Since 1996, creators and performers have been competing for the Jury Prize, the Audience Prize and the Acorán Award, after a selection made by a committee of professionals.
In this section we present the programme of the XXVII Edition of the Choreography Contest, which will be held from 18 to 21 October 2023 at the Pérez Galdós Theatre in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
The application period will ran from 15 February to 30 April 2022.
CHOREOGRAPHY CONTEST 2022
WEDNESDAY 12 // THE PÉREZ GALDÓS THEATRE // 20,00 h
BEHIND YOU (10’)
Naples, Italy
Created by> Adriano Bolognino
Performed by> Frederic Zoungla & Gaia Mondini (Compagnia Opus Ballet)
Music> Max Richter “Sunlight Music”
“This creation wants to investigate the emotional aspects of winter taking inspiration from the artwork ‘Return from the woods’ by Giovanni Segantini. The difficulties of life often create a long winter of the soul. And only when a thick fog flares up within us is that, through it, we can immerse ourselves completely in ours essence and rediscover ourselves, flourish again, let go of the cold to find a new light. In a snowy blanket and desolate, a flame turns on out of nowhere. Also winter has its colors. All enclosed in a pure white”.
CHAOS (10’30”)
Guangzhou, China
Created by> Zhiren Xiao
Performed by> Shaoyan Bing & Yuxi Pan
Music> Hoch und Deutschmeister “March”
Order without liberty? Or Liberty without order? …
ARE YOU GUILTY? (15’)
Seoul, South Korea
Created by> Min Kim & Madrid Lee
Performed by> Min Kim, Madrid Lee & Chang Min Lee
Music> Daft Punk «On/Off”, AC/DC «Back in Black»
“Eyes closed and mouths shut, we choose the convenient option to be silent when encountered by the plight of others. Ironically enough, when we are placed in a crowd, the easier it becomes to sit down and watch tragedy pass by. Oftentimes, we effortlessly choose to distance ourselves. ‘Are You Guilty?’ explores this phenomenon known as the bystander effect, the social psychology theory that people are less likely to help someone in need if there are other people present. By fusing together various genres including hip-hop, theatre, and contemporary dance, this piece creatively navigates the fine line between being a perpetrator and a victim in situations where we exist as passive bystanders. ‘Are You Guilty?’ witfully employs an organic mixture of restrained movement and exaggerated expression of the dancers. This piece throws timely questions to the audience about the nature of empathy and widespread social apathy’.
THURSDAY 13 // THE PÉREZ GALDÓS THEATRE // 20,00 h
FALSE MEMORIES (14’55”)
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Created & Performed by> Tu Hoang & Hiro Murata
Original Music> David Granstrom «Obsidian»
Music> Flxk1, DB1 »A2»
“ ‘False Memories’ is created around the concept of the psychological mind through the perspective of two individuals that have an unspeakable connection with each other. In an abstract way, the feeling stays that they are one entity in their spiritual world, whether they are together or separated in physicality. Our memory is a very fragile concept. Sometimes we remember things the way we want them to be. Our imagination takes us to escape our own reality in order to find comfort or peace”.
CONVERGENCIAS (15’)
El Escorial, España / El Escorial, Spain
Creadoras & Intérpretes / Created & Performed by> Tania Garrido & Eva Alonso
Música / Music> Rival Consoles “Untravel”
“ ‘C o n v e r g e n c i a s’ is a landscape piece that unrolls between time and space almost pictorially. Two female bodies cross the stage in a radical way, carving it into a single diagonal. Each body unfolds in the other the dance of a single common body that develops through a wave of memories, desires and torsos that explore spirals. ‘C o n v e r g e n c i a s’. Two parallel journeys. A common cycle. A pattern that repeats itself. Perhaps a mantra. A ceremony. A biomechanical exploration of the movement of the spine. A request for immersion. An attempt at an exit. A possibility of returning to oneself. An effort to move forward. To die and to be reborn, in the continuous present. The coexistence of the common and the diverse. Together. Trying the way of one, testing the way of the other, experimenting the way of one with the other, inventing the shared. Inhabiting convergence in touch, in sight, in breath… in that which unites and accompanies us on this solitary path, but in the union of two”.
