Explaining a lot of things without saying anything: ‘Aclucalls’ “raw” at El Graner!

Three IN RESiDENCE groups connect with the laSADCUM proposal, just before its presentation at Dansa Metropolitana 2022.

Lights off and the room in silence. Suddenly, electronic music, a voice offstage and an interpreter giving indications and speaking in an unknown language appear on stage. This was the beginning of the first session of 'Conversations, Processes of Creation and Movement', the cycle of activities in the form of open rehearsal and space of dialogue and exchange between creators participating in Dansa Metropolitana 2022 and the teenagers, artists, teachers and mediators who take part in the current edition of IN RESiDENCE.

On this occasion, the participating students were the 1st-year students from the Institut Doctor Puigvert secondary school with Gerda Kochanska, the 4th-year students from the Institut Infanta Isabel d’Aragó secondary school with Tanit Plana, and the 4th-year students from the Institut Emperador Carles secondary school and Marilia Samper, who connected with laSADCUM. This company, headed by Guillem Jiménez, is carrying out a residence at El Graner, a Creation Factory related to dance and the living arts which has formed part of the IN RESiDENCE mediation team since the 4th edition (2012-2013).

The session began with an exclusive “raw” open rehearsal, without costumes or audiovisual projections, in which laSADCUM opened up to the audience a part of its show Aclucalls.

Aclucalls is a multidisciplinary dance proposal that integrates performance and sound and audiovisual creation. It is a creation of laSADCUM, which has brought together for this project 18 performers born in the 1990s. It is conceived as a grotesque portrait of present-day society, displaying the frustrations and traumas of the “Z” generation from the point of view of its members, immersed in technological dystopia, saturation of information, forced optimism and the cult of the body.

This was the first time that this company had opened up its creation process to a sizeable group of teenagers, and the proposal did not disappoint anyone. A sampling of 30 minutes was followed by a dialogue between laSADCUM and the participants of IN RESiDENCE. The students, taking advantage of their immersion in the ‘contamination’ sessions, were keen to learn about the creation process of the show Aclucalls. The director and choreographer Guillem Jiménez explained that it has been a three-year process that he began when he was 19, and he proclaimed the capacity of young artists to create powerful artistic proposals: “Through dance and the movement of the body we can explain a lot of things without explaining anything”, he said. Nayara Pla Moliner, a 1st-year student from the Institut Doctor Puigvert secondary school, asked him about the meaning of Aclucalls. Jiménez replied that the piece is a portrait, taken to an extreme, of the post-Internet society and its generation, who find themselves bombarded by technology and mottos like “everything is possible”, “if you want, you can” and “don’t give up”. Nayara also conversed with Carla Moll, a dancer of laSADCUM, about two parts of the piece that had caught her attention, a scene with some cards and another scene where the performers danced with very aggressive movements of their head and hair.

For her part, Tanit Plana, an IN RESiDENCE creator at the Institut Infanta Isabel d’Aragó secondary school, described the impressions gathered by the young members of her group. Emotions like terror, aggressiveness, tension and escapism are some of the feelings that occurred to them as they experienced the open rehearsal. In this respect, Tanit Plana also wanted to connect the message of Aclucalls with the creation process they are working on at the secondary school, which revolves around the architecture of the building as a regulatory system, setting out rules for students, teachers and the educational community.

The emotions were also highlighted by Gerda Kochanska, an IN RESiDENCE visual artist at the Institut Doctor Puigvert secondary school, who asked the performers what emotions they had prioritised in constructing their characters. Meritxell Soto, for example, based herself on the archetype of superficiality and vulnerability and the emotional state of feeling empowered and dictatorial at the same time. Stefano de Luca, for his part, said he had based himself on emotions like rage and impotence.

To conclude, the artist Mónica Rikić, resident at the Institut Escola Rec Comtal secondary school, asked about the final message of Aclucalls. The director of the company said that the objective of the piece is to “move the audience, to see if they recognise themselves or not”. Both Rikić and Pia Mazuela (the executive producer of Dansa Metropolitana, present at El Graner), along with the rest of the participants in the conversation, congratulated the company and wanted to know how the final artistic proposal will be. Guillem Jiménez and Carla Moll valued the experience very positively and offered to continue conversing with the students after the première, which took place at the CCCB on March 11th, 12th and 13th, to full houses.