Synopsis

Tuétano is a journey towards the depths of our being, a return to our most organic nature. In an aporetic and hence desperate attempt to find the origins of the earth, the clay from which we and everything come, "mud is my name although I am called Miguel" (me llamo barro aunque me llame Miguel). A dance as a journey to the kernel. Inquiring into a primordial obsession, that of discovering the shared core. Dialoguing until the marrow. Tuétano is also a longing for integration: bringing the speed and sophistication of the world into harmony with nature.

Why do we move? Why is the human being in perpetual motion? Moving to avoid death, as if life were at stake. Perhaps this partly explains the very existence of dance.

And amidst this flow, stopping to meditate, in balance, being physically like an interrogative on the stage. Because the answer matters less than the development of the question. In other words, "dancing from the question" (bailar desde la pregunta). Suspending time, voice, gesture, movement, and opening a door to reflection, to meditation. Then the border between what has been choreographed and what has been improvised fades. Doubts, transitions and hesitations are also danced. Returning to the elementary. Expurgating all filth, all gratuitous effects and everything superfluous. Undressing and exposing ourselves to the elements because beyond the dancer is the being, people, with their experiences and non-experiences, their encounters and non-encounters.

And centre stage, there is only a circle of earth; perfection and sobriety open to an array of symbols and meanings. And dancing inside or outside, dancing against or from the circle, a prohibited space or a ritual space. But always an embryonic space.

The search for the essential, for the forever lost link of flamenco. It doesn't matter. What matters is the path. Retracing our steps. Creating past. Creating past, present and future.

In one of his most profound novels, Juan José Millás wrote that oil is the only liquid that can filter into marble, and that we notice this because it leaves a stain behind on the surface. The smooth cold surface of memory is covered with similar stains; each one recalling a filtration. Each filtration is a drip of flamenco that connects us with the marrow.

And within the marrow lies the Other, without whom the journey is impossible.

Concha Vargas is an echo of Lucy, the figure of a mother-woman and a black goddess, with her wide telluric hips. Generous, combative, anchored to the ground, rounding herself in the shape of a planet. "Yellow copper, her flesh smells of horses and dusk" (cobre amarillo, su carne huele a caballo y a sombra). Concha, "faraway, sweet: lodged in the marrow!" (¡lejana y dulce, en tuétano metida!).

The singer's voice in all its essentiality, at once ascetic and deep. The flamenco cry, the black sound, "grief that filters into the marrow of the bones" (la pena que se filtra en el tuétano de los huesos).

Faced with so much essentiality, the dancer searches, questions himself, reflects and confronts the circle, the mystery of the origins, which perhaps is merely an inner mystery. And he tries to express, to explain or, rather, to experience the density of this search, keeping the audience in suspense. Letting them share a fragment of this trance, of this secular mysticism.

Jean-François Carcelén

Credits

coproduction & première MONTPELLIER DANCE FESTIVAL June 23-24 2012
national première 17th BIENAL DE FLAMENCO DE SEVILLA Sept 11 2012

dance Andrés Marín
guest artist (singer) Tomasa Guerrero 'La Macanita'
guest artist (baile) Concha Vargas
electric guitar Raúl Cantizano
percussionAntonio Coronel
off percussion Luís Tabuenca

coreography Andrés Marín
artistic & stage direction Andrés Marín
lighting design Laurent Benard
sound Fali Pipió
stage manager Pepe Távora
tailoring Teresa Baena

literary advisement Jean-François Carcelén
poetic text Antonin Artaud
Extracts from Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu and Le pèse-nerfs et autres textes (Gallimard Editorial). La question se pose de... extract from Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu oratorio-rock mis-en-scène Natacha Dubois, L'infini dehors/théâtre.

executive producer Daniela Lazary
production Montpellier Danse Festival 2012 / Arte y Movimiento Producciones / Andrés Marín Flamenco Abierto
distribution Arte y Movimiento Producciones / Andrés Marín Flamenco Abierto

special thanks to Bartabas, Roser Montlló Guberna y Brigitte Seth - Cie. Toujours après Minuit, Salud López and Mercat de les Flors

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