 So we're going to begin while we wait for Luz to come back by telling you a little about what we've done today, the event. Besides what I mentioned at the beginning, we also had screenings all day. We chose some of our favorite contemporary artists from Spain together and we created a selection of screenings that have been showing all day in the Lilac department in the fourth floor and in the third floor in the theater department as well. We've been showing some work from Angelica Lidl, from Sara Molina, from of course Marca Ellas and La Farmaco who are here today, as well as Rodrigo García, La Tristura, El Conde de Torre Ciel and Vertero. So if you had an opportunity to go upstairs, we had several screens showing these works at the same time and we wanted to talk later with the artists about how they see themselves in this environment of Spanish scene but the first thing we want to do is talk to Marca Ellas who is here with us tonight and who has been leading a workshop in the afternoon starting at 2.30. It started in the James Gallery and I would just like, first of all, if you could explain to us what we did for those of the audience who were not there. Good night. It was really a great day and thanks for the invitation. Well, the idea is as we were like a short time was to first to show some of my creative process or the way I mix the different influences in order to write then the script for the pieces but also we're connected with different things like movies, TV series, music, because one of the points that I wanted to show that like originality in the 21st century it's not a thing that exists. I mean we all work based on works that have been previously done, like everything is a remix and the idea is how you mix all these elements to create something new, that it's not really new so that was another thing and then the second part we just went out walking for a, I mean because I've worked some pieces outside the stage, outside the theater and I wanted to show them like some kind of this thing of walking slow and trying to get the details in order to think about the spaces, how the spaces matter, in a time like when big cities seem or are threatened to look like the same, like it seems like some cities like you can find a starbucks event or a thara, the same kind of things but that's the surface, then there are places that survive like this guy that repairs shoes that we found randomly and we went into his shop and the guy was really pleased that we were there and he was like explaining some things to us and his little shop is like a little stage with all the three chairs where you can clean your shoes and it was really, I mean the interesting to be there. So the 15 of you all went into the store? Yeah but the thing was that he was well it was a little surprise but not for him was like, well he didn't ask what we were doing we just began a conversation with us and like if he goes prepared you know that like in a way he could, they asked me no but had you been there before? No I just, I mean I just walked yesterday and saw it from outside it was closed because it was Sunday and I thought that it would be a good idea to go there but I was not sure, I didn't know who was that man and it became a man that he wanted to be like a performer for us for a while because of course no one performs better about oneself than oneself. So he was very good at being himself, a man that repair shoes and his humility at the same time, his love of his job, I mean it was like a nice, well it was an example of what I was trying like of this idea of becoming the world on a stage and like you you frame some scenes in the daily basis. Yeah so Alex Viteri has been working with Mark in preparing this this workshop so if you also wanted to enter the conversation and tell us about the experience yeah you can. Hi everybody, yes I think I've been following your work for a little while now so I have like an idea of it so today yes for me it was quite interesting also to see this space because it was quite anachronic this little shop that is like a time travel but I believe that these spaces are around the city quite a lot and I think one of the particularities of Mark's work is that he actually catches these little glimpses of the city or these singularities in the cities and he highlights those so in that sense is yeah the poetics of the everyday life we were speaking about that today. Yeah and before that it happened and a more extraordinary thing that we were like walking just this when we were turning right in the avenue a man like a 60 years old man he stopped by and talked to me asked me where I was I mean where are you from I said no I'm from Barcelona Spain okay and what about your friends like meaning the group you know the 10 people of 12 and I said well I don't know I think they are from different places like Colombia and okay so and then he began a speech telling them that they had to listen to me because I'm from Europe and I and we survived a world war so we had more like like I don't know more experience more in order to say some things so and and some of the of the people some of the well students would say all the participants of the workshop asked they asked me if that was prepared no I mean but of course I said that yes no that they had been rehearsing all morning with that guy I mean it was it was so unbelievable that it was prepared that it was not prepared I mean both both situations were were really strange no but but that happened and we enjoyed that that moment run and that was fun I think it's a great time to bring perhaps loose into the conversation because another thing that you say a lot is that you want to bring your body into your pieces into the work poner el cuerpo in Spanish which I think for loose is quite obviously perhaps the answer perhaps we can play a little game where loose is the writer and mark becomes the dancer but I wanted to like speak to you both of you about this this notion of how to put the body in your work or what does this mean to you like you say it a lot and I wasn't sure what exactly you mean by that put the body poner el cuerpo well in my case I'm referring when when I do like this kind of writing workshops that to put the body is like that you cannot write about stuff