2024-10-14 03:01:00
“Somewhere on the Santiago mountain there is a lonely tree. During the night a spinner says spells in Quechua. Old beliefs are awakened. The mountain turns green, honoring the saint the folkloric gesture is born. The prayer dance begins.” With these words it begins single treea show that crosses folklore with the contemporary in both dance and music. Traditional dances are combined with current techniques and ancient rhythms with electronics to reinterpret the Rezabaile de la Telesita, an ancient community ritual from Santiago del Estero in which favors are asked from the pagan saint (Telésfora Castillo, better known as Telesita) dancing with joy, with drink and food for many hours.
The alma mater of this proposal is the artist from Santiago Miri Fioramontiwho dared to debut as a director supported by a luxury team. Marcelo Moguilevskyin charge of the music, created a soundtrack of remarkable richness with a very wide range of textures, instruments and genres; The choreographies mark three moments of the day and each one was conceived by different choreographers. Miur Nagur created the night dance from elements of the butoh dance, Juan Onofri Barbato gave movement to the dawn where energies not yet channeled are displayed and Andrea Severa gave an overflowing energy to the dance of the day. The director, who left her native province to study Arts at the UBA and train as a dancer, summoned Deby Wachtel as assistant director.
In the wide scenic space of the Guevara shed This show takes place with an air of ritual, inhabited by a tree, an imposing spinner sitting on a chair and a very even and high-level cast of male and female dancers who give life to the “promising ones” and the inhabitants of the mountain. There is music, singing, prayers in Quechua, projections and a lot of movement. “I was interested in taking up the Rezabaile de la Telesita because they are things that are disappearing, that are changing. I remember, for example, that as a girl I went a lot to Grandma Rosa de los Carabajal’s party, “grandma’s party” as it was known. You went to his house, there was food and there was dancing in the yard. Now it is still done but in a stadium-type field and you pay entry. The rezabaile has to do with resilience, with cycles of regeneration. The saint is asked for rain, for the animals to be well, for the plants to grow and she is asked to dance. It is a collective prayer, a very ancient ritual. The church was never going to allow something like that: the incorporation of the body. And it involves an understanding of being part of nature, of being nature, not of living only in it. I wanted to approach that tradition from a diverse, multiple language. How we see that rezadance today, how we incorporate it into our bodies. There is already a national folk dance company that dances perfectly. My intention is different,” Fioramonti tells Página/12.
-How was the work process?
-I have been developing it since before 2019. I come from a folklorist family, my mother embroidered, my grandmother knitted. I was always very close to my roots, I always liked to dance folklore. The work is a bit of a compendium of many things that I want to share, provide a poetic connection with something as ancient as folklore. And since I am a kamikaze, I sent myself to create the work, I felt that I wanted to put together a team and work collectively. With Débora we finished shaping the dramaturgy together and we summoned Mogui for the music. I wanted it to have the timbres of the zambas, the chacareras, the beat of the bass drum, the violin. A folkloric sound crossed by electronics from the beginning that grows to its maximum peak in the last stage, that of the day, and that explodes in the theater hall where audience and cast join together dancing at the end of the performance.
Why did you call three choreographers?
-I wanted a multiplicity of languages and for each one to bring its own imprint. Miur Nagur works with internal images of the performers because the night had to be a bit meditative. Juan Onori worked on the dawn with the dancers who begin to display more movement. It is the genesis of folk dance, the birth of the folk gesture but still uncoordinated. The rhythm of the cueca drives that pure energy, how we step, how we raise our arms, once the rain comes. And with Andrea Servera comes the full day, the dance in the patio of the ranches where the community meeting takes place. An explosion of vitality in that zamba that intersects with contemporary dance with jumps and pirouettes in an organic way. And the costumes accompany this evolution. From a more minimalist style to skirts, to the overlapping of fabrics, to embroidery and fabrics with vibrant colors such as the textiles in Santiago del Estero. It is a great work by Florencia Vitón, the costume designer.
-How do you see the relationship between the spinner, who is still, heavy, and the cast, which is pure movement?
-The actress who plays the spinner was born in Santiago. Her character is a static figure but she is the one who pulls the strings, the one who generates movement, the one who says spells in Quechua. And he controls what happens between the beings of the mountain that are his power animals and the “promising ones.”
-What is your view on the figure of Telesita?
-It is said that she was a shaman who at night came down from the mountains to the town to dance when she heard music, when there was a party until dawn. In the Telesita ritual, a doll is made that is burned because the legend says that it was found dead in the mountains, burned by a fire. I wanted to remove Telesita from the idea of the “poor thing” with a tragic ending. Santiago del Estero was always a very Catholic province and the Church never looked favorably on this type of celebrations. It was common to sleep next to a stove and get burned. Today I also think that it could have been a femicide. In any case I wanted to give it the strength of the earth. The chacarera that we wrote with Moguilevsky and that Feli Colina sings says at one point: “I am not a soul in pain. It’s a shame not to be able to dance.” I wanted to rescue from contemporary times something that is ours, a popular tradition that has to do with resilience and joy as well. In difficult times, the peasants asked and ask for blessings, they asked for rain and they did it by dancing and drinking. And the name of the show has to do with that struggle too. single tree It is a town in the department of Quebrachos near Chaco, a very inhospitable place where people continue to live despite the tremendous deforestation. It is called that because they cut down the quebracho forests to make the railroad ties and currently the deforestation continues.
*Arbol only appears on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. at the Galpón de Guevara (Guevara 326). Emilia Degano, Gerónimo De Martino, Juan José Hair, Selene Irrazábal, Martina Kogan, Ana Pérez, Camila Povrzenic, Camila Redondo, Evelin Santillan, Camila Vega, Lucas Yair Araujo dance and Laura Tarchini acts as the spinner. Jonatan Szer collaborated with Moguilevsky on the musical creation and the lighting is by Leandra Rodríguez.