Tania W. A. and Celeste
| Idea and performance: | Celeste and Tania Arias Winogradow |
| Music: | Concierto para dos violines, de J.S. Bach |
| Costume design: | Nuria González |
Concerto Barroco (Balanchine, 1941)
(Baroque Concert (Balanchine, 1941)) was one of the first dance pieces that
Tania performed when she was part of Victor Ullate’s company, many years
ago. Celeste, in the National Ballet, only got to learn the role of the
male, without dancing it.
First it was the invitation to Celeste to participate together in this
Confin. Shortly afterwards, Bach appeared -his Concierto para dos violines (Concerto for two violins)-, and with
him, Balanchine. This is how we took up again Concerto Barroco
(Baroque Concert), this score choreographed by the Russian artist, with the
idea of making a variation or revision of the work. The Autumn Festival
invited us to create pieces emerged from the confinement. This continuously
generates and, at the same time, degenerates the idea of departure.
Abandoning the word, a decision taken due to saturation in the face of so
much discourse, is one of our first motivations. Recording ourselves
dancing came up easily. The word could not have any other form but a dense
and contagious one. We were fleeing from the contagion of the war speech in
social media, in the news, in the life of life.
To stick to the times of Bach's music, played by live musicians. To return
to dance, to abstraction, without explanations. To choreograph in the
manner of Balanchine, incorporating our daily practices and languages of
movement.
To recover the rigour and cleanliness of the technique, already with the
magical beauty of two dancers in ruins, maintaining the pulse generated by
distance and the distance generated by sharing in solitude.
The dialogue we maintain is, until today, all virtual. The question is:
should we meet in a rehearsal space before 22 November or should we avoid
all physical contact until the very meeting?
Two rings, six musicians, two dancers.
This is our meeting.
The pandemic keeps mutilating us.
Like Paul Wittgenstein, who lost an arm as a pianist and kept playing
concerts, we will continue to compose and dance in this new era, even if it
is in our dreams.
A first confined movement.
A second and third post-confinement.
Nothing else to add.
Only that two old bitches come together in autumn to flower.
Once again.
Tania W. A. and Celeste
Celeste
I am officially Celeste since May 2017, when the Spanish state granted me a
new ID document with a changed name and sex. The Spanish state does not
allow you to have a female name if you have had a male name before, or a
female identity if you have had a male one, unless your birth certificate
is destroyed first and a new one with an earlier date is created. The state
does not recognise that one can be a gender dissident, that at any given
moment one may not agree with the name and gender given at birth. So, for
the Spanish state, I was born a woman and was baptised as Celeste.
How was Celeste able to study at the Jesuit school? How could she be called
up for military service? How is it possible that she used to change in the
men's dressing room, put on suspenders and take the ballet technique class
for men? And that she was a partner, among others, of Maya Plisétskaya?
"You deceive because you seem to do what you don't do". These words by
María de Ávila (dance teacher of masters and director of CND) addressed to
me have been with me all my life. Have I always been an impostor?
Tania W. A.
Sometime before 2017, after 30 years of dancing, I invite Celeste to
collaborate in my budding Bailarina de fondo en concierto (Background
dancer in concert) We began an intense correspondence that soon turned into
a close relationship. Sharing work materials, we play with trajectories and
common concerns.
Our lives crossed during the years in which Mauri became Celeste. Her work
always seduced me, partly because of how she usually turns classical ballet
around, without losing sight of the great admiration she has for this
language.
After the Background dancer in concert tour, we started new research and
creation processes together, among them, danza más cabra (dance plus goat),
with Andreya T, and Wakefield Poole: visiones y revisiones (Wakefield
Poole: visions and revisions), as an exercise of repertoire transmission.
Today we are back on the road together. Our initial proposal is to dialogue
about our daily lives. We both feel that we live in confinement, beyond the
current pandemic, perhaps because of the turn our lives have taken in
recent times.