The María Pagés Choreographic Center‘s project aims to transform the creative biography of a Spanish choreographer into values and guidelines for action in defense of dance and its professions.

One of the lines that we try to rationalize publicly, by vital professional necessity and ethical conviction, lies in the sad fact that society has not yet made an effort to understand the performing arts in their natural globality. Nor has it done anything to assume dance as a creation of creators and a profession of professions, maintaining the false romantic cliché of the dancer who only moves if moved by an external transcendental force.

The staging of a dance show requires the creative intervention of many creators. Lighting and set design, or the visual book in the words of Bob Wilson, are essential to the art of creating dance performances. They give character to the characters and create the space, the atmosphere, the climate and the rhythm that a choreographic work needs to become its choreographic and theatrical essence.

Dance and women in action. Choreographers, illuminators and stage designers in search of the stage is a meeting that brings together choreographers, illuminators and stage designers at the Teatros del Canal, all linked by their professional and artistic passion for stage creation. The participants are women, they know, respect and admire each other from within the creative process. They have all experienced the artistic intimacy of the creative process.

They will talk about the conditioning factors of choreographic language and its adaptation to the stage space, the ways of inhabiting the stage through movement, the relationship of the performers with the objects and the stage, exploring codes that range from realism to abstraction. They will also think about the question of rhythm and movement in relation to music and dramatic tension, dance materials, their colors, natures and forms, light, plasticity and the creation of images and costumes.

Participating in this Dance and women in action. María Pagés (choreographer), Luz Arcas (choreographer), Mónica Boromello (stage designer), Lia Alves (lighting designer), Elisa Sanz (stage designer), Helena Martín (choreographer), Davinia Fillol (stage designer), Carmen Martínez (lighting designer), Pilar Valdelvira (lighting designer) and will be moderated by Marta González Novo (journalist) and Elisa Sanz (stage designer).

This meeting is organized with the Asociación de Autores de Iluminación (AAI), our traveling companions since we started our noble adventure in Fuenlabrada. We are united by a clear human and visionary complicity. It is also part of the training cycle of the Ballena Project.

El Arbi El Harti, director of María Pagés Foundation