OFFENSE (15’)
Taipei, Taiwan
Created by> Tzu-Han Hsiao
Performed by> Hung-Mao Chang, Bo-Yu Chen, Chen-Wei Lee, En-Wei Lin, Chien-Yao Liao
Music> London Symphony Orchestra “Boléro (Ravel)”, Arpád Jóo “Ravel: Bolero”
“A series of mistakes? A group crime? Or the original sin of one person alone? A story about masculine violence and frustration. ‘Offense’ is inspired by a real-life event in Taiwan. Twenty years ago, a boy called Yeh Yung-Chih was found dead in the school’s toilet. The death sparked the discussion of Yeh’s predicament of how his feminine traits caused him to suffer from the masculinity-rooted bullying. After Yeh’s death, Yeh is remembered as ‘the Rose Boy’, a term that has since been used to refer to boys with feminine traits. With the repetitive layering musicality of Bolero, the dance shows how every man faces the oppression of competing under the tacit rules to herd survival. Coupled by a quasi-joke competition, the dance pushes masculine bodies to the extreme, again and again, until the stage unwittingly evolves into a battlefield as if in search of a ritual offering…In retrospect, to question the masculinity-self. Is a man born or is a man made?”.
FRIDAY 14 // THE PÉREZ GALDÓS THEATRE //20,00 h
VOYAGE (12’)
St. Gallen, Switzerland – Taipei, Taiwan
Created & Performed by> Guang-Xuan Chen & Mei-Yun Lu
Original Music> CHIU PI 邱比 “Reflection”, William Basinski “4(E+D)4(ER=EPR)”, William Basinski, Lawrence English “Mono No Aware 1.3”
«This is an intimate private journey, we listen to every decision at the moment, being aware of the imbalance and sharing every risk that could arise. We would like to invite the audience to discover with their own view on our voyage.»
BREATHE WITH ME FOR A MOMENT (10’)
Moshav Givat Shapira, Israel
Creadora / Created by> Or Marin
Intérpretes / Performed by> Uri Dicker & Tomer Giat
“ ‘Breathe with Me for a Moment’ is an instant where a window opens for intimate dialogue between two dancers. What we mean when we speak about true intimacy. How fragile closeness is. Is it what we call love, passion, honest conversation, in-depth knowledge? The duet proposes intimacy as shared breathing, a moment of close connection that encompasses the various colors of intimacy. The meeting of two bodies, through shared breath into a harmonica, produces a note/sound to the concept of intimacy, vocalizes the closeness, the love, the passion. It connects the two bodies and turns them into one musical instrument with two lung spaces and one note that emerges from their bond. Union. The sound of intimacy that is revealed to us in a unified musical layer serves as a soundtrack to the bodies in their release into one another in a human, abstract/sensory way”.
LOS PERROS DEL BARRIO COLOSAL (12’)
New York City, United States of America
Created by> Omar Román de Jesús
Performed by> Margaret Jones, Bailey Jo Harbaugh, Eduardo Jiménez Cabrera, Rachel Secrest, Ian Spring & Christian Warner
Música Original / Original Music> Lucho Bermúdez “Homenaje al Gran Lucho”
Additional Music> Franz Liszt “Liebestraume”, “S541/R211”, “No. 3: Nocturne in A-flat major”
“Through the exaggerated mannerisms of daytime television, the six characters of ‘Los Perros del Barrio Colosal’ take us on a wild romp through the challenges of creative decision making. Diving dramatically into the adventure of an imagination yet to be physicalized, they ask us to consider the far side of the moments when our ideas threaten, with disjointed urgency, to swallow us whole”.