Bayonne, 18 July 1936. After receiving news of the revolt of Franco’s troops, Antonia Mercé y Luque, a Spanish dancer known as “La Argentina”, suffers a syncope and dies. Falleth one, falleth the other. Isabel de Naverán examines the echo of this moment, an individual seizure which, representatively and symbolically, contains the collective trauma addressed and resonated through artists such as Kazuo Ohno, Takao Kawaguchi, Rocío Molina, Federico García Lorca, Vicente Escudero and Gertrude Stein. 

This conference/performance takes place on a day entirely dedicated to addressing the issues of transmission, choreography and history. These three aspects synthesise the key ideas of the dance not dance programme, revealing what is political and ideological in the forces that move bodies among themselves and through time.

Discussing the nervousness of 20th-century Spain, mirrored by Portugal, Wrap, history and syncope is the title of the long-term research undertaken by Isabel de Naverán on the relationship between bodies and History.  It is also a book that takes the form of a performance conference in which the contents unfold, creating a vivid connection between images, words and gestures.

On the same day, the conference On the possibilities of conserving performance by Hélia Marçal, the screening of the film Yugoslavia: How ideology moved our collective body by Marta Popivoda and the conference Social Choreography: Rehearsing order for appearances of disorder by Bojana Cvejić also take place.

Image: Isabel de Naverán at Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao, 2021 © Karlos Martínez

dance not dance

This event is included in the (re)performances, films and talks series which constitutes the first part of dance not dance – archaeologies of the new dance in Portugal. More info.