L’animal a l’esquena, Temporada Alta, Mal Pelo and FID (Finestra Internacional de la Dansa – International Dance Window) are organising a gathering at the creation centre that will include a guided tour of the project at L’animal a l’esquena, a display of the working process for the new piece by Pep Ramis/Mal Pelo The Mountain, the Truth and Paradise, and brief screenings of videos by other Spanish companies and artists: El Conde de Torrefiel, Lali Ayguadé and Albert Quesada.

In this conversation El SOLAR will share some of their views and working processes. These combine various focusses of creative attention: material culture, collective memory, documentary, the theatre of objects, etc. They research the idea of “documentary Theatre of Objects” in specific contexts.

They will talk about how they question ways of relating to communities and the objects that carry their real and symbolic stories, and what this means when it comes to turning their ideas into performances. They will also tell us about the evolving methods they have used to approach people’s private material lives and how, from close up, it is possible to decipher minute details of fact and feeling about a trade, a neighbourhood or a city.

The Colegio del Cuerpo eCdC (eCdC College of the Body) began life in Cartegena de Indias, Colombia, in 1997, as an initiative by its co-founders and co-directors Marie France Delieuvin and Álvaro Restrepo.

eCdC is a cultural and educational space, plural and democratic, which offers the opportunity to build a new ethic of the human body, indissoluably linked to certain aesthetic and artistic quests, in turn associated with contemporary events in cultural, social, political and economic life. eCdC fulfills its mission in four fields: training, creation, public awareness, research and documentation.

Meeting-workshop to experiment with the camera in motion, with Leo Castro, Neus Villà and Núria Font. What happens if the person operating the camera is a dancer who takes techniques used for controlling the body and applies them to make the camera “dance”?

We invite you to a conversation with the Neapolitan writer Erri de Luca in the hall of La Mercè Arts Centre at 8pm on the 18th November 2015.

On the occasion of his visit to Girona for the performance of the piece El quinto invierno/ The Fifth Winter, directed and performed by María Muñoz and Pep Ramis of Mal Pelo at the Festival de Tardor de Catalunya Girona/Salt – Temporada Alta 2015 on the 20th November, Erri de Luca will talk about his relationship with writing, his recent publication “La palabra contraria” (“Contrary Words”) and his literary ideas.

Meeting between Mariantònia Oliver and María Muñoz to work together on the creation process of Malmenats/Badly Treated, a new performance project by the Mariantòniaoliver company, a piece first created and performed by the Mallorcan choreographer with Pepón Prades, Jaume Manresa and Pedro Mas. This is a parenthesis in her residency at El Graner, a centre for body and movement creation in Barcelona, to share another view of movement, presence and the body.

From the beginning L'animal a l'esquena has conceived the creation of an archive as one of its main axis of development, working since then on the documentation of its activities.

The idea of generating a digital archive starts from the need of contextualizing, analyzing and locating the different artistic practices in the framework of the Contemporary Arts related to body, dance and movement. This is the main purpose of implementing 'cos creació pensament' as a digital archive, to allow open access to study, research and transmit such practices. Also, to facilitate the dissemination of the different activities, artists and working processes having taken place at L'animal a l'esquena for ten years, 2001-2010.

'cos creació pensament' is the result of more than two years work based on the classification, digitalization and re-codification of the documentation, done by the researcher and artist Elena Oña.

The project We Love You was born in Brussels in 2003 after the encounter of three musician of three different countries: Ilan Manouach sax (Greece), Clement Nourry electric guitar (France) and Ivo Sans drums (Catalonia). The essential idea between them was to never play a composition, but always start playing in front of the void. This fragility it's their force and it rides them into moments of pain and sadness but also into happiness and states of trance. They try not to fall into the built-in behaviour of music: composing, soloist, etc. but try to create and confront living structures born out of instant time in the creative act. The execution of the group as a real experience is an isolated fact in the main stream of music and even in the underground. That's why the live, since 2007, a kind of triangular diaspora -Brussels, Athens, Barcelona- and they have a few occasions since then to play together.
(free entrance)

Master in Contemporary Arts Practice & Dissemination Final Projects Presentations (2007-2009).

Kònic Thtr invites the catalan choreographer María Muñoz to visit its universe (technological devices, audio-visual displays and music) and to revisit the own one (choreography), through a crossing experience of research and creation: new technology-choreography-interpretation-music.

This activity is part of the process of research-creation which will be presented within the frame of the Festival IDN at the Mercat de les Flors in January 2009.

