Thinking

What happens when you grow up with a genderless neutral language and then arrive in a country in which everything is gendered? How can we speak of identity when a language has already determined what is masculine and feminine?

This is what the young Iranian artist Sorour Darabi was faced with when s/he arrived in Montpellier to study dance. Her/his mother language, Farsi, has no masculine or feminine forms. French, on the other hand, constantly forced him/her to distinguish between male and female, even in her/his search for his/her own language of movement. Accepting a word thus became a physical test.

Darabi rebelled against this violent form of authority. Farci.e (2016) is an androgynous solo show that flirts with the boundaries of gender, language and sexuality.

Los Teatros del Canal and CA2M are working together in a programme conceived to mark out a shared working space: the body understood as in permanent construction and, accordingly, in permanent conflict. For Sorour Darabi (Shiraz, Iran), the transition of his own body triggers a radical confrontation with the social body: transgender identity uncovers the power of language over bodies, but also the power of the body to threaten the conventions of language.

Sorour Darabi is a self-taught Iranian artist who lives and works in Paris. After working in the underground network in Iran, s/he went on to study at the Centre Chorégraphique National (CCN) in Montpellier, France.

Last summer, a group of boats set sail from the port of Valparaíso. When they reached open sea, the crew tied the boats with ropes to keep them close together and to recite poetry. A while after the event it was believed that it was the bodies that were holding tightly onto one another with their hands, very close together, in concentric circles so that they would not separate and to keep upright. Caro says that the public held onto the poets so that they would not fall into the sea while reciting.

This summer the mothers died. This summer we burnt the mountains in Madrid and we smelled it all. We extracted its gases in order to incrust a galaxy into the museum in the ceramic skirting board that runs around a large part of the third floor. We dreamed of pouring ourselves into this gap in which the horizontal and the vertical are decided, to cross this edge and to slash open the museum and escape on a flying carpet or on a UFO.

Rodapié Universo (skirting board universe) is a trip to the final horizon; to the ocean, its views and its voices which we conjure up through the architecture of the museum.

Acknowledgments: Toño Naharro, Sergio Muñoz Arriagada, Carlos Cociña, Julieta Marchant and A Cielo Abierto / Festival Internacional de Poesía de Valparaíso.

Limited capacity: 68 people.

CA2M in conjunction with Silvi ManneQueen and Madrid Ballroom Scene wish to invite you to attend a Kiki Ball. Kiki is the less mainstream side to the ballroom scene. Because it is more open, it gives exposure to new members coming onto the scene and offers the audience a chance to take part. A ball is a voguing battle where dancers and artists demonstrate their moves in different categories in front of an international jury.

 If you’ve seen the exhibition Elements of Vogue and love voguing and ballroom culture then you won’t want to miss this ball. But if you haven’t seen it and you love everything about fashion, catwalks, dancing, and want to feel like a model strutting your stuff on the runway, or if you’re into creativity and want to express yourself freely and be who you want to be.... this is also the place for you! You can take part as a competitor or simply enjoy the show as part of the audience: but, simply remember, be who you want to be and once you start looking, you too become part of the show!

This is also a special occasion because it gives us a chance to present for the first time members of the Kiki House of F.A.B, the newly founded international house of artists and voguers based in Madrid.

DRESS CODE / THEME

Borrowing inspiration from the installation made by the NY artist Rashaad Newsome especially for holding balls at CA2M, you will be whisked away to a fabulous world of gemstones, glamour and bling bling whose superficial appearance belies the fact that it is a platform for the radical resistance of dancing bodies.

CATEGORIES

• Runway 
• Virgin Performance
• Realness
• Old way vs. New Way
• Hands Performance
• Best Look of the Night
• Vogue Femme

OTA (open to all, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, etc.).
The order of the categories will be announced at a later date.

Host: Silvi ManneQueen, Mother of the Kiki House of F.A.B, Madrid

Commentator: Matyouz Royalty, New Kiki House of Royalty, Paris

Guest judges:

• Father Typhoon Angels, Kiki House of Angels, Rotterdam (Prodigy)
• Mother Kiara Mermaid, The Supreme House of Mermaids, Paris (Ninja)
• Inxi 007, Sweden (Prodigy)

Participants / Enrolment:

If you want to compete you have to fill in the following form.

