During this third laboratory, which will take place at L'animal a l'esquena over three weeks, Pastora, her band of musicians, el Niño de Elche, Mal Pelo and Pedro G. Romero will meet to share their work tools and set up a conversation in the process of creating the piece La diferencia/The Difference.

Dance: Pastora Galván /Song: Niño de Elche, Cristian Guerrero.
Clapping, cheering and dance: Mª del Mar Montero / Assistant choreographer y repeater: Marco de Ana / Artistic direction: Pedro G. Romero / Stage direction: Pep Ramis, María Muñoz.
Rest of cast to be arranged.

Pastora Galván, in her research into the experience and feelings of flamenco, seeks to pay homage to the previous generation of dancers, who played a key role in its history: Eugenia de los Reyes, Carmen Ledesma, Rocío de Loreto, Manuela Carrasco, Ana Mari Bueno and Loli Sevilla, among others. This was not a tragic generation. The period after the Second World War was a time of modernisation. They worked in Flamenco venues, tourist spots and ballets, at parties and US bases, on international tours. Myths abound: the Sevillian School, the differences between Seville and Triana, the gypsy style. The interest of this research lies not just in biographies, but in understanding a way of dancing that has names yet belongs to no one.

Flamenco is full of paradox, constantly testing the space it occupies, however much it may continue to return, over and over again, to tradition, or even to its ancestral, mythological, atavistic origins. Flamenco always sits uncomfortably with the place allotted to it and, even when this fits, has an imperious need to mark itself out as different.

The idea is to operate in a triangle: on one side Pastora Galván, the flamenco artists accompanying her, the shades of the Galván family; on another María Muñoz, Pep Ramis and the creative team of Mal Pelo; thirdly Pedro G. Romero, the documentation of Carmen Pulpón, her dissertation Being a Dancer: Art, Gender/Genre and Work, and the experiences of a generation of dancers.

"A few days working with Pastora Galván and her group of collaborators were enough to immerse ourselves and to see the quality of her work and its language: precise, direct, hypnotic, evocative, full of references and symbols surrounding the mystery of its origins.

Pastora Galván's idea is to open up her experiences, bringing with her all her baggage from the world of Flamenco. We at Mal Pelo accepted the challenge of working around her universe, which we approached with respect and a sense of the unknown. From the first day, however, through suggestions for specific moves, we found points of affinity and confluence. We shared our passion for dance and the desire to uncover each other's tools, offering them up to be questioned and re-used. This gave us the opportunity to dream up a new, shared choreography. There is no quarrel between experiment and technical training: on the contrary, they reaffirm each other. For us it is a privilege to be able to share the creation process of La diferencia/The Difference and to contribute our experience of our common ground, the stage. Above and beyond any classifications or stereotypes that affect the way people see dance and Flamenco, we have experienced this encounter as a real opportunity to learn and for mutual influence and absorption."

María Muñoz, Pep Ramis, Mal Pelo.




La diferencia/The Difference will be premiered on the 3rd October at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, as part of the Bienal de Flamenco de Sevilla.

http://www.pastoragalvan.com