Lucia Lacarra (Zumaya, 1975) puts on the stage more than ballet. Next to you Matt Goldingcreates stories where dance goes beyond its limits and grows with other disciplines, especially visual arts. Next Thursday, March 2, comes to Teatro Principal in Alicante. fordlanda “light at the end of the tunnel” show created during quarantine and premiered in Dormund at the end of 2020.
She received the Nijinsky Award, the Benois de la Danse Award, the National Dance Award for Interpretation, was named dancer of the decade in 2011 and won the Max award for best actress last year. in the silence of the night. This is just one aspect of the successful career of Lucía Lacarra, principal dancer with Roland Petit’s Marseille Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and Munich Opera Ballet. From 2018 to 2020 she was artistic director of the Víctor Ullate company and the ballet school she.
fordland created during incarceration. It’s a complicated process considering it’s about dance.
Yes, we created it during the pandemic. It was a work that we liked very much because it was a bit like oxygen. We were in Germany and on 12 March 2020 they told us that they would close the theater and catch the flight home. Matthew went to Amsterdam, and I arrived in Zumaya on March 13, the day before the lockdown. It was a big shock to me as well as everyone else. When I spoke to Matthew, his first response was: All right, we’re going to create a show. We already had something in mind, and that gave us all the reason and all the need to use our 10 weeks off to create the show. He was in Amsterdam and I was at Zumaya and ballet was what united us in separation and gave us hope. What we did was capture what we felt in order to be together again on stage, to be able to dance, to reunite with people. It felt like a dream to us, and it was that web we cling to to hope, to not fall, and people say they feel it, peace, that optimistic message, that light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s a hopeful message because of this special occasion, but it’s also useful in a difficult time like now.
I believe the world has been through a trauma and it shows in everything. You have to see how people used to fill the cinemas and now it’s very costly. Theaters don’t make shows like they used to, and people don’t buy tickets like they used to… Performing a dance show is a bit of a kamikaze job, but for me it’s a necessity, food for the soul. Since the pandemic, in bad conditions, traveling upstream with curfews, without giving us time to eat… We moved forward because we wanted to continue doing our job to convey these feelings. Now we are somewhat in the same situation, everything is very hilly, complicated, but at that hour people will experience something positive.
“We want to innovate in the world of dance, open new horizons, get out of the purity of dance and combine it with other arts”
There is dance, music, cinema, visual arts in this show… Do you think the arts are no longer stagnant, do they grow and develop together?
The fusion of the arts has always been important to me because instead of limiting yourself to the purity of your art, I believe that the arts reach another level when they feed off each other. We love music and movies. When we played with all these ideas, it felt like this was the way to tell us our story. What we want to capture is how we are and the images projected are of Zumaya and the Netherlands, which we see separately until we finally meet again. The last track is back to normal and the one we danced just before the pandemic. It was like coming back to reality.
While dancing, they play with the show presented on the stage and what they see on the screen.
The screen is the common point of our dreams. It begins with Matthew sitting on a beach in the Netherlands, closes his eyes, and begins to daydream or come closer to me. Then the curtain opens and you see an empty theater, the Dormund theater where we are. There are also images that show that we are united in mind but not physically united. This brings us to a forest in Germany, then to a Zumaia beach. All energies are seen. Until the moment I reached the beach where he closed his eyes and we met.
Why this kind of homage to cinema?
Because we are big movie fans. We love the experience of going to the movies, not just watching movies. It’s one thing to see the dance you can do online, it’s another thing to experience when you go to the theater and the lights go out. That energy you receive alive is an experience that goes beyond what you will see. Matt is also the director of all the movies we make. We already have two shows with a movie and we already have one for the next show that we will premiere in October. It’s a very different job from ours, but we really enjoy that process.
fordland talking about dreams Do you think art is a good tool for dreaming and making others dream?
I think so too. From personal experience, fordland it was a dream because we needed to escape from a gray reality. Art, dance, what it offers is an opportunity to give and transport people an escape from their own reality and a space where you can feel your soul and let yourself go. This is necessary to give your soul and mind a break.
His company Goldenlac aims to provide complete, innovative experiences. Is there anything left to do in dance that hasn’t been done yet?
The term innovation is rather abstract because one thinks of innovating, but it is difficult to create something that has not yet been done. It tries to innovate visually, to break away from the predetermined points of art and beauty; more provocative, darker, reaction-seeking, more groundbreaking things are being done. We want to innovate in the world of dance, open up new horizons, get out of the purity of dance and combine it with other arts. Of course, there was always music, but the visual arts and making things are disappearing more and more. We enter the abstract world with the theme of innovation, but we also want to maintain the emotional world of dance. What we’re trying to do is show emotions, create our own unique stories, make sense, move people to a different situation. This is not easy.
“Every loss of a company and a school is a loss, especially in a country with too many youth, too much tradition and too much quality.”
Reading her resume gives an insight into what the dance world means in Spain because she has almost always worked abroad. Has progress been made in our country or do you have to go abroad and then come back to be recognized?
The truth of the matter is that the punishment is not recognized or not recognized, but the situation here still has not changed. There is no offer to offer options for those who want to stay and those who want to go. There is now a company in Spain, no more. Maybe the mentality is still not progressing in that sense. There are great dancers in Spain, but they are not recognized. They go abroad and are recognized there and given a name.
Was the disappearance of the school and the Víctor Ullate ballet you directed three years ago a great loss for dance in this country?
The disappearance of a company and a school is a loss, especially in a country with too many youth, too much tradition and too much quality. I always say, unless the dance world is completely independent of politics, in a sense, the situation will not change. Art, culture, whoever is in the administration should be necessary. Encouraging this should not depend on the political situation. In Germany, dance is part of the educational programs of schools and institutes. This has to be here in Spain. That it is nothing decorative or recreational. It should be an important part of the country’s education and culture.
In Spain, a classical ballet company that the industry has demanded for many years still does not exist in Spain.
It now has the National Dance Company, which offers repertoires ranging from classical to contemporary. In a national company this is normal. The problem is that there is still a feeling that there is no classic company in Spain. 20 years ago, the Paris Ballet troupe performed classically. We had a world-renowned CND with Nacho Duato here 20 years ago and it was great work but the style totally changed and then what we had to do was do a classical ballet ensemble. It is normal for CND’s repertoire to diversify today.
Dance is a brutal profession that takes you off the stage when you’re young.
Dance is a profession that physically demands a lot from a person’s body. The more the body is trained, the less pain it will suffer and the longer you can keep doing your job. I cannot complain. When I started in Marseille at 18, they gave me an interview on Basque television, and I said I would start thinking about leaving at 30. But for my age, I’m not complaining. I do not make my body suffer because I have physical qualities. The more you go against your nature, the more you suffer. I don’t feel like I’ve squeezed my body any more than I thought it was ready. Nothing upsets me and I continue to enjoy the scene, which is a tremendous luxury. But it’s true that in the middle of your maturity it’s a profession where you have to think about what to do next. This is something that has been on our minds a lot since we started.
He said they will be releasing a new show in October.
Yes, Lost Letters. we will release him At the Arriaga Theater in Bilbao. His story is created between two ideas. On the one hand, an exhibition opened under this name in a Washington museum, where letters lost in different wars and never reached their recipients are exhibited. And I also had a book of wartime love letters. I found a letter in that book that I really liked, and we mixed the two ideas. What would have happened if that letter had not arrived, and how would that woman’s life have changed? This is a romantic story. Two of us along with eight other dancers. We’re going a little upstream. We like to fight the situation. Creating performances is an inner struggle of the will to produce work for other dancers and contribute to our grain of sand.