THE TERRITORY WE CALL SPAIN

Dear all,
I post here the text about the contemporary dance scene in Spain, that La Mekanica comissioned recently for the Mediterranean Dance Map, project by DBM - Mediterranean Dance Network. This text will be very soon on-line at the new DBM website .
HIND, i think this text will be of your interest, considering your post some weeks ago... hope it could help you on having an idea of the contemporary dance scene in Spain for you conference.

Rui


THE TERRITORY WE CALL SPAIN
Text by Jaime Conde-Salazar Pérez
commisioned by La Mekanica within the framework of the Mediterranean Dance Map, a project by the DBM (Mediterranean Dance Network). May 2007

1. The territory
The territory occupied by what we call nowadays Spanish State, has been traditionally seen as the Western doors of the Mediterranean Sea. The classical tradition tells the story of Hercules separating two columns and letting the waters flow into the space we know as Mediterranean Basin. That opening point would be that point we now call “Estrecho de Gibraltar”.
As a threshold, Spain, has been a territory crossed and transformed by many different cultures: Celtics, Íberos, Greeks, Cartaginensis, Romans, Visigothics, Muslims, Sefardís, Almohades, Mozárabes, Catholics, French revolutionaries etc. All these currents have shaped a space in-between, a land where everything is mixed up and where limits not always are clear. Paradoxically, this ground crossed by a constant movement is also a space that tends to isolation. The Peninsula is closed towards the continent by the stone wall of the Pyrenees; and it is separated of Africa by the actual Mediterranean sea. What we call “Spain”, has also been a place where diverse cultures have remained stuck. As a result, we can also find hybrid cultures that remained in the peninsula reifying existing traditions and developing peculiar cultural expressions. These original phenomena used to embody isolation as part of their character avoiding any interest for the rest of surrounding realities. This fact made this territory appear as a territory of the “exotic” inhabited by the Other as seen from “European” eyes. As Lynn Garafola has pointed out, the characteristics traditionally assigned to Spanish dancers are quite similar to those that helped Edward Said defining “orientalism” . A territory that escaped modern Western white hegemonic subjectivity appeared below the Pyrenees. In fact, it happened a moment of “discovery” right after the French revolutionary invasion of the Spanish Kingdom at the beginning of the 19th C. In that moment, that same modern colonialist impulse that took different European countries to expand their limits, appropriating cultures and territories perceived as peripheral, constructed an image of “Spain” that is still alive. The opening of the Spanish Painting Gallery at the Palais du Louvre the 7th of January of 1838 marks the beginning of that process . Darkness, passion, primitivism, flamenco, cruelty, darkness, bullfighting, spontaneous dancing...were put together to create a figure that invaded London and Paris venues and still nowadays can be found in any souvenir shop. If we just take a look at ballet, we will easily find the new found “Spanish Other” in company of other Others like “Chinese”, “Indian”, fairy tale characters etc.

