For a long time the French-Spanish border has been a phantom or abstract line of geographical separation. But it is also a very concrete natural frontier: the Pyrenees. As a voluntary exile in France for the past fifteen years, Marta Izquierdo Muñoz explores this frontier in this new project, travelling along it physically, taking an interest in its landscape and legends. Her choreographic imagination takes inspiration from the Pyrenees, that natural frontier haunted by tragic migrations like that of Republican exiles after the Spanish Civil War.

Marta Izquierdo’s choreography includes a basic object, a stick: an attribute of a walker, animal tamer, fighter or buffoon that allows her to link folk dances from both sides of the Pyrenees. The Catalan stick dance (ball de bastons), which dates back to 1151, is danced by men and incorporates both warlike and farming traditions. The Provencale stick dance (l’arlequine) is danced by women as a magical-religious ritual to awaken the powers of the earth.

María Muñoz, co-director of Mal Pelo and L’animal a l’esquena, will collaborate artistically on Practice Makes Perfect.

After the last residency, which culminated in the creation of Practice Makes Perfect, this week of work will be used to draw up and define a protocol for meetings between the different folkloric groups with whom we are going to collaborate. The project will continue until the end of 2018, with a residency at the Naves del Matadero in Madrid where we will hold events and lectures centred around contemporary creators’ interest in tradition. María Muñoz (Mal Pelo) will attend this and take part in the conversation on the encounter between traditional and contemporary dance.