Catalina:

Yay!

Maria:

Yay!

Catalina:

So, when we were talking a little bit to prepare this, we wanted to somehow keep a link with Victoria's invitation of being part of this, sort of, dream community or community of dreamers in a very, very enlarged vision of what community of Dreamers might be. And we thought maybe we would start with this quote by Fanny Howe the book is Night Philosophy. We wanted to start with this reading just a bit of these lines because we think it can connect at the same time to Victoria's invitation, and to where we want to go, or we might go together Because we don't know. I really like starting with somebody else's words.

Okay. So, Fanny Howe:

“It is to the dream model that I return as a writer, involved in the problems of sequencing events and thoughts. Because in the weirdness of dreaming, there is a dimension of plot, but a greater consciousness of randomness and uncertainty as the basic stock in which it is brewed. Sustaining a balance between the necessity associated with plot, and the blindness associated with experience, in both poetry and fiction is the trick to me. Dreams are constantly reassuring happenings that illuminate methods for pulling this off.”

So, I think it's just a very beautiful way of observing dreams as a form. As a method for doing art, in her case is fiction and poetry. But I think to me, when I first read this a couple years ago, it was this, ah, that's what I'm trying to do as well. Like, that's to keep this tension between some form of narrative or going towards something in, within a piece and like keeping a dramaturgy. It's a temporal scope, however long it might be, but it's a temporal scope that starts from here to there. So, this sensation of a plot, and then at the same time being in touch with absolute uncertainty. Sometimes improvisation. Sometimes letting things emerge that you would do not control. And, but that still doesn't feel completely random, but it can, at the same time be part of the bigger plot. And when I think of your work, I've seen this at work many times as well.

Transition Sounds:

Maria:

When I listen to this quote or I listen to these words, I link it with idea of hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present.. Somehow in the sense of what our work is producing, or what actually, what experience we want to share with the audience. For me, it has a lot to do with creating the conditions for a common hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present., let's say. I put this in relation as well, on how I work, not only on what I produce, but also how this idea of hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present. is very linked to the process as well. So, in that sense, what are the conditions that we create in terms of what makes it. Something that is not something else. So, what is actually holding somehow the work? It could be that idea of the plot, or what is actually like creating the links in between things, no? So, that is kind of holding the experience. But then there is, this is not certain. And this is actually very blurry. And for me it's always like very surprising when someone describes the experience of a piece or experience of a film, in the very close terms of what I am using. In that sense, it's like, wow, we had the same hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present. somehow. Because I'm not trying to communicate with my work. Like my work is not, I have this message for you to take or to understand. So, it's, it's more like this idea of a potential idea of a promise of a communication, but not an actual communication. So, I'm very surprised when actually that hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present. is very similar to the hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present. of my process, because I don't look for certainty, and that is like, wow. Yeah. Like what is operating in the work is actually creating bridges to somewhere that we cannot easily put into words. Or be in consensus with. But sometimes it happens. And that is, I remember you saying once, if I see a ghost, you take me as I'm a fool. But if we are two seeing the same ghost, then maybe there is something there.

They laugh.

Catalina:

No, but I think this thing of opening a potentiality and leaving the audience or the spectator or the attendant, the also the possibility to resonate or not with it. That's, I think is what makes me continuing want to do performing arts. In the sense that it can only be a potentiality of these living beings coming into the same space. But because we are living beings, it can never be assured. And it's such a fragile and such a vulnerable little space where it might completely break. And nothing. And not only the common hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present. might not be, but we might feel even further apart. But in this little potential of perhaps, it'll bring us together to see, sense, perceive, dream, something that it's not even fully there in the world yet. That's what keeps me wanting to go back to do things, and to keep on trying. Not at all the certain. And I think if it would be certain I would move to another thing, I would change jobs. But it is because it's uncertain that it, that it remains an interest, I think.

But I have a question about something you mentioned before. Because you were saying that this happens of course, in the work itself or in the produced object that comes out at the end. But you said that this collective hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present. is also part of how you see the process. I wonder how, if you can talk a little bit more about that?

Maria:

Well, I always, when I start the process, I start normally with something that unsettles me. Like it's like, this I don't understand very well, or this is producing me like an impossibility. Or this is a place where there is a miscommunication or a misunderstanding. There is something that is not absolutely clear. And that unsettlement creates like a place or a question to enter in. But I have not much more before that. I mean, like, it's not, it's very difficult for me to project, to have like a projection of what the work is.