During John Berger's stay in Celrà for the staging of He visto caballos by the company Mal Pelo, L'animal a l'esquena and La Llibreteria join forces for the first time by inviting the writer to a talk in the bookshop and a visit to the Reading Club of the Public Library of Salt on May 28th 2008

Conversation with Toni Serra about the reflections, working progress and ups and downs of the research project 'El Somni Colonial * Zones Autònomes'. A compilation of videos, independent documentaries and media archeology around Colonialism and its transformations in the Global era.

Conversation with choreographer, interpreter and artist Mónica Valenciano who spoke about the approach to writing as an artistic practice or as a way of thinking.

Conversation with the professor and Performing Arts researcher José A. Sánchez who presented a new digital archive for Contemporary Performing Arts in Spain.

Conversation with researcher and teacher Scott deLahunta (USA/NL), who presented a series of projects related with the movement notation and archives created from choreographies by Forsythe, Trisha Brown, Myriam Gourfink, Wayne McGregor and Emio Greco/Pieter Scholten. He spoke also about modeling, simulation and movement capture: representational analysis and systems.

Chat with Ixiar Rozas, where the artist presented the project 'Perikeriak', conceived with the idea of creating collective spaces of knowledge, of thoughts and of action. That is the reason why a conference (or seeing modes) programme was organized, workshop (or narrating modes) and a parallel programme.

Chat with Toni Serra, member of OVNI, where the artist presented the Archives of the Observatory and the Babylonia Archives. The aim of these archives is to facilitate a critic of the contemporary culture using various strategies: video art, independent documentaries, mass media archaeology.

Exhibition of the works by the photographer Jordi Bover with the French company 'Royal de Luxe'. This photographical chronic is a resumé of both the various scenic forms that the group has explored and of the creations developed in far away locations such as Cameroon and China, while searching new audiences and new interlocutors.

Chat about the independent art magazine "Performance Research", by Ric Allsopp.

Chat with Pep Ramis and Faustin Linyekula. This chat was part of the project 'L'animal i Kabako', chat and creative process of Mal Pelo and the Company Linyekula

Chat between the participants of 'The journey. Last chat with the artists participants of this project.

Chat between the participants of 'The journey', from the contemporary creation's registration and archive, and its processes.

Chat between Toni Cots (Barcelona), Ornella d'Agostino (Italy), Leire Llano (Barcelona) and Alessandro Quaranta (Italy). Within the program Danza / Conflicto.

Chat between Lisa Nelson (USA) and María Muñoz (Celrà, Girona) within the program Danza / Conflicto.

Open rehearsal by Cie Taffanel and talk with Jackie Taffanel, where the artist talked about the composition in the centre of the relation between choreographers – performers; from improvisation to track, from committed sensation to associated visions.

Conference conducted by Àngels Margarit, in which the dancer journeyed through the choreographic language that she has been developing during her experience as a performer and as a choreographer. She talked about the working processes from the moment where movements come out to the articulation of the choreographic and scenic language and the organic and formal relationships among them.

Conference conducted by Lisa Nelson about the choreographic language, where the artist offered her strategies as a improvisation performer-choreographer expecting the choreographic survival.

Conference conducted by Kònic Thtr (Rosa Sánchez and Alain Baumann), based on the human body and its relation with technology for scenic projects. The conference also mentioned the problematic transmission of movements' expressivity and the human emotion through technology.

Conference / exhibition carried out by Dogon Efff (María de Marías and Andrew Colquhoun) in which the artists analysed the conceptual integration of 'livestream' (live video on Internet) and 'telematic environment' in its scenic work.

Conference conducted by Nik Haffner, in which, from a series of videos, the artist talked about different aspects of time and its measurement that dance presents.

Conversation about Andrés Corchero's performance, in which, the artist, proposed to begin with a text or a poem and dance it without making it neither explicit nor graphic. With Andrés Corchero (choreographer), Joan Saura (musician) and Feliu Formosa (dramaturg).

Conference carried out by Núria Font, who covered the young history of this field. Núria Font is an independent producer, collaborator of contemporary dance companies and Director of the Mostra de Vídeo Dansa de Barcelona.

Seminar–laboratory about the contemporary creation, the main objective of which, was to combine the creative work of a group of dancers, choreographers and musicians, invited to L'animal a l'esquena to develop an open process, supervised by a professional group of observers of this process development, within a certain period of time and a determined location. The lab ended with the presentation on stage of "Entre les côtes de la baleine" within the Festival Temporada Alta 2002.

A get together about improvisation and commentary with Hisako Horikawa, co-founder of Body Weather Laboratory together with Min Tanaka and Maïuku, butoh dance company (Japan) organized by Andrés Cordero.