Witnessing the assembly of a choreography awakens a primitive feeling, the process of seeing how little by little movements, gestures, jumps and turns take shape and meaning is a fascinating discovery in the psyche not only of the choreographer, but also of the dancers on stage.
For the dancer and choreographer Nelson Reguerathose who dance are also creators: “I don’t try to assemble a phrase or something preconceived, I work a lot with improvisation because the dancers are also creators, I am not only the creator in the work, I am like a filmmaker who puts everything together from of the image I want, but we are all creators”, he confesses to me shortly before starting one of the rehearsals for the premiere he is preparing.
Brutal is the name of the piece that mounts with Rosario Cardenas Companythird choreography presented with this group, after the premiere of Desire in 2019 and Murmur in 2020, shortly before the coronavirus pandemic hit COVID-19 to the island.
The Tito Junco room of the Bertolt Bretch Cultural Center will host the work during the next weekends of September, in a context where the Coronavirus seems to be a thing of the past, close to entering the history books of the immediate future.
Precisely the stir caused by COVID these two years worldwide has been one of the driving forces and inspiration for the Cuban creator based in France, who has poured all that energy accumulated for two years on stage with this work, with which He has unleashed not only his creativity, but also that of the dancers on stage.
“Brutal It is inspired by the chaos caused by COVID-19, everything I felt in that moment of confinement. When I premiered Murmur and the pandemic was beginning to reach the entire world, that’s when the idea came to me.
Not only my own experience, but also that of the dancers, being confined was something very brutal, not only in Cuba, it was something global that united us in one way or another and also kind of took us down a step, it was nature saying ‘ you don’t have the power, I’m stronger than you’.
“It is incredible how such a small virus can pass from one person to another and personally it was very difficult to feel that feeling of confinement, locked up in a house, it was like reconnecting with our human part.”
That animal instinct comes to the fore in this piece, although Reguera also resorts to feelings to try at a certain point to keep that overflow of emotions at bay, to control the anxiety of the bodies in the face of the chaos, insecurity and terror that it unleashed in society this virus.
The dancers crowd each other, the bodies and the gestures are confused in the rectangle that is the unique stage created by the choreographer for this occasion, which reminds us not only of the physical space to which we were confined, but also of that mental barrier with which which we had to live with during the confinement against an invisible rival who threw us to the ground at the slightest carelessness.
That uncertainty is also part of Reguera’s dance game: “To achieve the movement that I look for in the choreography I tell the dancers not to dance for me, to just move, I’m looking to focus more on the movement itself, more primitive things : push each other, pull each other, see who gets to a certain point first, get on top of each other… that’s where I get the elements of the choreographic image for this work”.
To achieve the definitive idea, the choreographer uses different resources: “I also film a lot, I work with those images to try to repeat the good things that one finds in improvisation. For example, I give them an idea, they improvise and I try to capture them with the camera and then I make them learn what comes from that instinct, I like to work with chance, something that happens like this, suddenly, without explanation, spontaneous, I try to recover that and achieve that scene that will later be the work, the final result”.
Although he makes use of new technologies, Reguera prefers to resort to the messages and emotions that dancers arouse on stage, a resource that comes from the work he has done abroad for almost two decades, he says.
“I prefer to work the body, the images of the bodies and not load them with superimposed images. I think it is something that was tried to be done, but personally I never found the value of that resource, if you are going to give information it is better that the public see it clearly, not put so many artifacts on it, as happens with the word, try to be as direct as possible.
Of course, the scenery, lights and music play an important role for him, being the creator of his own scenarios and for the play, he designs the costumes, with a unique touch not only for reminding us of the bloodiest moments of the COVID pandemic , but because of another special detail, one of the surprises reserved Brutalwhere Rosario Cárdenas herself intervenes, this time from the plastic arts.
“When I imagine a work, I don’t just see the dance part, I also think about the scenery, the light, those essential nuances when staging it on stage,” says the creator, who will continue working with the company with which he was trained in the 90s of the last century.
“It is very important for me to make my creation in Cuba and with the company of Rosario Cárdenas, there is a special bond between the two of us and I feel the need to return and stage my work in Cuba because this is my country.”
“Cubans are quite in contact with human reality. I have been living abroad for almost 23 years and in one way or another, Cubans are connected to that feeling, it is something very strong”, which Reguera takes advantage of to show us that “brutal” dance, capable of moving the public and reminding us how primitive and vulnerable we can be.
