“The problema arises when the spiritual part is forgotten and the question should be: Why do we dance? Nowadays technique is not used to create but to exhibit, only as a demonstration, the subtlety of how to tell a story is lost, of those levels of sensations and experiences that make the whole.”

Ana Laguna

Ana Laguna is, without a doubt, one of the indispensable references of universal dance and we have the chance to share together a beautiful and insightful moment with her and María Pagés for this week’s Dance & Diaspora. Spanish creators around the world. To her intrinsic artistic value and worth, we must add her creative evolution together with her creative and sentimental partner Mats Ek.

An outstanding historical disciple of María de Ávila and with a solid career in European contemporary ballet, Ana Laguna has developed almost her entire career in Stockholm at the Cullberg Ballet, where Ek created for her transcendent roles such as her personal vision of Giselle.

Ana Laguna, with her undeniable dancing genius and her almost mystical discretion, has always defended that dance is not a still, tangible substance, but one that changes. She thinks that “dance is like water. It is not like sand, it is always in movement and has to do with the moment it is made, that it is danced, neither before nor after.”

Image: Johan Persson. From The Wonderful World of Dance Magazine.