that don't doesn't matter to you know doesn't like touch you and and and for instance put the bodies like like if you want to write about the city where you have to walk the city you have to enter into places you have to to listen to the voices of the people because I mean otherwise it's going to be a I don't I mean you may write something but it's going to be cold or distant or you're going to have a position that so I refer to to that one and two but obviously in her case I mean there is no doubt about the body so it was really present no no and with the music so I don't know I'm going to be translating for Lou it's the first time I do this so forgive me yeah but because she speaks English but but she's tired and and and and I think she's going to express better herself in Spanish and and I won't express better myself in English but that's fine and in our company and in this work obviously we always try to put the work in the body as the main thing I feel really frustrated when the body is just conceived as an intuitive or or or non-discursive place apart from from yeah from discourse or we try to vindicate the the the intellectual character of the body that doesn't need like something in order to make it intellectual intellectual already for us and without renouncing to that instinctive and non-discursive place of the body we have also tried to to work with the narrative dimension of the of the bodies we have always tried to look at as a way of working with this narrative sorry I forgot the last part for its capacity to contain stories and a little bit of what belongs to us all obviously in a very open and very experimental way but also in some way and without forgetting without getting the experimental and avant-garde this part of the world of contemporary work and dance work and we tried not to forget about this other side which tends to be out of contemporary dance I'm sorry I'm not translating I can try to leave but I don't do this it's not about body appropriating of something not about putting the body or not only putting the body but but conceiving the body of something that already is thank you so much luth that was amazing and thank you Carlos as well I wanted to ask you a little bit about the process of creation between the two of you with you know you're playing and her dancing was that like a creative process from the beginning of the piece the two of you together or we create the at the same time perhaps luth makes some movements I try to to to express the movements with different kinds of instruments I don't know it's a very long a very long process it happens at the same time I don't give him a score we compose at the same time and I'm going to add not only them but also some other people that is not here Abraham for example the the dramaturg of the company for a long time yeah the other musicians that that tend to work with you there are three important people missing from this play today from this place on display it has been very very beautiful and they have accompanied us very well but there is a whole space proposal of color temperature that we have not seen so Jorge Colomer the the the person that works with lights normally with the company there's a whole composition that we didn't have the chance to to see today and a space composition that we didn't have the chance to see but we work with with the with the lights here with the possibilities that we had here Jose Saquez which is the one who built the the horse the beautiful horse and also Abraham Grajera who is the also a director of the company he participates in the in the in the dramaturg and also he's he's a main point in the composition in the music composition process Carlos composes but Abraham works with him all the time in the in the composition yes no well many things I liked the piece but really the transitions of the piano to the battery and such that marked also they were very powerful I think there were some points that really marked the rhythm of the scenes very well and I loved the image of you playing the piano let's say without looking at the keyboard not also following her not that also that game of looking at your important very important so mark is speaking about and he thinks that there are many things that are quite powerful in the piece but he also was quite caught by the fact that Carlos was playing live and responding like he's speaking also about the looks between the two of them and how this exchange happens live on stage with us so we thought that it was also quite interesting the transitions between the piano and the battery yeah what did that one thing that happens is that when people tell me that this is a solo I tell this is not a solo this is a trio it's a play and something that happens between Carlos the musician the horse and me and in some way the processes that happen to me in the game also happen to the music is not that part has a very very complex relationship and knowledge with him with the rhythm and he passes on the things that happen to me in the body in a way happen also in the music there's a complex process that is taking place in both cases and is shared in a way in the history of Kaspar also also has the anecdote that he played the piano and he played it in a very strange way, the original sorry because I forget the original Kaspar Hauser the person in which that inspires the play the real story he was also famous for the way the very weird special unique way in which he played the piano I play the for Jack's tune with mistakes thank you so I wanted to open a question for both of you before we go to the audience's questions I was thinking of the topic of the day New Theater from Spain and the kinds of shows that we have been showing upstairs and that you also were referring some of them in your in your workshop you talked about el conde de torre fiel and I have actually two questions combined in one which is where do you think your work within the contemporary scene of work considering like the kind of theater that we're thinking about and I combine this question with this idea of action arts that in Spain is a very popular way to distinguish between theater or traditional theater and then other arts that combine elements from dance and theater and visual arts or do you think