Trilogy of my Galicia
conxurando o invisible
Trilogy of my Galicia Act I
solo dance theater piece teaser
a stage proposal that offers the world with a mantra of respect for those who pray with their ancestral voices and presence, and recovers elements of the intangible heritage of Galicia's cultural tradition
Act I takes the Galician ‘queimada’ tradition as its starting point
the Galician creator-descendant aïda colmenero dïaz returns to her land Galicia and develops a process of investigation of the personal family memory of her childhood and of all her ancestors, delving into the intangible and tangible Galician heritage. she delves into Galician folklore in search of movements, and makes a journey of memory of the collective body, mass bodies, connected to ancestral history. everything is related in the network of life. everything is tied to the laws of existence. earth is not only the piece of dust from which we were born, earth is history. earth is mother, earth is eternal father. that is why we are brothers, human beings, animals and things. earth is dignity. earth is the spirit of our peoples and our ancestors. earth is life. earth is history.
accompanied by popular songs from Galicia, from the region of their great-great-grandmothers, aïda conjures and prays with that which cannot be seen, the invisible, the voices and ancestral presences, not palpable, but which have always been there.
conxurando o invisible speaks about the imagined Galicia, built in the collective imagination of millions of emigrants who left in search of a better life, and by those who stayed, and built the imagination with the disappeared. through laments and songs of homesickness, aïda conspires to collectively, build a Galicia that is spread all over the world and left behind many missing ones.
conxurando o invisible delivers a prayer to connect with the disappeared, the dead, the enslaved, the marginalised: galicians; recovering elements of the intangible heritage of the most ancestral Galician popular tradition such as alalás and aturuxos , yelling, as a means to invoke their own self expansion and connection with the invisible, that which is present but not seen. in turn, the singing and dancing animate the emotion and implore the imagination. this spell - queimada is a mantra projected onto the universe with humility, a way of praying, an act of clemency, a call for justice, protection from death, evil spirits, and the appeasement of the emotions captured in the body.
la Queimada is a traditional galician alcoholic drink, typical of the region’s cuisine, made with Galician drink aguardierte. it is said to possess healing properties, and it is claimed that, when drunk after reciting a spell, it acts as protection against evil spells, as well as keeping spirits and other malevolent beings at bay from the person who has drunk it.
direted and performed | aïda colmenero dïaz
music: teresa colmenero, grupo abertal de la rúa, entroido viana do bolo, aïda colmenero dïaz
costume: d´aquela
photo: carlota mosquera
coproduced by Unesco Group of World Heritage Cities of Spain
sa.grado
Trilogy of my Galicia Act II
this artistic research is part of the stage trilogy that aïda colmenero dïaz develops around her Galicia, in which she investigates the relationship with the sacred, incantation, memory, and blood.
Act II takes the Galician tradition of the pig slaughter as its starting point
sa.grado act II is a stage research project that explores blood as a symbolic archive and as a territory of the sacred. as a flow of memory, an invisible pact, and inherited energy.
blood as that which binds us to the land, to the bodies that preceded us, and to the stories that inhabit us. in dialogue with Galicia as an ancestral–familial–everyday–imagined space, the project delves into the ritual dimension of the contemporary body, activating blood as a metaphor for destiny, transformation, and continuity.
the creator proposes to explore how human beings have related to blood throughout time: as bond, destiny, pact, sacrifice, protection, and memory. blood as biological fluid; as lineage, territory, inheritance, and community.
it is that which connects us to those who came before us and to what we consider sacred.
a search for what beats, what burns, and what passes through us without being named.
“an invocation to the sacred.
not as a distant mystery, but as a living flame at our center.
may the sacred pass through us like a river of blood,
transform us like fire,
and reveal to us, once again,
that the divine has always dwelled within us.”
author’s note
rooted in Galicia, the project enters an imaginary landscape in which blood occupies a central place in popular cosmology. in galician tradition, shaped by the coexistence of paganism and christianity, blood has been understood as an element of power and union.
this research proposes to examine how these beliefs dialogue with our contemporary reality. blood as nourishment, as rural ritual, as pact, and as memory.
a fundamental axis of the research is the rural ritual of the pig slaughter (matanza do porco), a central practice in many galician families. beyond its alimentary dimension, the slaughter constituted a communal act charged with meaning. blood is not a residue: it is treated with respect, transformed into food, and shared. to spill it carelessly is considered a bad omen. this moment condenses life, death, sustenance, and community into a single gesture. the research approaches this ritual as a space of transformation: the passage from life to death, from death to nourishment, and from nourishment to community. a cycle in which the everyday and the sacred merge.
likewise, the religious dimension forms an essential part of the research. in galician catholicism, the blood of christ symbolizes sacrifice, redemption, and salvation. the project seeks to question the contemporary meaning of sacrifice, asking: what are we willing to offer today? what needs to be “bled” so that a community may heal? how can sacrifice be re-signified as transformation?
i am also interested in blood as a symbolic element, observing inherited pacts, invisible loyalties, and family or collective wounds that traverse generations.
from an artistic perspective, i am interested in the body as ritual territory; movement as heartbeat, pulsation, wound, and transformation; the stage space as land that receives and listens; the voice as invocation of the invisible. the aim is to generate an experience in which the biological and the spiritual enter into dialogue, where the audience perceives blood as vital flow and embodied memory.
this project situates itself at the crossroads of ritual anthropology, studies on the sacred and the profane, embodied memory, and galician popular tradition, in dialogue with contemporary performative practices. my intention is to re-signify the rural and the everyday—those imaginaries—from a current, critical, and personal perspective, and from there to recover their symbolic and poetic potency.
it is also an invocation. an attempt to remember that the sacred is not a distant mystery, but an energy that dwells within us. that blood—beyond its materiality—is a symbolic river that unites who we were, who we are, and who we will be at the same time. and that perhaps, by touching the earth again—even metaphorically—we may hear the echo of our ancestors and understand that the divine is not outside us, but beating within our own body.”
aïda colmenero dïaz
Trilogy of my Galicia Act III