Catalina:

Yeah, I have the same.

Maria:

So, while working, were the things become something. And that's something is not necessarily more clear. It's more what it needs to be somehow. Like it appears, it appears through putting things together. And as you were saying before when you were talking about your practice is, when relations start to make this field or this space or this place more complex, and then is when I enter the complexity of those relationships, when I feel I am working on it, you know. And that, and those relations become more complex. And that complexity is what actually makes me share the work. And normally when I invite people to work with me, that I also all try to work with the same people or people that I know very well because I think this complexity needs as well, certain deepness in the relations. So, these people that is ready to enter this not very clear idea of what we are working in. And then all the elements are discovering themself while putting these relations together. So, for me has to do with an hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present., in the sense that it merges in front of us, like there is not, not something that we envision before. It's something that is appearing in front of us. And sometimes we don't have the same hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present.. I'm talking about an hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present. because we are not having the same hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present. during the process. And I, and when we share it, we are seeing different things. Sometimes. Yes, we have the same, and sometimes we take decisions following one or other, because we kind of trust certain things that emerges. But sometimes when we have a consensus, normally we follow as well the consensus.

But I also, when I enter a research, you start doing associations and links that are not there. And this is for me, amazing, since I'm a student. I don't know. This is, I remember talking once with Victoria Perez Royo. She said when I need to write about something, I read about something else, completely something else. And then the thing appears, it means that you are not looking for something, you are encountering something. And this encounter happens in a level, that has to do for me, with something that is not there yet. And that's why I call it hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present., maybe. In process.

Catalina:

This I can relate a lot. The thing of working on something else or reading something else to go there. But it's also not, whatever, I like very much in my processes to sometimes have a practice that it's not like a practice or some books or study. Something that will most likely, and I'm pretty sure, will not go into the final thing. But we, I know that by heating up this other fire. That is in some sort of relationship of tension with what we're trying to find, but it's also not the thing that we're trying to find. There, we can increase the chances of getting to this other place. But if you focus too much on the thing, you will never reach it.

Maria:

Yeah. In that idea of reaching the complexity of the relations, it's about this actually. Because when you go towards what would be obvious or what would be mandatory, like in the idea of literal, then it becomes very flat topic. Or the what you're working becomes like, just in front of your eyes. And then, yeah, then you lose the deepness of all those relations that are not so obvious or not so in front of it.

Catalina:

And also, you completely, you enter something that only belongs in the realm of the known. And you don't give yourself the chance to really not knowing. Because if I'm like, I'm gonna work on this thing, and this is the references and the books that I've read around it. So, let's go within these fields. Surprise! This hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present. that might appear in the moment of, it needs to be intentioned with actually literally not knowing. So, I think by working on other things, or doing practices that have not that much to do with the thing you're creating, like a little vacuum between the thing you want and this other thing. And in this vacuum, there's actually a space where like we don't know what these things, how they can relate. And it's literally something in the field starts making bridges or starts creating links that were not in the world yet. Or at least not in our world. Yeah.

Maria:

And even the form that it actually takes at the end, not necessarily is a representative form of what it actually is happening inside the operation of that form. So sometimes what you are touching or you're reaching is not so linked to the, necessarily with, the image that you are producing. I don't know how to explain it, but yeah. I think it's also separating yourself from representation somehow. So, then this idea of deepness is happening behind, as well of the form, or in the artesanía of the craft.

Catalina:

I like artesanía.

Transition Sounds:

Catalina:

Maybe I can bring my glossary word, which is also a Spanish word that needs to be translated, yeah?

Maria:

Yeah, go!

Catalina:

Asombro Asombro can be translated to "wonder", but where "wonder" has a brightness or a spark, asombro is to be astonished by a shadow (sombra)..

Maria:

Asombro Asombro can be translated to "wonder", but where "wonder" has a brightness or a spark, asombro is to be astonished by a shadow (sombra)..

