Calendar

Promised Land
María Pagés - El Arbi El Harti

Name: Promised Land María Pagés - El Arbi El Harti
Start: 2023-10-27T19:30
End: 2023-10-27T20:30
Location: {

Fri / Oct 27 / 7:30 p.m.
Sat / Oct 28 / 7:30 p.m.
45 min
€20 Unnumbered seats, audience members stand to watch the show

Museum Galleries WORLD PREMIERE

María Pagés and El Arbi El Harti are developing this choreographic creation project inspired by the exhibition A Promised Land, from the Age of Enlightenment to the birth of photography. A project that arose from an artistic residency at the Museum.

Promised Land is a theatrical performance created specifically to interact with the exhibition of the same name, A Promised Land: From the Age of Enlightenment to the Birth of Photography.

Produced by María Pagés Compañía and CCPM, in collaboration with the University of Navarra Museum, this performance choreography has an inclusive vocation. In it, choreographer María Pagés and playwright El Arbi El Harti invite flamenco dance, photography, and museum scenography to conceive a new scenic semantics. They combine the fertile energy of flamenco dance with the aesthetic and ethical beauty of the museum and the exhibition in a welcoming blend.

In Tierra prometida, dance approaches the genesis of photography, dialogues with it, and sublimates it. Photography and dance share the same poetic essence and the same link with space, time, reality, movement, and harmony... A photograph is a snapshot that tells a story. A choreography is a succession of snapshots that seek to tell the story from the ethical emotion of a creative imagination.

The imagination has always needed symbolically fertile territories. The East undoubtedly fulfills this requirement. It adapted very well to the existential need for estrangement that the West required at that time. The translation of The Thousand and One Nights, the publication of dictionaries, the writing of essays, the creation of plays, novels, poetry, and short stories, the fascination with distant countries, diplomatic relations with the Gate, and intellectual interest in the Koran are nothing more than proof of this endeavor to discover a world located in deeply evocative territories.

All this work, which began in the 18th century and had much of an almost convulsive creative tenacity, was an invitation to the other, through an aesthetic of the unknown, an aesthetic of exile, of rewriting.

CAST

Dance: María Pagés
Vocals: Ana Ramón and Cristina Pedrosa
Guitar: Rubén Lebaniegos
Violin: David Moñiz
Cello: Sergio Menem
Percussion: José María Uriarte

ARTISTIC CREDITS

Direction: María Pagés and El Arbi El Harti
Choreography, musical direction, and costume design: María Pagés
Dramaturgy: El Arbi El Harti
Music: Rubén Levaniegos, David Muñoz, Chema Uriarte, and Sergio Menem
Lyrics: El Arbi El Harti and popular
Lighting design: Dominique You
Costume production: María Calderón Workshop

TECHNICAL TEAM

Lighting: Dominique You and Manuel Ordenavia
Sound: Kike Cabañas
Stage manager: Alejandro Pintado
Assistant director and production: Dácil González
Assistant director and communications: Habib El Harti
Administration: Beatriz Sánchez

BIOGRAPHIES

María Pagés

A creator born in Seville, of Catalan origin, adopted by Madrid and iconoclastic by nature, she has made flamenco dance her poetic homeland. Contemporaneity is tradition in constant motion and the source of the dynamism of our languages and ideas. Her creative contribution lies in her serenity in speaking without complexes in all languages and making them accept the mythical hospitality of flamenco.

Through her use of the fundamental codes of flamenco language and her research both within and outside of it, she has proven to be a pioneer in understanding flamenco as a living contemporary art form with an unusual capacity to engage in dialogue with its time. She is convinced that, in culture, dialogue and exchange enrich art and promote greater understanding and empathy among human beings.

Through the María Pagés Choreographic Center in Fuenlabrada and her Foundation, María Pagés carries out intensive work in the areas of creation, research, training, and promotion of dance and Spanish cultural heritage as a personal paradigm of social and civic commitment and solidarity action for the benefit of children, adolescents, gender, and vulnerable groups, such as children's hospitals, shelters for abused women, disability centers, etc.

The Arbi The Harti

A Hispanist, poet, and playwright committed to culture and, in particular, to heritage, which he considers to be an inexhaustible source that nourishes all contemporary culture aware of its significance.

Has published After Tangier (2003), The Gate of the Winds (2004), Immense Strait (2006), A Moroccan Ambition (2009), Utopia of the good place (2012), Desert utopia (2015), Dunes (2018), Memory in motion (2020), The Trials and Tribulations of Mary (Documentary, 2021) and The north is no longer possible (2022). He has also edited the Contemporary Spanish Literature collection.

In 2011, he began an intense creative collaboration with María Pagés and in 2016 he left his professorship at Mohamed V University in Rabat to devote himself full-time to the creation and management of projects at the Maria Pages Choreographic Center, which he founded in 2018 together with the Seville-based choreographer.

He has co-directed with María Pagés Utopia (2011), Children's joy (2013), Seven strokes and a path (2014), I, Carmen (2014), Listen to me with your eyes (2014), Don't let the day end (2015), Dance of the Hearts (2017), An ode to time (2018), Borders (2019), Black paradise (2020), The Trials and Tribulations of Sinbad the Sailor (2021), An ode to orange blossom (2021), From Scheherezade (2021), 94 Alcalá Street (2023), God's love (2023) and Promised land ( 2023)