DANCERS

Eduardo Guerrero
MarÍa Moreno

Eduardo Guerrero
MarÍa Moreno

MUSIC

Raul Dominguez
José Torres Trio

TRANSLATOR / CONSULTANT

Estela Zatania, Spain

PHOTOS BY

Luis Malibrán (Guerrero)
Felix Vazquez (Bridge)

The Bridge of Isabel II in Sevilla, known as the Bridge of Triana. It crosses the Guadalquivir River and connects the city center with the neighborhood of Triana.

MUSIC

Raul Dominguez
José Torres Trio

TRANSLATOR / CONSULTANT

Estela Zatania, Spain

PHOTOS BY

Luis Malibrán (Guerrero)
Felix Vazquez (Bridge)

The Bridge of Isabel II in Sevilla, known as the Bridge of Triana. It crosses the Guadalquivir River and connects the city center with the neighborhood of Triana.

Volver was a special project of filmmaker Felix Vazquez, BuenaSombra Films, and is one film in a collection of different shorts titled Portrait Collection. Volver is an inspirational endeavor by filmmaker Vazquez to reflect the significance of art during a very complex time in history.

Volver is urban and filmed in the solitude of night, in the streets of Sevilla and Madrid, and in slow motion to depict the paralysis and lethargy of art during the pandemic. It includes the special participation of dancers Eduardo Guerrero and Maria Moreno, the voice of Javier Latorre (dancer, choreographer, and flamenco legend), and text written by Manuel Segovia, Artistic Director of Ibérica Contemporánea.

THE DEATH OF CULTURE
by Manuel Segovia
 

I’m going to tell you about the moment I was about to die one cold night in the month of March. I don’t know how I got into that situation, but it has to do with the toxicity of the invisible, which is looming, that which can’t be seen and which gets inside of us triggering asphyxiation and the collapse of the world’s heartbeat 

I’ve had to do some soul-searching in order to realize the importance of the quotidian, of the simple things… On that nearly eternal night I listened closely to the distant noises, of the man who is free, those things we normally don’t take the trouble to notice, waking up, going to bed, making a meal, coming and going, laughing and crying or simply nothing at all. That symphony of noises filled my moments of agony for long moments, just think, I, who opened impossible spaces, who broke the limits of color on the canvass of life, who has traveled through the souls of poets in search of beauty. I, who released pentagrams so that notes might run free, who danced with the angels and struck the floor with my knuckles seeking that special rhythm and the Earth’s heartbeat… 

That night that I nearly died the theaters were closed, every closed door banged upon my ears with an infinite echo, and I thought the end was near, and I feared not having time to even finish my own story. 

I won’t answer the questions anymore, nor will I try to ask them, and if I’m really dying, they can bury me, and never more will they feel my presence. They won’t talk about my achievements, nor the talent that inhabits inspired souls, and they will tell distant unreal stories about me, reflections of grey dreams, empty peaceful tales like the shadows of Plato’s cave, and there won’t be any contrasts in them, nor fever, nor passion…almost lifeless, like an empty broken artist trying to catch the moon of the gods. 

I still wonder about the why of many things, and I would like to remember many others, but the otherness of this world gives me no respite, and frightened men put locks on their eyes in order not to see the old fog that surrounds them, and with their hands they close the doors of the temples of art. 

Before going on, I’ve decided to briefly recall my current situation. I know the worst is over, and all I need is a small light, a firefly from the inhabited forest, which is the world, and in the end, I shall find the way out of this blackness at the top of the sacred mountain of the muses. That encounter is soon to be, perhaps today, perhaps it’s happening as you listen to my errant voice in a rediscovery of the luminous truth of art.  I am culture and I was about to perish…one cold night in the month of March… 

Who is Manuel Segovia?  Click here to find out.

Programs, artists, dates, and prices subject to change.

I’m going to tell you about the moment I was about to die one cold night in the month of January. I don’t know how I got into that situation, but it has to do with the toxicity of the invisible, which is looming, that which can’t be seen and which gets inside of us triggering asphyxiation and the collapse of the world’s heartbeat 

I’ve had to do some soul-searching in order to realize the importance of the quotidian, of the simple things… On that nearly eternal night I listened closely to the distant noises, of the man who is free, those things we normally don’t take the trouble to notice, waking up, going to bed, making a meal, coming and going, laughing and crying or simply nothing at all. That symphony of noises filled my moments of agony for long moments, just think, I, who opened impossible spaces, who broke the limits of color on the canvass of life, who has traveled through the souls of poets in search of beauty. I, who released pentagrams so that notes might run free, who danced with the angels and struck the floor with my knuckles seeking that special rhythm and the Earth’s heartbeat… 

That night that I nearly died the theaters were closed, every closed door banged upon my ears with an infinite echo, and I thought the end was near, and I feared not having time to even finish my own story. 

I won’t answer the questions anymore, nor will I try to ask them, and if I’m really dying, they can bury me, and never more will they feel my presence. They won’t talk about my achievements, nor the talent that inhabits inspired souls, and they will tell distant unreal stories about me, reflections of grey dreams, empty peaceful tales like the shadows of Plato’s cave, and there won’t be any contrasts in them, nor fever, nor passion…almost lifeless, like an empty broken artist trying to catch the moon of the gods. 

I still wonder about the why of many things, and I would like to remember many others, but the otherness of this world gives me no respite, and frightened men put locks on their eyes in order not to see the old fog that surrounds them, and with their hands they close the doors of the temples of art. 

Before going on, I’ve decided to briefly recall my current situation. I know the worst is over, and all I need is a small light, a firefly from the inhabited forest, which is the world, and in the end, I shall find the way out of this blackness at the top of the sacred mountain of the muses. That encounter is soon to be, perhaps today, perhaps it’s happening as you listen to my errant voice in a rediscovery of the luminous truth of art.  I am culture and I was about to perish…one cold night in the month of March… 

Who is Manuel Segovia?
Click here to find out.

Programs, artists, dates, and prices subject to change.