Catalina:

I like saying it! But in English there is also wonder, which also, like in the word itself, there's this whoa. And in asombro Asombro can be translated to "wonder", but where "wonder" has a brightness or a spark, asombro is to be astonished by a shadow (sombra)., there's also something that manifests. And I think I wanted to bring it in because it has something to do with this idea of producing work that can produce either a hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present. or what I tend to cherish is like, how do you, how do we bring wonder into the world by making crafts and pieces of art. It's something at the same time, childish. Children are very close to the “wow” moment of a wonder. It's at the same time unsettling, and it moves the grounds of what we think the world is. It’s like a magic trick. It cannot be. And at the same time, it is! Being in front of your eyes. So, this deep wonder and appreciation of the world, but in asombro Asombro can be translated to "wonder", but where "wonder" has a brightness or a spark, asombro is to be astonished by a shadow (sombra). there is a particular touch with the shadow, with sombre. So, it's as if something that was in the shadows comes up and surprises you. Or, that I think this wonder and this like surprise, with a little touch of darkness, is very much what I'm aiming to keep as a potential experience for myself, first of all. Like how to be still astonished and surprised and rediscover the world. And then also for everyone who might be there in the room with me. And I have a sense that, again, to go back to the…I think there is a link with this hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present. moment. But I think I brought it also because it has a lot to do with your recent intimacy with le sombre, the shade, the shadow?

Maria:

Yeah. For me it's in this last work around the shadow, we enter magic in the process. Like real magic through the book of Starhawk, The Spiral Dance. It's an ecofeminist witch. And in this book, she gives a lot of practices around how we can develop more the right atmosphere of the brain, which is the one that is far away from language or rationality. So, it's like other sensorial experience of the world, how we can reach that other experience of the world that has been so limited, especially in occidental education or work. So, I also interviewed Augusto Corrieri, who's a magician. Well, he's a theoretician and a performance practitioner, but he has practice as a magician and he has an alter ego called Vincent Gambini. And he do magic tricks. And he was wondering nowadays, like he's very interested in ecology, how fake magic can link to real magic, no? Thinking fake magic is like the cards tricks and like people that makes appear rabbits or this kind of magic, and the real magic that is linked to shamanism and witches and other forces and entities and nature. And for me it has a lot to do with asombro Asombro can be translated to "wonder", but where "wonder" has a brightness or a spark, asombro is to be astonished by a shadow (sombra)., no? This idea that I've been trained in theatre and I have also been trained in conceptual art, choreography and dance. I work a lot with conceptual in my early years as a performer.

In this new work, we work a lot with the idea that we are using material world, and we are using the theatre, but what we want to reach are these other entities, but we cannot get rid of what we have. And what is beautiful in the book of Starhawk is that all this witch practice is very linked to materiality to what the world offers us. And we have to work with that. And for me, there is this wonder when a magician makes a trick. I was telling Augusto I don't see them so far. I mean, yes, they are far. But in one sense, in the one, you want to make this wonder in the spectator through the trick, but on the other one, you want to wonder the world in the sense of there is still a lot that we have to wonder about. And we have to train this other links to the world that are still unknown. And for me now is somewhere where I want to be. Because it also put into crisis my idea of knowledge, or what I know about the world. Before, maybe it was more focussed on theatre, and conventions of theatre, and how we look and how we experience images. But now maybe it has to do with how we relate to the world, and what other senses are still to be developed in order to enter in contact with the unknown, or with the things that we still don't know. Childhood and playfulness in my work has always been very, very important. Because that gaze or that, and it can be very simple in the craft. Nothing like very sophisticated. But then, this idea of entering in another reality or jumping in something that it was unexpected, or not meant to be, then this is very important in my work.

Catalina:

But I think that's the beauty of what I love about your work. And also, about the both types of magic. It's like you see the trick, doesn't appear as an experience. You know, you drink a plant, it's just a plant, and then you go and you puke and then you come back, you know, it's very simple. Or with the magician, it's like, you know, there's like something in the hat or…So, it's not about necessarily sophistication of means, but it is, with the simplicity of the materiality of the world, opening holes or gaps of a certain type of epistemology or way of understanding the world. And giving space for that whole to happen.

Transition Sounds:

Catalina:

I think one of the things that I'm deeply politically trying to fight against with this wonder and this magic, and is that of course there's a thinking that you know the world. This pretentious and supremacist. Believing that you know the other. That you know the world. That you master it. There's that. But there is also, I feel more and more around me, even with people who are critical and questioning supremacist, colonial ways of thinking, little by little what it has become this, it's another form of this knowing it, believing that, you know it, is cynicism. And, and I have a feeling that I, in myself. Me, myself. And then of course this is what I'm trying to fight in myself, and then in the world. But is this feeling of like, oh yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's not even, um I don't know, like a vindictive, powerful ‘I know it all’. It has turned into like, ‘yeah, I know and what else can we expect from the world?’ Like what?

