wohnzimmer sessel modern
originally i was actually a dancer, but really i was dancing ina very set way and i didn't feel in tune ormuch affinity with what i was doing. i had many creative interests, and i started to develop a sensitivitytowards choreography and we started to do some researchinto movement. at that time my house had a 6 by 6 room, and i provided all the chairs,all the lights, the tables and with all that i put on the first retazos showcalled "mujeres" (women).
little by little i've developed a school, a form of movement, a technique and also a company that has its own particular way of working dance-theatre and retazos is 23 years old. really my life has been a great laboratory, of ideas, of forms, of techniques and of knowledge or familiaritywith the situations around me and retazos is that, snippets of emotions, snippets of life, snippets of feelings
and i put it in writing in some files and documents of retazos because really we are made up of different moments and we are all generally fragmented and the way in which we manage these fragments, is how we develop in life and that is also how retazos was formed. i don't know how other choreographers work, for me the concepts and the playwriting are fundamental, what i want to say, then how i'm going to say it. that's why the playwriting has to be clear and defined,
that's what i need, i ask a lot from the dancers2900:03:05,968 --> 00:03:09,046who must think about the phrases we give them, about the feelings we require, about good technical development to establish the language we are looking for. i think that i'm much closer to the plastic arts, that i'm much closer to cinema. i think the image is the main thing,and my language, the speech flows through the image, not through the artistry, that's why i think we're slightly separated from what dance can do,
it's a much more experimental language and much closer to theatre. 3 years ago we started a video-dance festival, which at first were really dances from the stage that arrived here, so that people could watch them, now it's actually a space for exploration through the camera, already in its fourth year. so, always for this idea of exploring movement, the camera is a way of seeing differently what we are doing,
what others do and for mesupporting this is fundamental. it's 16 years since i started coming to old havana, i fell in love with old havana, i fell in love with the patios, the interiors of houses... it was the special time, the 90s, the theatres were closed, i said: this is not the moment to die but to develop dance or the cultural activity we want to do, and the first festivals i did were only snippets
that went from one house to the next, and that's how the first festivalof street dance was formed. as it became better understood,you began to realise the purpose of this, which wasto provide a space for movement in the street, to give a social aspect to dance which wasn't elitist. also it's something i've always thought, the dancers having to performon the street with the greatest simplicity and at the same time with the immense skillthat the transient public requires. really what most interests me is
providing a space for young people, searching for new choreographers, choreographers of the future. and at the same time doing social work with children in the community. i don't think it's the great aspiration of creating a company, but it's a space for children to enjoy themselves, for children to connect with each other and in some way it's a way to educate and it's a way to get them interested in art.
so that love that is woven slowly so that the caterpillar really turns into a butterfly, isn't easy but it is something fundamental for us.