YOU ARE NOT ALONE Festival: PHANTASMAGORIA & ATRÁS

PHANTASMAGORIA
Dance work by Darío Barreto Damas
19:30h / 40 min

PHANTASMAGORIA is the title of a research project by Darío Barreto Damas that focuses on the relationship between the figure of the ghost and politics of disidentification, following the lines of work of the projects seguir moviendo and ES UN NO PARAR, which study the catalysts of a dance that exceeds the body that dances it (rhythm, repetition, feedback, archive, gaze, and voice, among others).

Playing with different beats and melodies of music together with a DJ set, and the overlay of shadows and lights, the work is situated at the intersection of dance, music, and visual experience, constructing a common ghostly body that fades away, making room for everything to dance. Underpinning the entire research, the pleasure of dancing plays a fundamental role.
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Credits 

Creation and Performance: Darío Barreto Damas
DJ Set: Juana la Cubana
Lighting: Grace Morales
Dramaturgy: Aleksandar Georgiev
With the support of Auditorio de Tenerife, Cabildo de Tenerife, Government of the Canary Islands, La Caldera Barcelona, National Cultural Fund of Bulgaria.
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ATRÁS
Choreographic work by Aleksandar Georgiev - Ace 
20:30h / 40 min

“If I were to do it, I would rather do it bareback... no protection, from the back, from behind, until it brings out the narratives from the back—the back archive, the back histories, the desires from the back, the back frontality, the back kinetics, the aesthetics from the back, until it dismantles the dogmas and constructs of shame, blame, and censorship, so we can smooth out, emancipate, and fall in love with the back, all over again”.

This choreographic solo focuses on the back of the body from a decolonial and anti-capitalist perspective, both artistically and narratively. It is a choreographic work that begins by observing the body and its phenomenology from its "back side," exploring how it relates to this not-so-prominent body perspective. Within the Western European choreographic and dance context, historically, the back of the body, while being one of the fundamental parts of the corpus, has, however, been little explored and little exposed since, (apparently), it is not as expressive due to not containing identity marks such as a face. The back is usually left without prominence, drawing a parallel between this artistic and movement reality and the behind areas of our history and society.

Dominant thought and narratives also shape aesthetic and artistic languages. In this sense, "Atrás" highlights the rear perspective in contrast to the dominant front vision, where hegemonic narratives reside—such as those of reproductive logic and the perpetual forward-looking gaze. This work challenges the avoidance of looking back at the past and acknowledges what sustains or has sustained us.

Aleksandar's work in “Atrás” continues the themes from his previous projects, "The Power of S" and "Echoes of S," which explored “anal body and politics" and their potentiality. Now, he expands this exploration to the back of the body.
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Credits

Choreographer and performer: Aleksandar Georgiev 
Music and sound design: Tsvetan Momchilov
Light design: Pete Ayres
Graphic design: Asiria Álvarez
Image adaptation: Fernando Montiel
Production: Beatriz Bello 
Thanks to Dario Barreto Damas for backing up the work
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This work was realized with the support of LAV (Laboratorio de Artes Vivas y Ciudadanía), ICC (Imaginative Choreographic Center), Garage Collective, Cultural-Social Space Jadro, Konstnärsnämnden (Swedish Arts Grants Committee), Gobierno de Canarias (ICDC), Funds European Union Next Generation EU (Support for Cultural Accelerators), Cabildo de Tenerife, Teatro Victoria, Central Eletrican, Culture Moves Europe, Ministry of Culture of Bulgaria and Toplocentrala.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Darío Barreto Damas is a Canarian dancer who develops his work between Tenerife, Sofia, and Skopje. His artistic practice explores dance as an autonomous form of knowledge and disidentification practices as mechanisms of mediation.

He trained at Teatro Victoria (Tenerife), Institut del Teatre (Barcelona), DOCH – School of Dance and Circus (Stockholm), and JLU – University of Giessen (Germany). Throughout his career, he has collaborated as a dancer, co-creator, and performer with Cullberg, Aleksandar Georgiev, Deborah Hay, Cristina Caprioli, Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Philip Berlin, and Poliana Lima, among others.

He is a co-dreamer of ICC (Imaginative Choreographic Center) project-institution, co-founder artistic team STEAM ROOM, and a board member of the PiedeBase association (Canary Islands).

Darío co-directs, together with Beatriz Bello, LAV-C (Laboratory of Live Arts and Citizenship of the Canary Islands).

Aleksandar Georgiev (Ace) is an artist working with and around choreography between a couple of places (Tenerife, Sofia, Skopje, and Stockholm). His practice revolves around choreography, whether narrowly or expansively understood, while actively engaging in curatorial formats and the creation of imaginative institutions, such as the Imaginative Choreographic Center (ICC) and the queer cultural program PEC. Alongside his individual work, he is deeply committed to processes of collective authorship, especially through the artistic team STEAM ROOM, together with Darío Barreto Damas and Zhana Pencheva. His artistic interests include the politicization of the anus, “reading from behind,” “nostalgia as poetic archiving,” “radical tenderness,” “cheating as a social endeavor,” and “imaginative structures as support systems.”

He holds an MA in Choreography from DOCH – School of Dance and Circus, Stockholm and a BA in Dance Theatre from New Bulgarian University, Sofia, complemented by a range of non-institutional programs and self-organized learning processes that continue to shape his artistic approach. His work is marked by a commitment to co-thinking, co-dreaming, and co-imagining possible and necessary futures and structures.