Maria:

Yeah. Yeah.

Catalina:

Yeah. We know everything's gonna end. We're ruining everything. We're trashing everything. And then this affect, cynical affect. I have a feeling that asombro or wonder, it's a kind of like counter spell, to against this. It's like, ‘ah, fuck, I didn't know. Oh, wow.’ I wanted to put it in touch with cynicism somehow. Yeah.

Maria:

It's a very personal work that we all have to do. Because also, when I started working and when, yeah, I was part of a context in the 2010 in Europe, where critic was important like to put critique and theory into our practices, and be more precise on what we were working. But it create a lot of boundaries as well on how to relate with what we are doing. I was trained there and I have to do an effort to enter in another state of mind and to actually get rid of ‘Yeah, I know. Yes, I know.’ No? Because it's very painful for my own experience of the world, but for the others as well, because then you put yourself on this level of knowing, which is painful for the others as well. We have the responsibility to enter in a kind of a fragility of, ‘well, maybe I don't know so much, or maybe I know less than what I thought’. And for example, one of the things that I'm working with is like, okay, we are producing so much that it's impossible " If you illuminate the shadow, you kill the shadow." - -Leticia Skrycky to see all what we produce. And what if we stop producing and we actually work with what we already have, which is a lot. And it's the idea of thinking that we know what we are, we already have, it's a lie. It's not true.

And it's funny because we just, we just perform a piece of Juan Dominguez that we didn't perform in the last 13 years. It's a 16-year old piece. It's called Blue, and it was another world when we produced that piece. It was another world. It was a completely different moment. It was a completely different context. It has changed so much in terms of the field, but in terms of the politics and the world and the mood and everything, and taking it back and performing it again in Barcelona and Valencia, it was so incredibly rich to go back to that body because we thought we already knew everything about the piece, but the fact of just making it now, which in a way makes no sense because the world has changed so much that it allows us not to go back to the past, but to imagine or to defining a future. In the sense of what you were saying now of I know all, what else can I do? So, it was activating through the past of a possible future that was actually like pushing us forward. And this I found so, because you could say like, what for, you know, to take a piece, like 16 years old piece and it was very asombro Asombro can be translated to "wonder", but where "wonder" has a brightness or a spark, asombro is to be astonished by a shadow (sombra)., to put those bodies back. Because it was not melancholic at all. It was really like, wow, we forgot this and this is so valuable. And the world is saying now that this has no value, but the fact of practicing it again gives you a lot of power that seems that we don't have nowadays. Maybe this is very abstract, but it was really interesting in that sense.

Catalina:

Is there an example in the work itself that you can be like, we did this and we didn't expect it?

Maria:

Yeah. We work with pleasure. So, which is like now like the opposite of what we are working on. And so, we work with pleasure and all the practice is very linked to, is a work on a state, like the bodies in a state of pleasure. The bodies in a state of before the pleasure, after the pleasure. In Spanish, we have a lot of words to define pleasure, like deleite, you know? Like a lot of little variations of what pleasure can be. So, the whole piece is about this and the suspension of not having a cause and an effect. So, the pleasure is always like suspended. So you never know why or where this come from. And it puts the action in a, yeah, there is no cause effect. So, the reading is very ambiguous. So, yeah, the thing of going through this body that has pleasure is like, yeah, something that we have forgotten, but that we can actually bring back. Or is mandatory actually to bring it back somehow.

Catalina:

It’s the new research we will start with Carolina in April; it's pleasure! We're like, we need to like reinvest that body like fully. Because we do in other spaces, not in the work. And we somehow, there was so much we needed to do other works we needed to relate to. I needed to do this research with the dead for all, almost now 10 years. Catalina was working with sexual violence, you know? There was things we needed to go through, I guess, also to arrive to pleasure from another side. It's not like we need, like, this thing of asombro Asombro can be translated to "wonder", but where "wonder" has a brightness or a spark, asombro is to be astonished by a shadow (sombra). as wonder that also has the dark shadow within it. And I think there is something of also how arriving today to pleasure is probably also very different to when you did this piece the first time. But, because now there is the violence that doesn't leave the room, and I don't want it to believe the room, but with it, that shadow also, and with that tension to reinvest pleasure. I think it's, I totally am with you in this. And I mean, and would love to see this piece, Do it again and again!

