Israel Galván
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By: Nicolas Serve ISRAEL GALVÁN MAESTRO DE BARRA SERVIR EL BAILE Sat, Mar 6, 2021 at 7PM PST CAP UCLA Online channel ART MATTERS NOW MORE THAN EVER WELCOME TO UCLA’S CENTER FOR THE ART OF PERFORMANCE UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) is the public facing research and presenting organization for the performing arts at the University of California, Los Angeles—one of the world’s leading public research universities. We are housed within the UCLA School of the Arts & Architecture along with the Hammer and Fowler museums. The central pursuit of our work as an organization is to sustain the diversity of contemporary performing artists while celebrating their contributions to culture. We acknowledge, amplify and support artists through major presentations, commissions and creative development initiatives. Our programs offer audiences a direct connection to the ideas, perspectives and concerns of living artists. Through the lens of dance, theater, music, literary arts, digital media arts and collaborative disciplines, informed by diverse racial and cultural backgrounds, artists and audiences come together in our theaters and public spaces to explore new ways of seeing that expands our understanding of the world we live in now. cap.ucla.edu #CAPUCLA Courtesy of IG Company CAP UCLA Presents ISRAEL GALVÁN MAESTRO DE BARRA SERVIR EL BAILE Sat, Mar 6, 2021 at 7PM PST CAP UCLA Online channel Approximate run time: 35 minutes, no intermission Funds provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Endowment Fund. This free performance was commissioned by CAP UCLA and is presented in association with USCB’s Arts & Lectures, The Joyce Theater and Teatro della Pergola, Firenze, Italy. MESSAGE FROM THE ARTIST I like to dance in places that are not meant for dance. Since I don’t usually use scenery, this changes my way of dancing. The place transforms into something else, and the place forces me to dance in a different way. Besides, I like the presence of the people in the bar. The noise of the machines, the objects and the waiters. I learn a lot from the gestures of the waiters, it is a whole choreography. For instance, the kitchen of a McDonald’s is one of the most frantic choreographies I know. Here in Sevilla for example there is a bar managed by a family of deaf-mute and it is a bar of quiet and silence. This is how culture enters in relation to bars. A mi me gusta bailar en sitios que no están destinado para bailar. Ya que no tengo escenografía, me hace cambiar la forma de bailar. El sitio se convierte en otra cosa, y a mi el sitio me hace bailar de otra manera. A parte me gustan las presencias de las personas que están en el bar. El ruido de las maquinas, de los objetos y de los camareros, aprendo mucho de los gestos de los camareros, es toda una coreografía. Por ejemplo, la cocina del McDonald’s es una de las coreografías mas frenética que existe. Aquí en Sevilla por ejemplo esta un bar que es de una familia de sordomudos y es de quietud y silencio. Esto es como las culturas se relejan en los bares. ~ Israel Galván ABOUT THE PROGRAM Courtesy of IG Company Maestro de Barra Servir el Baile A Project conceived and directed by Israel Galván Commissioned by CAP UCLA Presented in association with UCSB’s Arts & Lectures, The Joyce Theater and Teatro della Pergola with Javi López, grip Israel Galván Balbina Parra, production manager Rosario Gallardo, production The Waiters of Bar Rodriguez Pedro Díaz Romero Produced by Julio Díaz Ruíz IG Company José Pablo Gallego Gálvez in association with EdM Productions Antonio Escalera Pastor Thanks to José Carrasco, percussion Real Betis Balompié Ramón Martínez, baile Liga de Futbol España María Rubio, baile Alejandro Villaescusa, cante IG Company is supported by INAEM Pedro G. Romero, artistic advisor Joaquin Aneri, filming and editing Pedro León / Manu Prieto, sound Juanma Carmona, cameraman During this past year, Galván has sought to “Servir el Baile” (serve the dance) by finding other spaces to “Seguir Bailando” (keep on dancing) until a semblance of normalcy is returned. Maestro de Barra (Master of the Bar) comes from Galván’s attention to the spontaneous music and dance culture associated with cafes and bars worldwide. As theaters remain closed, it feels in tune with this moment in time. Known for his ability to transform his body into an instrument and for his hypersensitive ear, Galván will prove his ability to ‘hear’ the air of public spaces. In these days of confinement, productive activities have a lowered intensity and the bars have taken center stage as public spaces. In the city, motor vehicles and air conditioners make less noise. Just as the birds with their trills have taken over the city and its sound, the sounds of the bar now take the place