DONAS – CALI DANZA CONSCIENTE

I composed original music for ‘Donas’ a 50 minute contemporary dance piece by the dance company Cali Danza Consciente. This all female company is led by artistic director and choreographer Alba Felepete Facal. As a company Cali are interested in womanhood and exploring representations of femininity, interrogating cultural and historical interpretations of female figures, examining female power and beauty in all its forms.

“We will look the same but everything will be different…”

Donas is an embodied poetry, an allegory to the feminine aspects of existence embodied in the woman’s body, a feminine path that collects the ancestral voices and illuminates them in the present.

It talks about becoming captains of our lives, cyclicality, life and death, sexuality, deep intergenerational wounds, manifestos, struggle, sisterhood and love, above all love.

It is a creation sustained by transcendence, which navigates through the symbolic giving voice to the echoes of the female subconscious. Donas is a circular work, close to the trance that envelops the viewer, creating an emotional climate open to the entire space beyond the scenic framework and all barriers.

 

We collaborated closely on the creation of the music which references Galician folk music in its use of percussive instruments and triplet rhythms, alongside strings, some woodwind, gaita (bagpipes), folk harp and piano. The female voice also features throughout the work in various ways; breaths, textures, chants, sustained pitches and rhythmic syllables and phrases that have no linguistic meaning. The work moves through various contrasting sections that were composed to reflect some of the central ideas being explored in the work, tribal, trance-like states, catharsis, the physical, emotional and spiritual realms.

 ‘Donas’ premiered at Auditorio Gustavo Friere, Lugo, Spain 14 Jan 2024.