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“Monster,” a dance show by Laila Tafur at Casa Árabe

April 03, 20226:00 p.m.
MADRID
Casa Árabe exhibition halls (at Calle Alcalá, 62) 6:00 p.m. 5 euros.

Casa Árabe and VORTEX - Dance Production Exchanges, are presenting this dance show in Madrid on Sunday, April 3 as part of the Vortex Festival. Tickets are now being sold online.

“My name is Laila. That I know, but I do not know what it means. I don’t know how I’m seen. I sometimes wonder. Perhaps a mixture of unusually cute and some sort of mistake. A “monster” that is, once again. I am Laila, half girl, half woman, half man.”

Laila Tafur explores the concept of identity through dance, image, action and installation. She has proposed a work for Casa Árabe on the diaspora, heritage, cultural appropriation and the construction of identity through tradition and experimentation. She reflects on the identity of those who, far from their homeland, reproduce the culture they long for, examining how it is impossible for such cultural memory not to become complex and hybrid. She starts out with her Andalusian past and the memory of Granada’s Sacromonte and its “zambras,” then rethinking flamenco and its legacy from an Arab yesteryear which ever remains present.

Despite her contemporary use of the body as a tool that transcends the physical and theoretical realm, Granada is dominant in her construction of identity and artistic creation. This work embraces and reinterprets both identity and body, conceiving dance as a production of forms based on friction between meaning and flesh. It cries out for the unnamable as the natural state of dance, the undefined as virtue, the deformed as beauty.

Show duration: 40 minutes
NOTE: The performance will be taking place in Casa Árabe’s exhibition halls and the audience will move from one space to another throughout the show. Those attending must remain standing most of this time.
About Laila Tafur
I was born in Granada and became a student at the University of Reykjavik and the Polytechnical University of Lisbon, eventually graduating with a Choreography degree at the Institut del Teatre. In 2017-18, I attended the MPECV Master’s program at the Reina Sofía, where my interest in song and amateur knowledge production first began. This research continued at MACBA’s PEI from 2020 to 2021. My solo works are called Mi arma, a flamenco western, Susobras, a highly “meta” work about dance itself, and Monstruo, about the unmentionable, the wild and impossible to domesticate. Working with Alba Rihe, we created Cobalto, a piece midway between a concert, meditation and a discotheque. All of these have been developed with the support of Masdanza, Certamen Coreográfico Madrid, Graner, Sismograf, La Caldera, Barceloneta, Colectivo rpm, C3A, Teatro Pradillo, Leal Lav, Espaço do Tempo, ADF and MR. As a performer I have worked with Xavier Le Roy, Janet Novas, Jerome Bel, Albert Quesada, Carmelo Fernandez, Lipi Hernandez, Vero Cendoya and Taiat Dansa.
About Vortex
VORTEX is a space for dance production exchanges between creators and institutions. As its very name suggests, VORTEX has broken onto the scene like a tornado with this artistic project. Unprecedented in Madrid’s cultural space, it involves different actors while transforming institutions and art galleries into new stages which stimulate and promote a new dynamic energy in the city’s cultural scene. VORTEX has been given the assistance of various institutions, both public and private, including: Teatro de La Abadía, Centro Centro, Goethe-Institut, Casa Árabe and Club Matador, as well as art galleries such as The Ryder and the Freijo Gallery.