Maria:

No, and seriously, I think part of this, I know this very, how do you say inactive? How do you say? Like, um, inactive or…or passive.

Catalina:

Passive?

Maria:

Passive! This activating or it's very passive. This ‘yes, I know.’ No? Like this idea of ‘ugh yeah’. But I know it's very passive and doesn't give you a lot of agency. So, going back to this piece, we're like, yes. We have this agency as well. We are much more wider than, than being down. So yeah, we have to do it again and again and again.

Catalina:

But I think also just in terms of production, like, I don't know, I was, I was reading yesterday that in the past 10 years we've produced as much as in half of the last century. Something like, as humanity of producing stuff. And I think that is really something that I see in our field anyways, is like, there is this hunger for producing, producing, producing. Whenever you speak to professionals, they want to know what your new piece is, when you're just finished doing the last one. You know? You just showed it two times, and it's like, ‘no, no, we want to know what the new thing is’. And this like endless production, really. It needs to stop, you know? Before there was this like repertoire and you would do one thing for a year, like a theatre company would do one. There's some field where this is still continuing. When I think of before and after, of course there's different levels of temporalities that are at work in the same time. But in our field of contemporary performing arts and experimental dance, and it has become just about the new, and the new, and the new. And I would love that we just now, from now on, just start redoing the old.

Maria:

Yeah.

Catalina:

And it's not old, but it's just start redoing. Yeah. Recycling, reusing. Because I think regarding magic or asombro Asombro can be translated to "wonder", but where "wonder" has a brightness or a spark, asombro is to be astonished by a shadow (sombra)., the point is not that you need a new type of wood or that you need to go and quest for the magical stone that is hidden somewhere. That's, those are the heroic stories and the colonial stories. The point is that with the same wood that you use for cutting a spoon that you will eat with, you'll use it for this magical ritual or for this magical event. It's the same. Or you use the fire, it's the same fire. You don't need to create new things for magic to happen.

Maria:

No, and I think, well, there are two things. One is when for a long time, performances has have been like revisited. But they were like revisiting history, like the history that are on the books, like a kind of confirmation of the references or. And actually, I mean, Blue is a reference for, I don't know, 100 people or maybe more. But this is not about that. This is about something else because Blue is not so much in the books or in the history, so it's not about confirmation, it's about something else. So that's one thing. I think that exercise is much more interesting than the other one. And thinking about dreams, it is a little bit like, in terms of the time, like how time or space work in the dream, for example, is when you make the description of a dream is like we were there, it was like, nowadays I have my hair was white but we were doing blue. You know, like the time and space are like a mingle and not corresponding to them. And I think this is interesting as an exercise as well, like why can't we bring things that are not in the plot, or that are not in this line of progressions towards the new. Then other relations can appear that are not the ones that are supposed to.

Catalina:

I imagine that embodied relations of what we think these bodies, in the terms of you, Juan, these bodies, what they can do today and couldn't do 16 years ago. And what are the stories that we tell ourselves of, I don't know, getting older, progressing, evolving, and actually just like going back and making those bodies do. Like materially entered other lines of time. That's not this linear one or predefined one.

Maria:

No, no. It's very different because you think, I am not able to do that again. But actually, when you enter first, this is it's really in your blood. But second, you have other skills that you didn't have when you did the piece. So then suddenly it's like, wow, I never did this in this way, but now I can do it in this way. And that's very beautiful. So, it's not about retaking, it's bringing back agencies and re-agency the body and the work, which is beautiful.

Transition Sounds:

Catalina:

In your glossary, I don't know if it's the time, but I'm curious.

Maria:

I have a lot. But one I think it's part of what we say, but maybe going deeper. The impossible " If you illuminate the shadow, you kill the shadow." - -Leticia Skrycky, somehow. The impossible " If you illuminate the shadow, you kill the shadow." - -Leticia Skrycky in the sense of, as you were saying before, like the supremacy of, ‘we know’. I try to put myself always in the position of not knowing and sometimes it's very, I push myself into real situations where clearly, I don't know. Like it's, I put in myself on the process, but then there are certain situations that I want to face, that are clear that I will never reach a sense. Or I will never reach a meaning. And it means I work with languages that I don't know, for example, like where kids teach me their language. So, I go to their school for three months and not knowing anything. They teach me their language, but they don't really know how to teach me and I don't really understand a word of what they are saying. So, there is an impossibility of communication and there is an impossibility of supremacy because we don't know. I mean, they know the language, but they don't know how to teach me, and I don't know the language, so I cannot explain my difficulties. Or working with birds, like for example, I have this work where I sound with birds. What is happening? Nobody knows. But I'm sounding with them, like opening this potentiality. Or you and me in the last piece with the dead. With dead people, no? So, there is this impossibility of reaching certainty, this idea of the impossible " If you illuminate the shadow, you kill the shadow." - -Leticia Skrycky . But where I like to put myself, and I think you also do through this, and it's like, I will never know.