2. Cultural landscape
If we attempt to make an objective observation of the Spanish cultural landscape, we will notice that the events that involve more people, that use more economical resources and that consume more political efforts, are those linked to catholic tradition. This does not mean that the country has a intense religious life dependent on Roman Catholic hierarchies. On the contrary, in those enormous performances in the public space, the catholic morality or religiosity appears somehow removed, silenced or even cancelled. A few examples will make clear what I am referring to: Fallas and Fogueres (Valencia and Alicante): big fires and fireworks in the nights of Sain Joseph and Saint John; Procesiones (Andalucía, Castilla-León, Castilla La-Mancha, Murcia, Aragón etc): crowded demonstrations in the streets following images of Christ’s Passion during the week before Easter; El Rocío (Huelva): multitude pilgrimage to Ayamonte to worship an image of the Virgin Mary ; El Camino de Santiago: pilgrimage route that connects the Pyrenees and the Western extreme of the country, where the tradition places the corpse of the Apostle; Corpus Christi (Toledo y Sevilla): a 2 m. gold and silver “custodia” containing the Holy Host is walked along the streets that are covered for the occasion with sheets and stepping rosemary branches and rose petals; La Asunción de la Virgen: National Feast on the 15th of August; Sant Jordi (Catalunya): everybody gives a rose or a book as a present; Los Reyes Magos: compulsive consumption period during the days before the 6th of January; San Fermín (Pamplona): freed bulls in the city streets run together with people during the first week of July. All of these cases come from very different contexts within the “Spanish State”. All of them imply an extraordinary cultural commitment happily assumed by individuals that enjoy joining this kind of public performances. Besides all those big events, every city, every small village has its Patron Saint whose celebration day brings again important cultural live performances. But none of them can strictly be considered only as spectacles of religiosity. Obviously, the catholic root is present, but it is more an excuse than a performance of faith experience.
In relation to that fundamental cultural landscape, Bourgeois Culture occupies a limited space. Theatre dance or any other theatrical performance, involves only a small part of the population and it is rarely present in the collective cultural imaginaries. Contemporary dance, as well as ballet, is still considered just as (sophisticated) “entertainment”. They don’t really play an important role in the construction of the fragmented and vague cultural identity of the country.
Focusing on contemporary dance, we could consider it a familiar but really secondary phenomenon within bourgeois culture. Flamenco, “Spanish Dance” and even ballet, receive more attention and respect than any expression that may point out to any small deviation from mainstream theatre. As an example, we could remember the astonishing scene performed by audience in the opening season of the new Royal Theatre in Madrid in 1998 when Pina Bausch’s 1982 work, Nelken, was blatantly booed.
One last image completes this picture of the Spanish cultural landscape. During the past decades and thanks to the economical support of the European Union, regional administrations have had access to an important amount of money to be spent in development and infrastructures. Due to this situation, the typical signs of bourgeois culture have been appropriated and used to build images of wealthy and progress. A big amount of opera houses, cultural centers, concert halls, modern art museums and theatres have flourished around the country. Star-architects have designed projects that have served to construct a disturbing image of modernity. But rarely this impulse has been followed by coherent cultural projects. Usually, big infrastructures remained void of content and only served to host second line mainstream programs. It is very rare to find one of these big new venues developing programs supporting contemporary dance creation . As a consequence, these infrastructures have not engaged new audiences and theatrical dance has remained as a secondary cultural manifestation.