that that is where well where do you think yours your work would be positioned in this context and maybe what do you think about that terminology well I think that the problem that's been in Spain is that for me theater in Spain has been the more the most conservative of the arts no if you compare with cinema with until so then the people that manage theaters or they've been like protecting their space and so this is theater this is not so there are a lot of people that we are working in in projects that mix then we've been forced to to adopt a new label like called artist vivas or life arts instead of like for as a strategy to to gain some spaces to that but it's a situation that that's it's been forced because in Europe most of the cities in big theaters you have a program nation that makes performance with theater I mean different things that happen on stage and that and there is not this fight on distinctions of this is theater is not theater so I think this is an all discussion and but in Spain it's been it's been like that because and so it seems like now in Madrid for instance a lot of the new spaces that that have to call themselves that they do in when for instance I've talked this with Pablo from connet or a field that he said that we have to say that we do theater not because I mean theater it's a word that includes all the all the other stuff so but it's sometimes I mean this thing of the labels it's it's like a strategy to to have some space no so it's a political fight that it's not yet resolved well we have a kind of special situation because evidentemente somos una una compañía de danza because evidently we are a dance company pero sin embargo nos sentimos más próximos o se nos reconoce de una manera más precisa en contextos teatrales but we are more in a way more related to or better understood in um context that are more connected to theater and I don't totally get why do we have that specific very um mark distinction in our country which is not the same one in other countries I'm not that interested in in the label in itself but I'm more interested in the wider idea of performing acts that happen in more conventional or unconventional places it depends for example in Spain and other parts of the world I'm interested in the in the words in yeah both in Spain outside Spain and interested in the words that in a way are not that warrior or have overcome the idea of having to be like performative or contemporary in a very specific sense or traditional these these areas as separate fictions have many different options and it's more about what you want to tell and and I'm recurring to different disciplines depending on what you want to to tell to to say for example Angelica Lidl's last piece the scarlet the last one she saw the scarlet letter one of the as what um starts with a kind of conventional um theater structure and I I just this is not a translation I'm I'm just going to clarify that Angelica Lidl normally is considered as avant-garde is an outside of the traditional um theater concept but in this case she starts with that and it is not less avant-garde or experimental because of that beginning we need to to overcome that as soon as possible those labels I mean thank you so much so now we're going to take a couple of questions from the audience please speak to the microphone because we're live streaming oh this is addressed to those um the performance and creativity was just superb but I did a question about um well it's three parts the question uh first of all what inspired you to choose the Casper Hauser second am I right in assuming that it was a matter of indifference to you whether the audience knew the story or not the details and third how would you deal with the issue of let's say exploitation I was thinking of I think the Australian lady lady novelist who got in trouble was challenged for writing a book about a native Australian because she was white and the subject of the book was um an aboriginal or or at least a third world person in other words the um it's conceivable that someone could raise that is some good object to the um to that um gap between the performer and the condition of the um the content of the story and the assuming that's done in the rendition of the um of the character I'm thinking of the relation between the um between the performance and the creativity which was superb and the content or the document let's say that inspired I think it was the Herzog movie and and the book in the 19th century is are my questions clear uh abran grajera the director of with me of the company and I decided to work on this character uh because we thought that in a way caspar incarnated a tragedy of all time embodied a tragedy of all time so in a way we can say that that that is the the impossibility of understanding the own time the own the own experience of the world sorry he's not just one of those savage children of those times I don't know because his conflict is not just about society or the social rules of a place or a moment besides that that is something that he suffers as a social metaphysical he also suffers the materiality of reality it's not just a political or social conflict but also a bodily and material one the process of of learning and of learning how to relate with the world of caspars is is dance is dance is como la la primera danza is like her first dance like and dance of the audience y permite ver como como el cuerpo tiene un pulso con la propia fisicidad del mundo and it allows us to see how the body um is has a pulse that is related to the physicality and materiality of the world and it also allows you to make all this reflection from the point of view of game and a child perspective and it's a character that is very sad but very tender at the same time and all those nuances permit also to see the different nuances in that relationship with the world there are many different interesting things in this relationship but one of the things for example that I that I feel when I dance it is the the um yeah the muteness and the deafness of the world si el mundo está sordo the world is deaf yeah the audience connecting um the the second question with the idea that I was speaking about of the body be narrative in itself I think it is not strictly necessary