Catalina:

Yeah. But it, and again, this tension because within the word, I mean the impossible " If you illuminate the shadow, you kill the shadow." - -Leticia Skrycky itself, it's a negation of something. And I think, yeah, with exercise, also with telepathy, or the first time I encountered Carolina, she was doing a workshop that was called Impossible Practices. I think she led us to do levitation and telepathy. And I was also working with telepathy at that time. But what is funny with this is that you put yourself, or with communicating or receiving messages with the dead is like you, you also assume that it could be possible. You have a tension towards; it's like a vector that is like going towards that. And at the same time, you, in calling it impossible " If you illuminate the shadow, you kill the shadow." - -Leticia Skrycky, or in knowing that you actually will never be certain, you also just sit yourself with training the discomfort of not succeeding. Which for me, it's also a very good tool. We need to relearn this humbleness of discomfort.

And just like, and I can imagine that when you're with these kids, it's a lot about this like, be up, let's train the other muscle, the one that is not assured and that finds other types of safety and assuredness in other places, that is not the one that is not knowing, and being certain that we are communicating. But when I do telepathy exercises, yes, it's like, you can't. Or when I do it in teach it in workshops, it's like, you can't. Of course not! I want to try and see, did we succeed? Did it work? And of course you're very happy when it does, so you do have a tension with it. One thing, to be possible and yet a real training of the joy of not managing as well. And to observing everything else that has been opened by failing. Because other things on the table are put in this failure. So yeah, it's this very pleasurable, make-belief, that it could be possible still. Because if it's not talking with the possible, then it would be another practice.

Which again, brings me to this idea of, there is a kind of plot. But we also just like break it apart or are okay with it actually not making sense. It doesn't need to be casual, coherent, but a little bit of tension towards. I guess it's just for me, if I think of, I'm understanding it probably for the first time, like this is like, I do come from a occidentalised, westernised teaching epistemology. And I do want to put attention into opening up, splitting it open, breaking it apart, and allowing other forms of epistemology to exist within me and practice them. But then I still need to somehow make, put them into tension, or make them exist with the ones I know. So that I'm stretching slowly, my muscle into that. Or that the tissue is like opening up the holes little by little. But if I jump immediately into another space, I'm afraid I would actually bring too much of the other. It’s just, it’ll not be easy to practice and train the transfer towards these new epistemologies. Because I have a feeling when a lot of people just try to jump all the way to the other side, you might not realize that you're bringing too much baggage from the previous epistemology. You just, you're not jumping. You are just like bringing the baggage with you. A way needs to be opened up little by little. It needs to be in practice, and practice takes time, and steps, and a stretch.

Transition Sounds:

Catalina:

I was wondering if you have a memory or you recall the first time you experienced wonder? Or one of the early ones!

Maria:

I remember this with the sea. And how I was like, this idea of, I don't know if somebody else is having this experience now in the beach like being a 10 years old kid or something, and having a full experience of the sea, as a body, that was touching me. And kind of not seeing the sea, but seeing the sea as a lover or something like that. Was like touching my whole body, and giving me so much pleasure, and remembering like a love story, like really like. Like this, and then like from all this experience of my childhood, I have a lot of information for my processes actually. Like in that sense is how to keep that wonder. Nowadays art is the way for me to keep on having that experience of the world. Work is actually what allows me to go deep on it.