3. What could be the meaning of “contemporary dance” in the context we call Spain?
1978 marks the beginning of a new moment in the socio-political life of Spain. After forty years of dictatorship, the Spanish people approved a democratic legal framework that established the foundations of what we know nowadays as Spanish State. As José A. Sánchez has pointed out, we can find in this fact the origins of the process of deep cultural transformation. In this new context the phenomenon we call “contemporary dance” took place.
During the following years, all possibilities of“modernity” in the field of dance arrived mixed up and at the same time to a country that was somehow thirsty of anything that sounded new. But contemporary dance in Spain cannot be understood as a project. There wasn’t a program, an ideological drive that could clearly define the limits and aims of the movement. We cannot find in that times groups of dance artists or companies producing coherent and solid discourses about dance, theatre, live representation etc. There wasn’t either a clear stylistic/ linguistic goal pursued by artists. The eighties saw how jazz dance, Graham technique, release technique, break dance, aerobic, contact improvisation, dance-theatre etc. mingled forming a sort of promise of the possibility of “being modern” after many years of repression. The aim was to dance not depending on ballet or Spanish dance systems. In that sense, any influence, no matter where it came from or its connotations, could result interesting and useful. Therefore, it is impossible to define clearly what “contemporary dance” meant exactly in terms of style. Finally, there wasn’t a clear political intention of using this kind of dancing as an image of the new times. It is true that during these years the country underwent a deep institutional transformation. For the first time, in a long time artists lived a sort of confidence in the new democratic structures. In 1978 it was created the Ministry of Culture and the CDN (National Center for Drama) ; in 1984 opened the CNNTE (National Center for New Performing Arts Trends); in 1985 appeared the INAEM (National Institute for Performing Arts and Music); and in 1990 the Ballets Nacionales de España ( Nacional Ballet Companies of Spain) where transformed into the CND (National Dance Company) under the artistic direction of Nacho Duato. Besides, the new decentralized regional institutions also had the power of developing independent cultural policies and structures. All these facts helped contemporary dance growing. Artists and companies found then, the possibility not only of existing in a regular basis but also of thinking production in a long term basis. But despite that new institutional situation, it was never achieved the goal of creating clear, stable, durable, focused and useful cultural policies and structures. When the post-Olympic Games crisis arrived, the political commitment revealed its weakness and soon state investments in culture were radically reduced producing a profound crisis in the field of dance creation.
The lack of an ideological, stylistic or political project makes difficult to think contemporary dance in Spain as a phenomenon similar to what happened in France, United Kingdoom, The Netherlands, Belgium or Germany. During the euphoric eighties, contemporary dance was a vague movement that, through repetition and absorption of exported patterns, attempted to define itself as a “new” current within dance. And indeed that goal was achieved: it can be said that a break happened. A break that left apart the 20th C. “modern” tradition in the field of dance and that focused on practicing and exploring new dance forms. But it is difficult to identify any aim of producing discourses on dance, creation or life itself.
Contemporary dance (if we accept that this expression refers to something concrete) in Spain only achieves its first maturity during the nineties. The 1993 economical crisis, the rise of the Right and the participation on the illegal invasion of Irak, draws the limits of the new situation. Artists no longer found in institutions a fruitful support and society (generally speaking) didn’t find the need of taking care of culture, education and arts. Madrid is profoundly devastated by successive ultraconservative regional governments. And the rest of regions vanished in terms of artistic creation. The case of Catalonia may appear as an exception. Despite of their successive conservative nationalistic governments, the support to arts and, especially, to dance, was maintained during the nineties. Somehow, Catalonian institutions got to understand that arts could be extremely useful in the definition of a national identity. In relation to the rest of the country, artists and companies based in Catalonia survived “easily” this period. We can also consider other exceptions in that cultural desert (Teatro Pradillo, Madrid; Teatro Central, Sevilla; La Fundición, Bilbao) but they were strictly punctual, deeply isolated in their contexts.
Surprisingly, this situation didn’t lead to the vanishing of contemporary dance. On the contrary: the crisis made some artists change their strategies and achieve certain awareness on the ideological implications of the established systems of production. It resulted urgent to question dance itself, the aesthetic values assumed and imposed in any stage performance, the patriarchal and never innocent intervention of the State, the relation with spectators, the economy of 19th C. theatres and official structures of representation, the role of festivals, programmers and market, etc. Somehow, dance moved away from official visibility and started creating alternative contexts in which artists could work in a newly defined freedom. It was the case of independent festivals and events like Desviaciones (Madrid), Situaciones (Cuenca), InMotion (Barcelona); or small theatre venues such as Sala Pradillo (Madrid), La Cuarta Pared (Madrid), La Fábrica (Bilbao), Conservas (Barcelona) or even collectives of artists like UVI. La Inesperada,(Madrid), El Bailadero (Madrid) or La Porta (Barcelona). Obviously, not all artists engaged this new critical impulse. Some of them remained stuck in conventional contemporary dance struggling to survive as small companies, remaining in a second line and usually sacrificing all their artistic interest.
While that crisis was taking place in Spain, it appeared in Europe what was called “New Dance”. That movement (if we are allowed to use that expression) also responded to a crisis situation (of a quite different nature to the Spanish one) with a critical approach to the established and traditional discourses of dance. Coming from very different cultural contexts, artists from all over Europe met in that critical aim. Very soon the presence of artists such as La Ribot, Olga Mesa, Olga de Soto, Javier de Frutos, Juan Domínguez or Cuqui Jerez in Europe was constant. And thanks to the small independent structures directed by artists, the presence in Spain of artists such as Jerome Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Marco Berretini, Vera Mantero etc. wasn’t rare. Astonishingly and despite of the catastrophic situation, Spanish artists found the way to connect directly with a movement that was proposing a new definition for Contemporary Dance. Somehow, a kind of short Golden Age took place in the first half of the nineties and artists that started their careers in the eighties reached a first and brilliant maturity. But the situation got worse with the generalization of neo-liberalist cultural policies, and artists found in exile the only possibility of surviving. By the turn of the century, the majority of these artists linked to New Dance, were based in different European countries, leaving in Spain an immense generational void.
Since 1997 exile is a big shadow over Spain. It produces no only an absence or a minimum presence of these artists in Spanish venues but also a lack of schools. Young artists based in the Spanish State have grown up without direct references and in an cultural context that avoids the development of their works. The youngest generation is used to work precariously, to follow very irregular processes of creation, to present their works in very small not properly equipped theatres, to face the constant institutional denial of their existence, etc. As a consequence and again paradoxically, “young” artists like Lengua Blanca, María Jerez, Idoia Zabaleta, Amaia Urra, Amalia Fernández, Paloma Calle, Claudia Faci, Lola Jiménez, Sergi Fäustino, Sonia Gómez, are slowly creating a new independent current that is only moved by their stubborn determination of keeping making art. Finally, it can be said that contemporary dance is being redefined once more. Nowadays, creation in the field of contemporary dance means an underground, independent and small movement that finds its sources in any kid of art or cultural discipline, and that is focused in producing visual, live discourses linked to the body.
4. Tips in a map
The following list is just an attempt to address some of the issues that are (and have been) present in the field of contemporary dance in the Spanish State. We don’t want to trap a vague phenomenon establishing a list of characteristics. These are just ideas or qualities that may be useful to keep in mind when figuring out a map of what happens in the field of Contemporary Dance in Spain.

