Luz Arcas (Málaga, 42 years old) is a depositary of a dance that flees from formalisms. She prefers to talk about “dance”, and with the choice of that term, he also opts for something primary, wilder and more spontaneous, which is instinctive and makes her language perceive even before going through thought. In this sense, and in many others that go through a particular point of view on the themes you choose to speak from the body, Arcas, National Dance Award in the creation modality in 2024, is an artist framed by a palpable authenticity.
The courage and the indomiting of the bodily is also present in its last show, Rare earths, which had its absolute premiere yesterday in the green room of the theaters of the Canal, within the Madrid International Festival in Danza. In that sense, the choreographer, also an interpreter of the work with four other dancers (La Merce, Danielle Mesquita, Javiera Paz and Raquel Sánchez) looks like requirements around dance. The five are free and delivered in that atmosphere of rite or ceremony ,. It shows that they usually work together under the company La Pcharmaco, there is complicity and total delivery between them. But its presence, body drive, is not always enough to support the work, and is missing in too many moments. A sophisticated light design, fantastic, but also overwhelming, sweeps almost everything else that happens in the scene.
You could almost talk about Rare earth As a visual-escenic device, such is the presence and weight of the luminaire virguería signed by Jorge Colomer and marks absolutely everything that happens. Together with Victoria Aime’s scenic space design, the result is overwhelming. The scene is located in a kind of futuristic landfill or apocalyptic mine. A subsoil in which five discarded bodies of any normative site coexist, a place where the dead dance. The end of something, no doubt. in what is under our feet. In that dark past on which the future is built. And five creatures appear, beings between life and death, which for an hour relate together and separately, and interact with elements such as a rubber, a drum or the huge black plastic that covers the stage.
There are a couple of climax around dance, hugged by the singing of Perrate, present in the work and remarking the earthly, which are absolutely dazzling. And they coincide with the interpretation of all the dancers in a primary and sophisticated dance at the same time, which reminds us leaves us wanting more, it is missing later. And although the five dancers are convincing in their personal interpretations, the dance is diluted too many times from the gestural and transitions, some too long.
Rare earth It is a demanding, dark, interesting work, but the bodily ends up being lost in the visual artifact, something that, where the choreographic and its conception of the body support everything.
