The spaces where the contemporary movement lives

In contemporary dance, there are many talented people, with the desire to produce, create, and show their work. We can do it in private, independent spaces, although not all of them have a wooden floor or a floating floor (you cannot dance on cement or tiles). But it is difficult to access venues on the official circuit or on the commercial circuit, where they are produced in more or less dignified conditions, with cachet for the dancers and the team. But there is an ignorance, a contempt for dance, despite the fact that the public does want to see dance, bodies, movement. Dance is a discipline that fascinates, but there is something retrograde about it”, is how choreographer Pablo Rotemberg describes dance in Argentina, and more specifically, independent contemporary dance in the city of Buenos Aires. Beyond the official companies (Ballet Estable del Colón, Contemporary Ballet of the Teatro San Martín, Compañía Nacional de Danza Contemporánea, Compañía de Danza de UNA, Ballet Folklorico Nacional, among other organizations), contemporary dance has an intense life, apparently circumscribed to an audience and to small spaces.

The dancer and choreographer Natalia Tencer says that dance “should be more considered by cultural policies. We need more resources and spaces, where we can work, rehearse, teach, meet, produce”. Rotemberg advances: “The difference between Proteatro’s budget and Prodanza’s is absurd, shameful. The subsidy for a dance piece is ridiculous, stupid, disrespectful”.

These conditions participate in the fact that dance in CABA remains among a circle of habitués in small rooms. Some historical ones have been the Portón de Sánchez, Espacio Callejón; Recently, El Galpón de Guevara, Fundación Cazadores has joined. Likewise, some spaces with public funds: the Rojas Cultural Center, the Borges Cultural Center, the 25 de Mayo Cultural Center, the Sábato-Cultural Space; more recently, the Kirchner Cultural Center, the Tecnópolis Situar Danza program. Today, independent rooms with a defined profile towards the arts of movement: Face, Movaq, Planta Inclán, Área Teatro.

Juan Onofri, from Planta Inclán, celebrates the exceptionality of his space: “There are not too many rooms, with a good technical level and spatial care, that have a priority focus on dance. Ours was bought and built in 2018 with subsidies from the National Theater Institute, which, I think, aware that dance has a very important presence despite the lack of spaces with state support for it, opened the spectrum of that call, knowing that we were going to give it a strong imprint from the movement, and not exclusively theatrical”. He now observes another problem: “For a room with about 50 spectators, the economic support scheme is very complex. The subsidies are totally devalued. The formula between the value of a ticket, the technical costs and the distribution for the room and a company is completely deficient. To dignify that income, the tickets would have to rise to about $5,000, which of course nobody would pay in the sector.

Availability of spaces and subsidies are the axes of the discussion, from Onofri’s perspective. Also, the geographical location and the generation of new audiences: “Planta Inclán is in the south of the city. It is a bit embarrassing to say that it is like the periphery, because there is a subway fifty meters away. We have to break that inertia, with programming and communication, so that people get here. On the other hand, the dance public is very niche. There is a dispute to see how to get other audiences interested in dance performances. Giving it up would imply a lack of interest in dialoguing with other publics”.

Galpón FACE (Formation of Contemporary Artists for the Scene) has also been in Parque Patricios since 2010. It works as a civil organization led by Inés Armas, Victoria Viberti and Fagner Pavan. Armas’ analysis coincides with colleagues in the sector: “Currently the number of independent productions in the city has decreased: state support is not enough to cover the needs of the projects. It is also a challenge to convene audiences and propose alternatives that are out of the usual centers of the Buenos Aires theater”.

Julieta Rodríguez Grumberg presents Movaq: “Many of the people who make up Movaq as a cooperative (Lía Maza, Analía Slominski, myself, among others) come from dance. Movaq belongs to Escena (Association of Autonomous Scenic Spaces) and also, to the Dance Emergency Front, because militancy, the network, weaving, giving opportunities to everyone are very important to us. Although there are no borders in the performing arts, in the cake of distribution of state resources, they go more for what is called “theatre”. We militate hard because there is a National Dance Institute”.

More than 20 years in the sector is a long time for dance, an art in perpetual renewal. For this reason, El Portón de Sánchez, opened in 2000, has a story to tell, in the voice of one of its heads, Roxana Grinstein: “From the beginning, dance was at prime time. For example, Mendiolaza, from the beginnings of the Krapp Group, recently arrived from his native Córdoba, and Carlos Casella, Pablo Rotemberg, Federico Fontán, Julia Gómez, Carla Rímola, Laura Figueiras, Silvina Grimberg have passed through here. Among the international names were David Zambrano, Akram Kham, the Pina Bausch dancers. Dance has captured the public and it is time for it to have spaces where it continues to show itself in all its dimension”.

In Aérea Teatro, the most recent venue, open to spectators since 2019, its manager, Brenda Angiel, develops a dance-only program, which “envisions holding seasons of at least a month on the bill, and thus, refute the idea that dance does not have an audience or does not reach people.”

Monina Bonelli presents the peculiarity of the 25 de Mayo Cultural Center: “CC25 is a space of the Undersecretariat for Cultural Policies and New Audiences of the Ministry of Culture of the GCBA. Its administration is in the sphere of the Recoleta Cultural Center. It is a decentralized space in the city, with an intimate and historical relationship with dance. The public recognizes it. Dance requires maximum protection, because in this activity the body is constantly at risk: it needs time to develop, a suitable floor, safety conditions, and lighting technology that enhances its visual invoice”.

Adriana Barenstein, a programmer at the Borges Cultural Center and a reference in the dance sector for decades, illuminates and concludes the topic: “Sometimes, the difficulties to keep a group together over time, sustaining energy, beyond this or that work, are of a basic order: not having a space to rehearse, that which gives you refuge, containment and conditions to sustain projects, make them grow, discuss them, deny them, affirm them. We need spaces that accommodate, so that a “we” can exist, a real meeting place, not a virtual one, where to think, argue, dance, assemble, disassemble and for the artistic act to exist, in this case, dance”.

What is contemporary dance?

Artists and managers approach characteristics of the works they make and/or program, and in their words definitions are outlined about that elusive object that is contemporary dance.

Juan Onofri: “Planta Inclán is a space to think about the bodily practices of the 21st century, inscribed in the problems of this contemporaneity that touches us: dance is a field to go through these issues. We privilege projects that take risks: artistic, production, with a certain courage, with a certain danger; proposals that get into gender problems, about racism, language problems; projects that work in a transdisciplinary way”.

Eleonora Pereyra: “In Timbre 4, we program works where the bodies on stage are necessary to have a powerful scenic experience without the need for a textual narrative.”

Fagner Pavan: “The FACE space programs works that risk crossing disciplines and experiment with different languages: contemporary dance, urban dance, physical theater, butoh dance, and also performative installations. Dance is what happens between bodies, the exchange of movement in the present time, whether in performances, classes, rehearsals or meetings”.

Natalia Tencer: “Contemporary dance is part of our time. close. We are creating it. We are inventing it at this precise moment, in which our own slogans, styles, imaginations, procedures and practices are combined. It has to do with the sense of freedom and with the expressive diversity and identity of each body and, above all, with improvisation”.

Monina Bonelli: “The contemporary in dance is a virtuous search for the dislocation of predictable forms and dynamics. The constant attempt to find poetry and power in a movement that carries the wisdom of tradition and breaks to be reborn”.