to understand the to to know the story to to enjoy the play or I would like it to be like that I think plays have layers and depending on your knowledge and and the things you like if you know about contemporary dance or music or theater you like the answer you don't like it depending on all those things I imagine that yes if you read about Kaspar or you know the music is it's more interesting to see the way it works but for me it would be a failure if it couldn't be understood in other ways and did I really like when people that comes to see the play don't know about Kaspar and they look for more information afterwards and about the third question um I'm now in a different creative moment this play was created in 2015 and it was um first stage in 2016 but in that moment the distance between the character and me I thought that was fundamental for the work being a woman being from a different sense and century thank you thank you um so um we have time for at least another question um your performance was extraordinary and I'm very interested in your training because it's clear that the emotional part of it was was as acting as an actor as well as an extraordinary dancer so I'm curious about your training and what it included my training has been very eclectic I've always done dance and theater in parallel I've always known that I'm not a textual actress in that sense but I've worked with physical theater a lot and as a choreographer I've always been interested in um in work from characters I've studied different folklorists like flamenco, classical dance, indias I've studied different folklorists such as Indian dance and flamenco and I've also been always an interpreter of my own world, I interpret my choreographies, I dance although now I'm in a different moment I've always been bored about seeing the dancer in dance I'm interested in seeing the human being not just the dancer and for me dance reveals the interior of the body it doesn't hide it and I think that technique has to serve to speak about fragility and there's a lot of technique work but it works in a way where virtuosism is about the soul and not the the finish of the technique and I like that the selection of movements in display are the ones of caspars or the ones that caspar makes in me not my own okay we have time for one more question when you conceptualize this or when you were making it did you predict that it might have like a dark humor or that the audience might laugh sometimes because I wanted to laugh but I wasn't sure if I should I think it's a very comic character in a sense and when I hear laughter I know that the play is going fine I know people doesn't they're to laugh always but Caspar has a very good time with the horse and he's also a really cool character in a sense but he has a very good time with the horse and he's also a really cool character in a sense and I'm really interested in how like silent cinema or good comedy is able to to put all together like human misery but but comedy also we do have time for one last question the last last do we have one more question yeah yeah question oh sorry well perhaps to bring mark back into the conversation because also we're talking a lot about pleasure and I think that's an important part of your work too um if like to give you a little bit of a sneak peek into his work his work is quite politically incorrect I believe sometimes also illegal like there are some plays that include some illegal activities but there are also social experiments in the sense that yeah like we are creating these spices where where we are not sure how to react and I think that's what's what's so interesting about theater about gathering a group of people in the room and I think your work in that sense quite managed like uh very interestingly I think it generates these social experiments where we're not that sure it's not that much of a question I think it's like a commentary on the the legality all the yeah the no but I mean if we live in a in a world where some spectator is afraid to love in a in a play for me was very surprising that not because I mean it's like I mean we've been so domesticated in how how we have to behave in some places that that we are like constrained all the time no I think that the theater has to be a space of freedom a space of relationship and and when I told them in the workshop that I like sometimes when as a theater director I feel like a the guy that's organizing a party so that's and I want to treat the spectators for me are my guests no so that's why sometimes I give I like to give during or after or before the play give some food or some drinks or some drugs some cases so in order to to to well to it's a way to to to make them feel comfortable no like like people feeling a party no so so I like I like this idea no that like it's it's a point of we meet and we have to and a party it's sometimes it's funny sometimes it's sad and and and sometimes it's it's political too no so so I think respect to the idea of things I I won't I won't confess anything because you know I cannot say if it's true or if it's false no because I don't remember thank you well I want to thank again Carlos González Luz Arcas Marca ellas thank you so much for flying all the way here and making us enjoy so much with your work and uh french heckner is oh so um today is the last day um the last um event for the seagull center and it's also the last day for Ilaida Akin so we just wanted to recognize her work she's been working at the seagull all year so this is a public recognition we're so happy to have had you all this time thank you um and I want to thank Ana Sanchez Acevedo um Alex Viteri Danny Viltueña it's been so fun organizing this with you um it's been wonderful I'm very happy it's done I want to thank you too Mada thank thank you very much because I think I I know it's hard like it's been hard and thank you so much for making it possible I'm super happy that we we were able to do this and speaking about party and celebration we're going to head to the archive on 36th street whoever wants to join we'll have some wine um and we can continue the conversation 36th street between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue um and thank you again for coming and thank you thank you