Catalina:

Yeah. The question of also the work itself and the process of how the process can create this, I think for me, a lot of the times is this in intuitive choosing people or friends who might create an alchemy together, but you're not quite sure. Last time it was like, I invited Leticia Skrycry and Sher Doruff, and they don't know each other. And I was like, I, something will happen. But they're very different people. And then seeing them talking together and being like, oh, this is almost like a material, like I could sense the material of the world transforming by their talks. And me just witnessing this like, oh my God, this is! And sometimes I say that one of my talents as an art maker is matching when I'm curating these things. Where people are like, ‘how did you know we would do this together or you know, we would meet and love each other like this’. And like, I'm like, I didn't know, but I had a sense. And I think that creates, like, the fact that we are surprised with one another, with the other literally, like in the process that we're like thankful and aware and this, yeah. This immense appreciation of life in the form of other little humans. As well, I think for me, participates a lot in how I can sustain an artistic process that can link me also to this wonder. And it's not only us working very hard to find it. It needs to be in the relational field, you called it a field, but I like this word a lot, in the relational field of the process making of a piece. Which in performing arts is made of people. There needs to be also, this kind of attention towards each other that makes it also increase the chances for surprise and hallucination An experience involving the apparent perception of something not present. to appear.

Maria:

Yeah, absolutely. I had the same experience with this last work I made with Arantxa Martínez and Letitia Skrycky as well, where they didn't know each other and sometimes I had the feeling they were doing the work that I was just like, as you say, witnessing. I was the one who was having this wonder of, wow, these people are amazing and they are bringing so much, and it's happening between them, is happening in front of me. Yeah. Especially I think you as well work like this, but yeah. In this idea of not being able to project.

I don't know if you have this, but I have this, the processes are already holistic, in the sense that everything affects everything, so nothing is separated. So somehow Letitia is a light designer, as an artist as well, but she entered the process as a light designer from the very beginning because we are working with shadows. So, it was very important that she was there for the whole thing. But then the body, the shadow, the fabrics that we are working on as a set, nothing can actually advance without the other. So, there isn't specific tissue that appear in a moment, and we work with that. And then the light adapts to that tissue and then the body adapts to that light. And then all this is like working together. It has its own rules. And the rules that we are working are not really working on with the rules of the theatre. So, the infrastructure of the theatre sometimes is painful because we are working with other relations, even though we need a theatre.

Catalina:

But is it the temporality of the of theatre structures, or the materiality of the theatre itself?

Maria:

Both. Because to do what we do, needs a kind of setup that has to pay attention to every detail. So that means that we cannot set, we need time. That's one thing. Because we have to see very specifically in each space, because it's a body, what we are working with, the body of the tissue, and the light and the bodies. And the other one is like, yeah, we are working with other system and materiality and maybe not working with the materiality of the theatre as it is meant to be. She has her own little machines, and for this last piece, we actually made our own little system of light. We elaborate them ourselves.

Catalina:

This is really a matter that comes all the time in my work too. That it's this like, whenever you enter processes blowing everything up, out the door, and being like, ‘to understand this, what are the conditions, material conditions that we will need to be able to continue understanding this question that we have or the, or going deeper’. It can be that you need to put into question the whole infrastructure, the architecture, the frequencies, the what a body is, how does the audience enter? Is there an audience? Uh, maybe there will be no audience at all this time, like, you know. Maybe it's one, maybe it's 10, maybe it's 25. And when you want to work very deep into the actual questions and material realities of, and pushing it very deeply, it puts it into crisis all the standardized forms of working. And then, yeah, I always end up with products that are like on tour, difficult to sell for little people, but you know, it always creates this, which I absolutely love, but it's also very bad for the economy.

But it's also, you need to live from other stuff as well. If we would be saying all of these things, of the magic, and the astonishment, and the re-questioning the world, and we wouldn't be re-questioning the walls that are around us. And then it would be just a representation of what we're speaking.

Maria:

Exactly.

Catalina:

So, I think we are both together in the, ‘I start a project, and I don't know if it's gonna be a book or a sound piece or a theatre performance’. You enter it and then you know some parts of where it's leading, but not many of the others. So of course, there's gonna be some fights because it's on an effective waste, it produces a very specific type of waste. Even if we're recycling and stuff. It's like in the sense of effectiveness; it's wasting time because you're not using time in a way that will be immediately visible in the final product. And things like that, that crash with other logics for sure.

Maria:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. If I have a practice, that would be my practice. Like in that sense that, okay, it's like each time I face an ecosystem that lacks a methodology.

Catalina:

Everything needs to be reinvented. And that's the point.

Maria:

Yeah. That is my, I mean, if I can relate my practice to a definition, that would be something that stays, that has been there from the very beginning and it's still there. that's why probably my work is always in between places. I mean, it's a problem for many things, as you say, economy, resources, politics of visibility. But, I think that's where I want to put my attention. I don't know. I don't know if it's where I want to, or is the way I can relate to it. I always wonder like, would I be able to actually do the same one and again and again and again, would it be actually more healthy?