of music. The recited tapas, the chalk writing on the bar, the screams from the kitchen, the conversations, the children running around, the banging on the tables: everything fell into a rhythm. Galván’s body will amplify these internal rhythms and rites, pauses and silences, using them as the score and to point out that everything one can hear, can also be danced to. Sounds can be ordered, accompanied and understood as a rhythmic vibration that can be translated into movement. Israel Galván, with his hyperesthetic ear, is thus classifying bars as schools of flamenco art. In reality, flamenco ‘bailaors’ have learned as much in bars as in dance academies. Many bars display a sign that says: “singing is prohibited here,” because it is the bar, itself, it is the bar that sings. The entire bar is made, as if by a miracle, theater, flamenco theater. ABOUT THE ARTIST By: Jean Louis Duzert Israel Galván de los Reyes stands out for proposing an expressive language of his own, not only as a dancer, but also as a scenic creator. A language, unknown until now in flamenco dancing, based on fragmentations, mixtures and sums of gestures. Galván was winner of the National Dance Award 2005 (in the Creation category), granted by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, “for his ability to generate in an art like flamenco a new creation without forgetting the true roots that have sustained it to this day and that constitute it as a universal genre.” He has also received other awards during his career, such as in 2012 when he won a Bessie Award [the New York Dance and Performance Award for Outstanding Production] and the Medalla de Oro al Mérito en las Bellas Artes [Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts] granted by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. In 2016, he was appointed Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres [Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters] of the Republic of France by the French Ministry of Culture. This honorary decoration was in recognition of Galván’s work in France, where he has always aroused the interest of audiences and critics both in his direct relationship with flamenco and in his approach to contemporary dance. He has also received a number of other awards during his career, including a total of six Premios Max de Artes Escénicas [Max Performing Arts Awards], obtained in different editions, and the Barcelona Critics’ Award in 2014 and 2018. The son of the Sevillian flamenco dancers José Galván and Eugenia de Los Reyes, from the age of five he began to experience the atmosphere of the flamenco venues, parties and dance academies where his father took him. But it was not until 1990 that he found his vocation for dancing. In 1994, he joined the recently created Compañía Andaluza de Danza, directed by Mario Maya, beginning an unstoppable career. He has collaborated in numerous projects of a very different nature and with various artists, and among those influential in his career were Enrique Morente, Manuel Soler and Mario Maya, without forgetting Sol Picó, Pat Metheny, Vicente Amigo, Alfredo Lagos, Manuela Carrasco, Nick Lizard, Fernando Terremoto, Miguel Poveda, Diego Carrasco, Gerardo Nuñez , Belen Maya, Chicuelo, Joan Albert Amargós, Diego Amador, Arcángel, Inés Bacán and Estrella Morente, to name a few. In 1998, he presented ¡Mira! / Los Zapatos Rojos [Look ! The Red Shoes], the first show by his own company, which was praised as brilliant by all the specialist critics, and represented a revolution in the conception of flamenco shows. That was followed by: La Metamorfosis (2000); Galvánicas (2002); Arena (2004); La Edad de Oro (2005); Tábula Rasa (2006); Solo (2007); El Final de Este Estado de cosas, Redux (2008); La Curva (2010); Lo Real / Le Réel / The Real (2012), a particular reflection on the gypsy holocaust under the Nazi regime, for which, in May 2014, he received 3 Max performing arts awards (best dance show, best choreography and best male dance performance); FLA.CO.MEN (2014); Torobaka (2014), a collaboration between him and Akram Khan; La Fiesta (2017); Coplas Mecánicas (2018), together with El Niño de Elche; Gatomaquia (2018); and Israel & Israel (2019), the product of a two- year collaboration with YCAM | Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, using artificial intelligence to express “galvanic qualities” through robotics. Also in 2019, he premiered El Amor Brujo with David Lagos and Alejandro Rojas- Marcos, and Stravinsky’s La Consagración de la Primavera / The Rite of Spring, together with Sylvie Courvoisier and Cory Smithe. In 2020 again with El Niño de Elche he premiered a new production, Mellizo Doble [Double Twin]. Israel Galván is also featured in a Netflix docuseries about dance called Move. He is an associated artist at Le Théâtre de la Ville, Paris.