‘RI TE’: desacralize the untouchable with energy and some laughs | Culture | EUROtoday

Towards the tip of the present, about quarter-hour earlier than it ended, a spectator within the entrance row left the room. To accomplish that, he needed to stroll alongside the sting of the stage, the place the 2 artists had been. And when he obtained to the door, he had a tough time opening it and getting out. So the eyes of the general public and performers moved to that nook the place the escape occurred.

Israel Galván and Marlene Monteiro Freitas, protagonists of the piece, started an improvisation with out music at that second. He, sitting; she, standing, barely hunched in a frozen gesture. And each one and the opposite, picked up the banishment of the spectator, who grew to become with out intending it (or so we wish to imagine) the white elephant of Conde Duque. Galván made a lightweight and complicit gesture (with the viewers and even with the one that left), in that lax humor of which he’s the proprietor and which raised (one other) snort within the stalls; and Monteiro, he had a match of silent laughter that he tried to carry again. The episode lasted only a few seconds and didn’t even symbolize a fracture within the present. On the opposite, it served to strengthen the complicity between the general public and the artists, who someway, with that response of integrating what occurred and reacting, had been telling us with amusement: “ok, yes, we know, we understand that you are leaving. We continue.”

RI TE It offers off that aroma of mischief and play; of punk hooliganism that results in confusion. That is to say, it collects the indicators of the purest discourse of the dancer from Seville and the creator and dancer from Cape Verde. But it additionally shops the sophistication that comes with the information of what’s being crumbled. Defining the piece as a mere assembly for leisure wouldn’t be honest in any respect, since we’re confronted with two creators who deal with choreographic depth and attain leisure after an intense pilgrimage that, after all, could be guessed.

Each one in all them individually strikes into irreverent territories of the scene. They additionally garner accredited recognition. And they champion a particularly private method that converges in that pinch of absurdity and even ugliness, which may result in caricatured humor, wanted rigorously. So discovering Israel Galván and Marlene Monteiro collectively on stage, on this first collaboration, which premiered in 2024 and comes endorsed by the Teatro de la Ville and the Paris Autumn Festival (in France they’ve revered the dancer lengthy earlier than he was revered on this nation), appears to make excellent sense.

The bodily concept that passes by means of RI TE It is the desacralization of well-liked tradition traditions. The one which entails Galván, associated to the flamenco wherein he lives and the Seville of Holy Week and the honest, and the one initially from Monteiro Freitas, born in Cape Verde and dwelling in Lisbon, educated within the legendary Belgian college PARTS. And how each of them commit this fabulous sacrilege, from the facility of information (of latest dance, of flamenco) and absolute freedom with none form of regard.

Monteiro and Galván perform as a dance and comedy couple. They talk by means of motion and the deep analysis that every one develops of their trajectories, though the consequence could appear gentle. The caricature gesture, which each the choreographer and the dancer work of their speeches, and which causes confusion, right here finds loads of room to awaken all types of laughter, with out concern of constructing errors. Knowing that what looks as if a sketch It comes with layers and layers of that means. And that weak snort that may seize you in some moments of RI TEadditionally arrives with a novel and transferring poetics.

The excessive moments of the present are achieved by means of the music that performs and refers to Andalusian and Cape Verdean well-liked music. For instance, the sevillanas corraleras that they carry out sitting down, each approaching from the physique fragmentation that they apply, the favored music of Cape Verde the place a karaoke voice performs or the solemn, enjoyable and transferring, lyrical, uncommon second wherein they interpret the well-known Holy Week march.

The moments of silence, wherein each artists relate from their our bodies and the sounds they emit, lengthen and that’s the place the present falters, though with out fully failing, because of that olé choked in Monteiro’s mouth that manages to return out with the assistance of the viewers and naturally Galván, able to flamenco to the purpose of onomatopoeia. The extraction of the “olé” is repeated a number of occasions adopted by a kiss gesture thrown into the air, by Galván, and a spit, by Monteiro, which buildings this uncommon communication between the 2 artists.

By the way in which, when the piece was proven on the Grec Festival in 2024, Monteiro’s spit reached a spectator within the entrance row who reacted with humor to the dancer’s misery, as reported on this newspaper.

With a row of flowers in the midst of her head, like a crest, flamenco boots for her, and pink rubber boots for him, RI TE It turns into an anthropological assembly of cultures and their corporeality, starring two of the truest and most real creators of the scene. One of these pearls which might be stored ceaselessly.

RI TE. Conception and dance: Marlene Monteiro Freitas and Israel Galván. Lighting and set design: Yannick Fouassier. Sound and technical course: Pedro León. Production: Rosario Gallardo and Janine Lages. Conde Duque, Madrid. 50 minutes. March 21 and 22, 2026.