Catalina:

But I think, yeah, pleasure also. Because for me, there is part of the huge excitement and pleasure and desire to, I guess, desire more than pleasure. Desire to enter a new work, is because everything can be blown up. And I want, and maybe not, maybe it ends up being very close to the previous piece. It also is, and then you're like, oh, it is actually some sort of continuation, but you, I don't know this in advance.

Maria:

Exactly.

Catalina:

It is part of what will get me out of my bed and bring me to the studio. It's because those things are to be really rigorously, I'm very much in love with the rigor word lately, but I think it needs to be reclaimed. But rigorous, rigorously without a violent discipline, but rigorously requestion the like, go through the questions until their limit. And if I'm gonna take that away from myself, I don't know if I would be able to get out of bed then go to the studio. Because it's like taking away the possibility of actually taking the time and the means to answer that unsettlement. And this like thing that is buzzing inside and that is having a problem with something that needs to be studied.

Maria:

And that's where we go back to craft, for me, like, because then all the craft is the relations in between those things. And that's why I don't work about something like the form is always malleable, because each time what you're facing, is when the relation changes, then the craft is also alive. Yeah. Then that's why the form is never the same because we are not working about something. We are working…And this is very difficult for me to sometimes to explain when I have been teaching or following process of other people. This is something that is not so clear to share with others. Like I have this distance to the working about something, and how to explain this to students or that are used actually to work about something, and to enter in a topic and really go through all the possibilities of that topic and knowing a lot about it, sometimes to communicate that, how to face the craft of actually what you're doing and what are the elements that you are putting into play. This sometimes I have difficulties to share.

Catalina:

But I think by, I mean, when one sees your work, it is very self-explanatory. You know? It's like, where is like materially? I really don't know what it'll be. I think when I teach, it's also a lot about like, sharing what I do. And then, and then they might not be interested. It's also their absolute freedom to not be interested in doing it that way. But it's a lot about sharing my little obsessions. And then being like, you know, I can't…And being like, I can't go into the studio and know what the shape will be. So, I cannot guide you into that. I will guide you into questioning why are people sitting and why…because I'm gonna go to the studio and wonder about those things. Why did you decide that people were gonna sit and they're like, ‘but of course they're sitting?’ And it's like, no! But what do you mean?

They laugh together.

Catalina:

Like, it's decisions! So, I think I encourage also…like I question the decisions that are invisible to them. Or that we sometimes forget that we are, they were made for us by the norm or the habit. And just be like, ‘how is this your decision?’ And if it's a choice. And if not, I will continue wondering, but literally it's just how I attend any studio or any performance. Like I do like to believe. Or I give the credit to the artists that they have made these decisions. And then when they tell me they didn't, it's like, ‘oh’. But then I feel, I feel a little bit cheated. You know? It's like, oh, but I come here and I believe they making these choices of your craft. What do you mean? Yeah.

Martin:

Thank you Maria and Catalina for this conversation. For the transcript of this episode and resources mentioned in the conversation, go to rosechoreographicschool.com. The link for this page will also be in the podcast episode description, wherever you're listening right now. This series is a Rose Choreographic School production, produced and edited by Hester Cant, curated by Victoria Perez Royo with concept and direction by Martin Hargreaves and Izzy Galbraith. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.

MARTIN:

Thank you Esperanza and Marta for this wonderful listening experience. For the transcript of this episode and resources mentioned, go to rosechoreographicschool.com. The link for this page will also be in the podcast episode description, wherever you're listening right now.

This podcast series is a Rose Choreographic School production. The series is produced and edited by Hester Cant, curated by Victoria Perez Royo, with concept and direction by Martin Hargreaves and Izzy Galbraith. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.

Bibliography:

People:

Arantxa Martínez

Augusto Corrieri 

Carolina Mendonça

Dorothy Michaels

Edy Giraldo

Leticia Skrycky 

Myriam Lefkowitz

Sher Doruff

Vincent Gambini

Publications and Productions:

Night Philosophy by Fanny Howe

The Spiral Dance by Starhawk

Blue by Juan Dominguez

Impossible Practices by Carolina Mendonça

Other References/Resources provided:

Being with death - Catalina Insignares (THIRDTalks)

Working with the dead - Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Carolina Mendoca (THIRDTalks)

Listening to the Vultures - Catalina Insignares (2015, Journal)