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La Vanguardista

There’s few artists you can truly label as iconoclastic within any discipline, let alone dance, but when discussing Rocio Molina few other labels seem to fit the bill. As a bailaora, her edgy and highly theatrical approach to flamenco has won her prizes internationally, brought adulation from Spain’s Ministry of Culture, and saw her win the coveted Silver Lion from Venice’s Dance Biennale, a prize reserved for the new vanguards of the field. But when discussing her reputation for excellence and avantgardism with her, she remains dubious of too much praise as if not wanting to jinx anything. “In general whatever title I might be given doesn’t mean too much to me because I may have the desire to create something contrary to what I did before,” she explains, “I can accept the title but I know that it can expire pretty quickly.”

Rocio Molina's “Calentamiento.” Phtotograph by Simone Fratini

Molina, who chats to me over a phone call, has an easy manner—you can practically hear her grin over the line. We speak through a translator, though she comes out with a few warm phrases in English expressing her excitement about coming to London with her newest show “Calentamiento.” Her Andaluz sunniness almost catches me off guard, this is a woman who, when dancing, has a near surgical approach, at once detached in her exactitude and totally rapt in the duende of it all, there is no doubt that this is indeed a master of her craft, vanguardist or not.

“Calentamiento,” which runs as part of Sadler’s Wells’ annual Flamenco Festival, comes from a place of familiar ritual, the warm up. The idea sprang out of a two-year-long period of experimentation for Molina. “I was doing a lot of research on the chemical, emotional, and physical responses that take place in a body, in my body,” she says. I ask whether this idea of endless preparation and readiness comes from a place of fear, in particular that the warm up will at some point have to end. “Being a dancer in my case is quite a frustrating experience” she explains, “it's traumatic when the body cools because you wish to maintain the warmth to keep going. It does speak as well about the fact that one day the body will stop, that it won’t be able to do it anymore, it just won’t want to start. Death is something that’s also quite present in the work I think,” she says with a laugh.

Rocio Molina's “Calentamiento.” Phtotograph by Simone Fratini

Rocio Molina's “Calentamiento.” Phtotograph by Simone Fratini

The idea of death recalls that hackneyed quote from Martha Graham about the dancer’s two deaths: once when they stop dancing and again when they stop living. Molina lets out an anxious laugh at Graham’s macabre adage, noting, “I prefer to say that as I dance I continue to be reborn. But also at every performance, in reality, I’m dying a little too,” she says. “In a way you have to die a bit when you perform in order to be born again, the emotional and physical state you’re in when dancing is a way of being born and dying continually”. 

The image is spiritual of course, but rooted in blood and guts, the fixation on the body is ever present for Molina. This remains true even in “Calentamiento,” a work that utilises text as well as dance to express her fascination with the warm up. Her collaboration with the Argentine playwright and director Pablo Messiez was born from somatic interest. “I wanted to collaborate with Pablo for quite some time because he really has a gift for presenting the body on stage or in a space” says Molina. “His writing for this piece is done in a way that the words only are able to manifest as they come out of the body. The body is what is generating the text.” Even with a script, Molina’s sense of direction is ultimately derived from her body, “my body has to be in a specific state for me to be able to say what I do, I need to get to that place where I’m sweating or exhausted to speak the text.”

Rocio Molina's “Calentamiento.” Phtotograph by Simone Fratini

Rocio Molina's “Calentamiento.” Phtotograph by Simone Fratini

While her proclivity for the experimental is novel, Molina retains that integral relationship to flamenco’s pillars of compás and palos, though the relationship is not always one of orthodox fealty. “What interests me is breaking these codifications of flamenco, sometimes I’ll exaggerate those ideas or tease them, I put them into the extreme,” she says. “My way of working is a little different in the sense that I work with what I’m making because it’s fun or makes me laugh.” Though the relationship is lighthearted this undoubtedly comes from a place of respect, she explains that it is essential that her team includes ardent flamencos in order to produce the best.  

Molina seems proud to be part of the new wave of flamencos that are bringing the art to uncharted territory, outside of the tablao and touristic theatres and into spaces where these dances would otherwise go unseen. “We are evolving,” she says, “we are representing our art form, representing a quality which flamenco has always had, but pushing it into new scenarios.” Though she has already come a long way, one feels as if Molina is only warming up.

 

“Calentamiento” runs in Sadler’s Wells, London on 24 June. It then tours to Murcia, Lausanne, Valladolid, and across France. More information can be found here: https://rociomolina.net/calendario/ 

Eoin Fenton


Eoin (they/he) is a dance maker and writer based in Cork (Rep. of Ireland), and London (UK). They have danced across Ireland and London in venues including The Place, Project Arts Centre Dublin and Galway Cathedral. Eoin graduated with a BA in Choreography from Middlesex University in 2024 and began writing as part of the Resolution Reviews programme. They are a regular contributor to A Young(ish) Perspective. 

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