EXILE.
We can understand this concept in two different ways. The first one makes reference to artists living and developing their work in other countries. In that sense we can say that Spanish contemporary dance happens mainly beyond the frontiers of the Spanish State. If we just make a quick recall, we will find La Ribot in Switzerland; Olga Mesa and Germana Civera in France; Olga de Soto, Iñaki Azpillaga, Blanca Calvo, Ion Munduate in Brussels, Juan Domínguez and Cuqui Jerez in Berlin; Paz Rojo in Amsterdam; Javier de Frutos in London; and a long etcetera that draws a disturbing image. But there is also another sophisticated kind of exile: what can be called “inner exile”. This is, artists that live in Spain and assume the deep limitations of the cultural context; or that remaining in the country, they only find the possibility of developing and presenting their works in a regular basis, overseas. It is the case of Mónica Valenciano and El Bailadero, Lengua Blanca, Elena Córdoba, María Jerez, Angels Margarit, Andrés Corchero, Sonia Gómez, Cristina Blanco, Mateo Feijóo, Las Santas, etc.

LACK OF SCHOOLS
There are no official educational structures that offer the possibility of learning contemporary dance discourses and practices. The Royal Conservatory in Madrid and the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona, offer classes of Contemporary Dance understood basically as a “style”. Students learn to dance in a “contemporary dance” manner, as well as they learn “ballet”, “Spanish dance” or “castagnettes”. The main goal of the curriculum is to train “executors”, no artists. One year ago, the Institut del Teatre incoporated in its board relevant choreographers like Angels Margarit, Andrés Corchero and Lipi Hernández to develop a contemporary dance curriculum. Although it is an absolutely positive decision and it may deeply change the situation in Barcelona, it is still not clear how far is the institution going to let this team go in the actual realization of their project .
Private academies use to offer workshops and seminaries addressing methods and issues related to contemporary dance. These are the only opportunities for students to learn something beyond “steps and style”, of meeting artists and getting involved in creation processes and of getting in touch with real problems related to dance. But small academies cannot develop coherent and constant educational projects. And though they keep alive the interest of students on contemporary dance practice, their educational offer is limited. Nowadays, if anyone wants to join a deep training process, has to find his/her way overseas.
There are some projects that interrupt the situation described above. Once the student has developed a clear aim of working in an artistic project, s/he can some find small independent structures that can help reaching some kind of maturity.
It is the case of Mónica Valenciano and Elena Córdoba in Madrid. Both choreographers remained in Madrid in the late nineties and formed small companies conceived not as enterprises but as collective spaces of research. Around them students have formed a kind of “school”: young artists join their creation methods of both artists and perform in their shows, and at the same time they develop their own projects. These “schools” define the two main trends within contemporary dance in Madrid.
L’animal a l’esquena is a structure directed by the choreographers Maria Muñoz , Pep Ramis and the dramaturgist Toni Cots based in an old recovered country house in Celrà , Girona. The place serves as studio for the company but also as space for residencies, seminars, meeting point for artists.
Mugatxoan is a biannual program hosted at Arteleku ( Donosti) in the Basc Country directed by Ion Munduate and Blanca Calvo. They select a limited number of projects for a long term residency. Mugatxoan also supports (not in terms of production) the presentation of the resulting works (if that is the case).
Finally, the Centro Coreográfico de La Gomera is a small center in the small Atlantic island in the Canary Islands. It works as an actual cultural center that hosts a school of dance, a creation center, an international artists-in-residence program and an archive. It has also developed an extraordinarily active education department that participates in the educational life of the island offering to High School students the possibility of taking their Philosophy and Physical Education classes in the Center.

