Israel Galván
www.israelgalvan.com
| Direction, choreography and dance: | Israel Galván |
| Musicians: | David Lagos, Tomás de Perrate, Eloísa Cantón, Caracafé and Proyecto Lorca (Juan Jiménez Alba & Antonio Moreno) |
| Art direction and choreography for Sevillanas: Sevillanas: | Pedro G. Romero |
| Stage direction and choreography for Alegrías: | Patricia Caballero |
After causing a stir at the closure of last year’s Festival de Otoño a Primavera with the Spanish premiere of TOROBAKA, his much talked about collaboration with British dancer and choreographer Akram Khan, Israel Galván returns to Madrid’s Festival in January 2015 with the show FLA.CO.MEN, a piece with which he revises his trajectory on stage in a unique way.
The specialised journalist and dance critic Omar Khan wrote about the piece for FOP Magazine, the Festival de Otoño a Primavera magazine:
‘Playing with deconstruction from the title itself, Israel Galvan’s new solo piece FLA.CO.MEN is also his own deconstruction, a look into his own past in which music is simultaneously the subject, the medium and the message. ‘It is like a version of myself, a way of summarising all my works in one, but without repeating them’, the creator explains in a relaxed way. ‘I’ve recuperated pieces of music from my previous creations and organised them as a concert. It’s the same music but seen with different eyes. There is flamenco singing and percussion with symphonic arrangements plus the addition of a xylophone, a bass-violin and an electric bass, a bit in the style of former flamenco, but I didn’t want the reencounter of this music with my body to be the same, it isn’t a potpourri or a repetition, though it revisits several past periods of my work’
With this new piece, Galván gathers the sounds from both early and recent creations of his catalogue, which range from his first success ¡Mira! Los Zapatos Rojos (1998), through titles like La Metamorfosis (2000), in which he brought Kafka into his own territory, his homage to bullfighting Arena (2004), La Edad de Oro (2005), El Final de este Estado de Cosas (Redux) (2008), based on the Bible’s Apocalypse, to La Curva (2011) and the tragic Lo Real (2012). All of them are musical landscapes now displayed together by Galván in FLA.CO.MEN as parts of a new creation sustained by new choreographic material. Pure deconstruction.
Every tendency, manner and aspect of Galvan’s work now converges in FLA.CO.MEN. ‘Though it is crafted taking my past as a starting point, I’m coming across new things during the process. I’ve invited Patricia Caballero to participate in the direction. I’ve gradually introduced her to these pieces of music and the way I’ve been dancing them for years, but I keep an open approach, I take her guidance and she teaches me a different way to stage them. Furthermore, I also dance a choreography totally created by her, plus another one by my usual collaborator Pedro G. Romero’, the artist explains.
David Lagos, Tomás de Perrate, Eloísa Cantón, Caracafé and the ‘Proyecto Lorca’ duo formed by Juan Jiménez Alba and Antonio Moreno, will be the regular friends in charge of (de)constructing live the well known and at the same time new musical universe of this FLA.CO.MEN danced in a solo performance by Galván.
Previous to its presentation at the XXXII Festival de Otoño a Primavera, the work was premiered on September 14th, 2014 at the Lope de Vega Theatre in Seville as a part of the Bienal de Flamenco festival.
