About the performance:
“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
Throughout its life, at both choreographic and composition levels, La Veronal has distinguished itself with a unique and personal language; a combination of several disciplines intersecting dancing which makes them richer, bigger and more meaningful. Marcos Morau started generating his catalogue guided by a wish to explore the nature of some specific geographic points on the planet. The modus operandi has been nothing but a concealed excuse to research the enigmatic territory which hides the geography of the human body and movements. In this work of choreographic composition from the last five years, Marcos Morau and his team of dancers have developed a specific movement code called KOVA, a manual, a map which includes a set of rules and coordinates used to guide the choreographic language.
At this juncture, after spending some time outlining this peculiar topography, the need of presenting and validating KOVA as a research tool becomes evident. Because of that, in this new work, KOVA – Geographic Tools, La Veronal gets rid of the more dramatised, textual, iconic and representative character of their creations, to focus on the pure dynamics of movement generated through KOVA. This way, they offer a portrait of composition in real time, a portrait of physical plasticity; they deprive their dance of this other layer which is the artifice of show given by text and image.
The stress generated by KOVA is given by a strict set of rules of the dancing action, which continually generates impediments and problems to the dancer’s body. In this context, the dancer, who continually fights to resolve the challenges which they themselves have self-imposed, is able to communicate an appealing sense of freedom and vast possibilities. Spectators find themselves in front of a complex and rich choreography panorama, a labyrinth of body-language, free from topics and preset recognizable forms inside a figurative frame.
GEOGRAPHIC TOOLS wants to raise the interpretative possibilities of dance to the forefront and chooses the dancers’ body as the only image talking to spectators and dance itself as the only possible text. This way, it explores the semiotic territory of abstraction in movement.
About the company:
Marcos Morau was born in Valencia. He forms in choreography at the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona, the Conservatorio Superior de Danza de Valencia, the Choreographic Centre of Teatres de la Generalitat Valenciana and Movement Research in New York, obtaining the highest score on the final project. In recent years he made his choreographic assistantship project in the Nederlands Dans Theater II and the company IT Dansa.
His artistic skills are not limited to dance but extended into disciplines such as photography and drama, studying the Master in Theory of drama, where makes an assist with choreographer Cesc Gelabert.
Its main trainers are Tomás Aragay, Hilde Koch from William Forsythe’s, Kazuko Hirabayashi, Roberto Fratini, Laura Marini from Rui Horta, Avelina Argüelles, Moreno Bernardi and others.
In 2005 he created La Veronal, company formed by artists from the dance, film and theater. The artistic team purpose lies directly on a constant search for new expressive media, for cultural references – cinema, literature, music and photography, mostly – to bet on a strong narrative language with the intention of forming global art spaces. La Veronal is creating a set of works where each piece’s background takes as a starting point a country or city in the world, creating an analogy between dance and geography. The pieces do not intend to become as documentary films that describe the country directly, but makes use of the elements that the name provides to carry out the development of an idea, an argument. This imagery has led the company to differentiate itself on the map of international contemporary creation as an own voice.
Marcos Morau has won many prizes at national and international choreographic contests. First prize at the choreographic contest of Madrid, Fira de Tàrrega prize, award at MasDanza; Maspalomas International Choreographic contest, prize at the International Choreographic Contest of Copenhagen and a special mention in Huesca’s International Dance Fair, special appearance at the International Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and shortly he is going to be the guest choreographer at the Cross Connection Ballet of Copenhagen, descendant company of the prestigious Royal Danish Theater.
Direction and costumes: Marcos Morau
Performers: Laia Duran, Lorena Nogal, Marina Rodríguez, Manuel Rodríguez, Sau Ching Wong
Assistant choreographer: Lorena Nogal
Dramaturgy: Pablo Gisbert
The performance of La Veronal is happening with the support of Embassy of the Kingdom of Spain in Bulgaria, Instituto Cervantes Sofia and The National Institute of Performing Arts and Music (INAEM).