LOW TECH
Due to the cultural situation in Spain, it is ludicrous to expect big productions in the field of contemporary dance. Artists are forced reduce their works to the basics: solo works or involving no more that 4-5 artists; flexible or small stage designs in order to fit in any space; use of domestic technology; low cachets, etc. But this doesn’t mean that artists work in these conditions only because of the limits imposed by the context. Nowadays artists share with artists of the past a strong attachment to the quotidian, domestic and everyday life. Brown cardboard, recycled objects, old blankets, real clothes, real food, cheap commodities found in any street market reused plastic, chalk, sarcastic use of street language, etc., create environments that elude the use of sophisticated displays and the dependence on expensive high tech appliances . It is not difficult to establish a connection with the objectual work of modern Spanish 20th C. Artists like Alberto Sánchez, Joan Miró, Joan Brossa, Antoni Tápies, Alberto Greco, Lucio Muñoz, Millares, etc. Maybe it is not too inappropriate to find in the artists of our times the heirs of that naturalistic drive present constantly since the 17th C.

UNBALANCED TERRITORY
Bourgeois culture and especially contemporary dance is concentrated in big cities. Territories among big cities lack that kind of cultural activity.
During the last two decades, big cities like Madrid, Bilbao, Valencia and Sevilla have invested a lot of resources in activating their cultural life. But efforts use to be focused on marketing strategies rather that in developing structures supporting local artists or the presence of foreign artists. As a result, creation in the field of contemporary dance has practically disappeared in some places or never fully developed in others. The paradigmatic example of how a region can destroy an emergent and intense current in the field of contemporary dance is Madrid. Decades of ultraconservative neo-liberal cultural policies have resulted into a sterile space that doesn’t offer an appropriate context for artists to develop their work. Creation in the field of dance is nowadays in Madrid is an underground activity that hardly grows under the shadows of big mainstream festivals that haven’t achieved, in decades of existence, a clear character or international presence.
The other side of this unbalanced landscape is Catalonia and specially Barcelona. The history of the development of this region (nowadays also called “nation”) has been linked to the development of bourgeoisie. While opera or ballet never really existed in the most part of the rest of the country, Barcelona always had an intense life linked to those artistic fields. That served as a rich background for contemporary dance that lived a fruitful period during the late seventies and eighties. The extraordinary permeability to new languages and contemporary discourses resulted in the appearance of a lot of contemporary dance companies that, very early, achieved a revealing maturity. It was the case of Anexa, Ballet Contemporani de Barcelona, Gelabert-Azzopardi, Grup Heura, L’Espantall, Accord, Angels Margarit / Cia. Mudances, Lanónima Imperial, etc.. The crisis of the nineties and the spreading out of conservative cultural policies reduced notably that intense activity. Some companies disappeared and discourses became somehow self-absorbed in their local identity. But it was also in that time when a new impulse emerged. Artists faced the lack of institutional support creating their own independent structures. This way, artistic creation turned into artistic management transforming radically the cultural landscape. Structures such as L’Animal a L’Esquena, La Caldera, La Porta and new structures like La Poderosa or La Mekanica, have gained a territory that remained closed to artists. Nowadays cultural policies in Catalonia are mostly designed following needs and advice expressed directly by artists. As a result, cultural institutions have started to respond to the actual situation of contemporary dance instead of imposing obsolete production patterns. An example of this new situation is the creation of special funds and grants for contemporary creation and research and the project of creation of an independent Arts Council that will define all cultural policies in the future. The success of these new impulses depends on the stability, independence and artistic commitment of the new structures.