La Veronal (Spain): Sonoma
La Veronal (Spain): Sonoma
Drama
The new SND building, Drama hall
The choreographer Marcos Morau creates a captivating and magical atmosphere with the power of movement, word, music and artistic elements. In scenic form, religion, folklore and mysticism intertwine here.
Sonoma is inspired by Luis Buñuel’s surrealism. It is a cry of a man who tries to survive at the limit of his existence. Sonoma balances dream, fiction and reality. A group of women want to free themselves from the ties of the past, and cross boundaries using their intuition and instinct.
The inner weeping that women share gradually grows stronger as it transforms into a celebration ritual with sacrifices, hypnotic songs, and dances. This state liberates their minds, but at the same time reminds them of their transience.
“If there is a heaven, it is here and now.”
Luis Buñuel
Sonoma is not a word that you will find in a dictionary. However, it contains phonemes from Greek, soma (body) and Latin, sonum (sound): Sound body and body sound.
Today we experience history in a hurry, quickly, at such a fast pace that we are barely aware of it. In fact, nobody knows what is happening anymore. You could say that we basically fall forward, and during this rapid drop, we scream - like we do on roller coasters. Sonoma is that sound of the body falling, the rage human beings feel for continuing to believe that we are alive, that we are still awake.
Sonoma then, is the cry of man subjected to this rhythm, the limit of his existence; this is where the primitive howl of the body, the pulse of humanity to survive and feel alive emerges. To exist, even if it is at the limit of reality, or above it. Sonoma is the certainty that the virtual and the digital can only be surpassed by returning to the origin.
Marcos Morau returns to the essential concepts of the piece he created in 2016 for the Lorraine Ballet: "Le Surréalisme au service de la Révolution” [Surrealism at the service of the Revolution], based on the figure of Buñuel, and falling between medieval Calanda and cosmopolitan Paris, and the Jesuit faith and surrealist freedom. That entire microcosm is developed and expanded in Sonoma, for his project with La Veronal.
Sonoma emerged from the need to return to the origin, to the body, to the flesh. And from that flesh and organic matter, one can lose themselves in a journey that flows between dreams and fiction, where the human meets the extraordinary. To make everyday things strange, renouncing the ability to construct meanings, allowing signs to germinate and proliferate on their own; communicating with the most irrational layers of any human, there where the united cries out to be separated, and the separated always seeks to re-join.
Because Sonoma also has another meaning, in an indigenous language it means: Valley of the moon. According to myth, the moon nestles in its plains every night. And there the screams, shrieks and beatings of the drums create a hypnotic beat, gentle, like a child’s lullaby, and far from overstimulating us, the rhythm accompanies us and calms us.
Buñuel has never been so current: he was able to predict what the future held when he found that cry pointing directly towards the viscera, in the noise of the drums from Calanda and all of Bajo Aragón. Because Buñuel has already been here, listening to what the abyss sounds like as it opens up when human imagination is free but man is not free.
“Sonoma begins with a scream and ends with a loud racket. In the middle, in a landscape between reality and fiction, a group of women try to free themselves from the bonds of the known, and cross frontiers using their intuition and instinct. When they come together, the inner cry they share is amplified, it grows until overflowing, and they celebrate it with rituals, offerings, hypnotic songs, and dances. They enter an unknown and bewildering state, a state that frees their minds but at the same time reminds them of their human condition. Sonoma is that place where the storm originates, where the drums continue to beat with a force that shakes the earth and opens a deep crack in the ground under our feet.“
Carmina S. Belda
MARCOS MORAU & LA VERONAL
Trained in Barcelona, Valencia and New York in photography, movement and theatre, Marcos Morau (Valencia, 1982) builds imaginary worlds and landscapes where movement and image meet and engulf each other. He obtained the highest grade possible for his undergraduate final year project and the grand award for creation from the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona. His artistic knowledge is not limited to dance, and extends to other disciplines such as photography and dramaturgy; he studied a Master’s degree in Dramaturgy at the UAB, the Pompeu Fabra University and the Institut del Teatre.
For more than ten years, Marcos has led La Veronal as a director, choreographer and designer for sets, costumes, and lighting. He has travelled the world presenting his works at festivals, theatres, and various international contexts such as the Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris, the Biennale di Venezia, Festival d'Avignon, Tanz Im August in Berlin, the Roma Europa Festival, the SIDance Festival in Seoul and Sadler's Wells in London, among many others.
In addition to his work with La Veronal, Marcos Morau has worked as visiting artist for various companies and theatres around the world where he develops new creations, always halfway between the performing arts and dance: GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, Ballet du Rhin, Royal Danish Ballet, Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, Carte Blanche, Ballet de Lorraine, Compañía Nacional de Danza and the Tanz Luzerner Theater among others.
Being the youngest person to receive the National Dance Prize in Spain, Marcos Morau's language is an inheritance of abstract movement and physical theatre. A powerful body language based on the annihilation of all organic logic, one which dissects movement and turns it into a unique identity. Marcos Morau was also awarded the FAD Sebastià Gasch prize, awarded by the FAD Foundation for Arts and Design, and the TimeOut prize for the best creator, among other awards. With his creations, he has managed to win prizes in numerous national and international choreographic competitions such as the Hannover International Choreographic Competition, the Copenhagen Choreographic Competition, Madrid and Masdanza.
In addition to his creative side, Marcos Morau also teaches, he combines his creations with training and gives classes and workshops on creative processes and new dramaturgies in conservatories, further education courses and universities, and at the Institut del Teatre, the University of the Arts of Strasbourg and the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris.
The future of Morau opens up to new formats and languages where the lines between opera, dance, and physical theatre blur more than ever, seeking new ways of expressing and communicating in our current turbulent and changing times.
Co-production: Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Tanz im August/HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Grec 2020 Festival de Barcelona – Institut de Cultura Ajuntament de Barcelona, Oriente Occidente Dance Festival, Theater Freiburg, Centro de Cultura Conde Duque, Mercat de les Flors, Temporada Alta, Hessisches Staatsballett in the frame of Tanzplattform Rhein-Main
In collaboration with Graner – Fàbriques de Creació and Teatre L’Artesà
Beneficiary project of the PYRENART cross-border cooperation project, within the framework of the Interreg VA program Spain-France-Andorra POCTEFA 2014-2020 – European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
With the support of INAEM – Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte de España and ICEC – Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya CONTACT Production and Management
Photography
