The Spanish choreographer Paloma Muñoz has established herself as a clear, uncompromising voice in the international contemporary dance scene. Now she brings the award-winning piece La Quijá to the Opera during the CODA Oslo International Dance Festival.
Resonance into the Margin
What remains when almost everything else is gone? What lies in the margin? In La Quijá, choreographer Paloma Muñoz returns to her origins – in a corporeal exploration of memories, resonances, and that which insists on expressing itself, even when words fall short.
Muñoz takes us to the Spanish region of La Serena in Extremadura. Not to recreate what was, but to dig into what still exists: in the body, in the bones, and in the breath. The title La Quijá means jawbone, and here it becomes an image of the voice, the lament, the cry, and the song. A place where the auditory expression takes shape, and where the smoldering can crack the surface.
La Quijá is an intense and corporeal confrontation with roots, identity, and community, which resonates long after the stage is empty.
A Collective in Tension
On stage stands a large ensemble in a physically demanding and precisely crafted movement universe. The bodies create images that dissolve again; they gather, break, and reorganize.
There exists a trembling tension between the tightly composed and the explosive, between control and breakdown. Muñoz works in close dialogue with the dancers, and the material clearly bears the mark of individual bodies in a shared landscape.
