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Alter Ego

18.5.2024
20:00
Sala Mare TNI
Alter Ego Alter Ego

Just like me, you are both cellar and skylight. Strength, fear, austerity, commitment to tradition, boldness and silly joyousness.

And an asterisk. We are a body with an asterisk hanging over us, flooding us with possibilities, freedom to correct ourselves, to live another destiny.

I give you my knees and ask for your torso. I ask for your feet and I give you my neck, which is a comet that veers out of control.

So now there are three of us. And we have created a new body. We know it is there, but we cannot see it. It is real and yet also abstract, like the impulse to recoil from a precipice out of the pure necessity to escape vertigo.

Together, Alfonso and Patricia make more than two. In this meeting of emotional mirrors, each of their alter egos manifest on stage – other selves that are more sincere, distant, committed, uninhibited and exposed. Swept away by what lies beneath the surface, by their other self that provides company, protection and also contradiction.

Alter Ego is a game of spectres, of two bodies that show their asterisks to us – and to each other – dancing on the edge of what is their own.

Patricia and Alfonso seeking themselves in the other, discovering the movement of the shadow that they are and are not.
Two spontaneous entities running out of hiding places. Alter Ego is a challenge that is shared, open and free. A dance made up of impulses, surprises, questions, treasures, bewilderments, vapour, guts and horizons.

Dansatori

Alfonso Losa

Alfonso Losa

He is the most genuine current representative of the Madrid school of flamenco dance and the necessary bridge between the masters and the new generations: in full artistic maturity Alfonso Losa managed to articulate his own language with which he is able to transmit the most authentic concepts of traditional dance through the new dance codes of our days, of which he is one of the architects.

Alfonso Losa managed to harmonise the austerity, verticality and elegance of the Madrid school with a vertiginous rhythm and prodigious body control. He is the most classical of the contemporaries and the most contemporary of the classics.

Awards such as “El Desplante” (Festival de La Unión), the “Premio Güito por Soleá” of the National Competition of Córdoba 2007, or the Best Dancer of the Spanish Dance and Flamenco Contest of Madrid (twice) endorse a career of progress that has been observed and valued by artists such as Enrique Morente, Tomatito, Manuela Carrasco, Enrique de Melchor or Montse Cortés, who have called on their company on stage.

Since his first premiere in 2000, Alfonso has created 9 shows under his own name.

In October 2021, at the Suma Flamenca (Teatros del Canal) Alfonso premieres the show “Flamenco: Espacio Creativo” with the help of Rafael Estévez and Valeriano Paños as artistic directors. This show, which marks a new artistic and professional turning point in his career, receives the Critics’ Award at the Festival de Jerez in 2022, and is presented at the Bienal de Flamenco in Seville, at the Teatro Piccolo in Milan, at La Villette in Paris, at the Biënnale in Holland, at the Théâtre de Nîmes, etc…

In September 2023, he premiere his new show, “Alter Ego”, at the Teatros del Canal (Madrid), together with the dancer, winner of the National Dance Award, Patricia Guerrero.

A master of the great masters (who come to his classes from all over the world), Alfonso Losa is constantly searching for the immutable truths contained in flamenco and does not negotiate with fashions.
He creates new schemes without breaking the mould.
He builds without deconstructing. He works with authenticity. He dances as he is.

Patricia Guerrero

Patricia Guerrero

Patricia Guerrero (born 1990 in Albayzín, Granada) draws geometric shapes with her dance. She then transforms them, picking them apart and turning them back into elements of life such as fire. As the titles of her previous works suggest, she creates Dystopias, which she turns into small and large Cathedrals with her dance. From Utopia to Dystopia with a dance that she gently rocks, nurtures, wraps up and hands to the audience as a gift of that art, raised and shaped by the magic and mystery that resides in the whitewashed walls of Granada’s Albaycín neighbourhood, where she too was born.
While Patricia’s flamenco roots run deep, she has always explored other genres of music and dance. She has performed at the world’s most prestigious theatres and festivals, including New York City Center, Paris’ Théâtre National de Chaillot, Madrid’s Teatros del Canal, Teatro del Maestranza, Teatro de Lope de Vega, Seville’s Teatro Central, Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, Brussels’ Bozar Institute, the Grand Théâtre du Luxembourg, the Moscow International House of Music.

She started classes at the age of three, at her mother’s academy. Over the course of her education, she was taught by maestros such as Mario Maya and Rubén Olmo, absorbing influences from both classical Spanish and contemporary dance. In 2010, she premiered her first solo work, Dede el Albaycín, which she toured around Europe. She also received an invitation from Carlos Saura to appear as a solo performer in the world tour for Flamenco Hoy. Saura worked with Patricia again on his film Flamenco, Flamenco. In 2011, Patricia was appointed first dancer at the Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía. Her own dance company went on to produce Latidos de agua (2013) and Touché, among others. In 2016, she premiered Catedral at the 19th Bienal de Sevilla, and won the Giraldillo Award for Best Show, as well as two nominations at the Max Awards in 2017, including Best Female Dance Performance. In 2018, she moved up yet another gear with Distopía, which also premiered at the Bienal de Sevilla and received three Max Award nominations. In 2020, she premiered Paraíso Perdido, in collaboration with the viola da gamba player Fahmi Alqhai, in which she danced to a Baroque musical repertoire (such as JS Bach’s Chaconne). That same year, she presented Proceso Eterno, a flamenco recital with Dani de Morón, Sergio El Colorao and Agustín Diassera.

In July 2021, she was the guest artist at the Ballet Nacional de España for La Bella Otero.

In October 2021, she received the National Dance Prize.

In 2022, she premiered the large-scale work, Deliranza.

In September 2023, alongside the bailaor Alfonso Losa, she premiered Alter Ego in Madrid’s Teatros del Canal. In October 2023, Patricia Guerrero was chosen to direct the Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía for the next 3 years.