Almost an Opera
Manuel Ramos
In this residency, I want to explore the tension of 'fitting into something'. At moments in our lives, we internally struggle between what we want, what we are, and how social groups accept us. It could be our relationship with our family and our decision to distance ourselves from some of the values we have been taught. It could be the attempts that school makes to domesticate parts of our being. It could be a migratory situation, where everything depends on meeting the requirements or managing the language. I am interested not in the specific circumstances, but in that struggle, that tension.
As a starting point, I take fragments from my personal history and Alphonse Daudet's story called 'The Goat of Mr. Seguin', where the main character prefers to fight alone with the wolf and die rather than accept the comforts offered by a safe place. I draw inspiration from elements of opera, as it is considered a 'total art' and may be the ideal to which we are pushed to fit.
From a performative point of view, I base my exploration on sequences of movement and their relationship with voice and objects. It's not precisely dance, it's not precisely theater. It's a quest based on achieving that the body builds its own dramaturgy.
Manuel Ramos is from Colombia. He is a theater maker and pedagogue. He has been living in Leipzig for a year and a half. He is interested in the processes of scenic creation that intertwine dance and theater, as well as in the pedagogy of art and the body, and in opening more spaces for dialogue between the performing arts and communities. He has worked as an actor, director, and pedagogue. He studied Arts and Education in Colombia. His scenic training has been mainly empirical, collaborating with companies such as the Theater of Memory, the Scandinavian Laboratory Theater - Denmark. In Colombia, he coordinated the Border Line Laboratory, where he explored physical and vocal training with actors and dancers. It is part of the Artistic Residencies Platform of Itinera – Arte en Expansion, Mexico. Principio del formulario