A decade after its previous participation and drawing inspiration from universal patterns of life and death, Morau’s Catalan dance company fused literature with theatre performance in this year’s ‘Myth Makers’ edition.
VENICE, ITALY — Oftentimes, the clashing paradoxes of contemporary storytelling are influenced by literature and uncanny novels that are part of our collective knowledge: from traces of history to shreds of imagination, dance is a practice that’s broad enough to dismantle and refine these elements.
For Marcos Morau’s offering presented in this year’s Dance Biennale, Mercé Rodoreda’s novel Death in Spring was a key point of fascination: a story that portrays a disturbed society steeped in death and decay. Through this body of work, literature is the subject that crosses the battlefield of La Veronal to create a new, multifaceted experience.
Photograph: Andrea Avezzù
Photograph: Andrea Avezzù
Based on the posthumous and unfinished — but not incomplete – work of the most revered Catalan author of all times, Marcos Morau and his work La Veronal delve into the depths of Mercè Rodoreda’s gloomy avenues of expression to construct an allegory on creative freedom, social commitment, and visually unfolds the way that art offers us a key of salvation and shelter to face the anguish of the creation-destruction cycle in which we are constantly exposed for us all to see.
“It’s a look at the stages of life that confronts us with the illusions of the past, of our childhood, which still resonate in our present and struggle to be the seed of a future that, hidden behind the fog, is increasingly difficult to imagine the history of art,” noted Morau.
Photograph: Andrea Avezzù
The spectacle experimented with a stark and abject narrative by creating an “evocative visual dimension,” as the artist defined it post show. What’s more, in this profound performance, Morau tackles an unsettling ambience and a macabre undertone by playing with contrasts: dancers sang while literature turned into a literal concert, and threads of movement kept taking the viewer in unexpected directions.
Photograph: Andrea Avezzù
Thought-provoking and thoughtfully atmospheric, it was a journey of intense exchange that made for engaging craft, resulting in a potent delivery that saw blunt details meeting moments of mystical transcendence. One for the books, indeed.
by Chidozie Obasi