More than two decades after its premiere, this emblematic contemporary dance work directed by Luis Eduardo Araneda returns, a revival of the Choreographic Heritage program of the National Council of Culture and the Arts.
In 1992 Jon Secada and Michael Jackson play, Cristian Edwards is freed from his kidnapping, Rock & Pop, an iceberg is sent to the World's Fair in Seville and the Iron Maiden concert is canceled due to pressure from the Catholic Church. It is Chile at the beginning of the transition and it is in that context that the Seventh Contemporary Dance Company premiered Sótano, 23 years ago.
"I just wanted to pour into the creation everything that was experienced in that very turbulent time in the history of our country, and that to this day generates a fracture in our society. The work was conceived as an exercise in experimentation, democracy had just begun, after 17 years of obscurantism and dictatorship, however in that environment I formed a dance artist, I am part of a generation of resistance," says Luis Eduardo Araneda, director of the work that returns thanks to the Choreographic Heritage program of the Council National Culture and Arts.
Sótano debuted in the Isidora Zegers hall of the University of Chile, then won awards for best editing, director, design and music at the First Pedro de la Barra New Trends Festival. Rodrigo Pérez, Paula Zúñiga and Carlos Cabezas, among others, were also awarded in the contest. The work was also staged at the Oz nightclub, in Costa Rica and Mexico. The last time he was on stage was in 1993 at the Municipal Theater of Viña del Mar. “Extraordinary, seductive and attractive,” was what La Tercera then published about the show.
The work returns with a new cast, but remaining faithful to the original, which was created in an experimental work by four dancers and an actor and which had an eclectic soundtrack, with tango and sevillana. "It meant a shift in terms of language, searching for new possibilities of expression in gesture and movement," says Araneda and adds: "He moved away from what he had been doing until that moment, in any case this transition was something unconscious. I think that the work marks a territory that defines all my work, which is awareness of memory within our cultural reality. My work has an identity accent, I always talk about my country, from our history."
Parallel to the work, the Retrospective of the sensitive body forum will be held, in which the protagonists of the works that the program re-released will participate: Choreographic Heritage: Paulina Mellado (The body that stains), Mario Ossandón, from the Compañía Movimiento (Los ruegos) and Luis Eduardo Araneda (Sótano).
Choreography, lighting design and set design: Seventh Contemporary Dance CompanyDirection: Luis Eduardo Araneda
Performance: Verónica Toro, Daniela Hernández, Daniela Murias, Nikolas Fuentes, Isidoro Ramos, Jaime Arias and Carlos Rivas