Enrolment is free and open until 16 January

REGISTRATION

Enrolment free, open until 16 January

Maximum 3 categories

The organisation reserves the right to consider a category to be full when a sufficient number of participants have enrolled. 

The idea is to motivate people to enrol in other categories. So, don’t waste your time and enrol now!
If you have any doubts on categories and dress codes, send an email to: madridballroomescene@gmail.com 

Description of categories and themes for dress codes

Choose whichever suits you best, become who you want to be, take part and hope the judges give you 10s! The sky is the limit! However, we have provided some guidelines for looks for each category.

OTA RUNWAY: Pearls and Diamonds

The INSPIRATION for this category is for Pearls and Diamonds to sparkle on the runway. This is your chance to be a real model without conforming to stereotypes or canons. But remember, this is not a fancy dress ball. Creativity, elegance and Xtravaganza are the watchwords. Slay the Catwalk!
To get your 10s, you need to wear:
- European Runway : Headpiece (ornamental headdress)
- American Runway : Handbag (bag, purse, briefcase)
All participants will walk individually. The judges will then choose who moves on to the battle phase, where two participants walk at the same time, ballroom style. The judges will be looking for runway technique.

HANDS PERFORMANCE: Pyrite (Gold/Silver)
Show us what you can do in hands performance inspired by pyrite, fool’s gold. Look to its angles, cuts, sparkle and details for the elements on which to base your polished technique and smooth moves. Protect your hands with gloves, and cover your arms with golden or silver details, to tell us your dazzling story.

BEST LOOK OF THE NIGHT: Sapphires and/or Rubies (Spectators and participants)

This is the moment to show off the most fabulous look of the night and dazzle with your style. To take part in this event you don’t have to walk, you just show off your look, the one that shows the real you. This category has no set rules; all you have to do is take your inspiration from precious gemstones like rubies and sapphires. Remember that judges in this category will be looking at all details: hairstyle, accessories, jewellery, etc. and your ability to sell your look.

The public can take part. So if you feel up to it on the night, you could win this category, though you have to bear in mind the dress code. You don’t have to sign up beforehand.

Dress up and pass yourself off with INSPIRATION from the installation created expressly by Rashaad Newsome for the exhibition “Elements of Vogue” at CA2M, where the Kiki ball will be held. Whether your choice is Bling Bling, Banji or Hip Hop you have to convince the judges with your realness and swag. And don’t forget, it’s not just a case of dressing up.

This category was originally created in the ballroom scene to acknowledge people’s ability to “pass” unnoticed in wider society at a time when being Black or Latino and LGBT was by no means easy. For instance, the challenge for a gay male was to “pass” for being as straight as possible and gain access to the same privileges in society, like getting a job. Or, for a transsexual, the challenge was to be as “real” as possible and return home safely without getting beaten up. This category is broken down into different kinds of Realness: Thug Realness, School Boy, Transman Realness, Femme Queen Realness, Butch Realness, Butch Queen Up in Drag Realness (BQUID), etc.

OTA VIRGIN PERFORMANCE: Pink Quartz

You love voguing and are thinking about walking but don’t have the experience? There’s always a first time for everyone! And, if you’re reading this category, maybe now it’s your turn. Don’t think twice. Prepare a look based on the virginity and purity of Pink Quartz, and show the judges your wild side.

Any style of voguing is welcome (Old way, New Way, Vogue Femme, but without mixing them up). For first-timers only.

VOGUE FEMME: Holographic Opal

This much-awaited category shines with a light of its own. If you’ve ever taken part in a kiki or ball, now’s your chance to dazzle the judges with your Holographic Opal look. Opal is the “Artist’s Stone” because of its ability to bring out hidden talents and the whole spectrum of the rainbow.

Use the visual effects and sparkle of the opal and add your own walk to outshine everyone else, whether it’s through dramatics or soft and cunt, and show those judges how versatile you are.

To get 10s, your walk has to include a prop and one or more colours of the rainbow. Be creative! Besides your attire, judges will be looking at your walk technique, elements and charisma before giving away any 10s.

If you have any doubts or questions about categories or dress codes please send an email to: madridballroomescene@gmail.com

You are invited to attend the Ball with a look inspired by one of the options. Please pay attention because there will be a category in which you can decide to take part on the very day of the Ball. Follow the event on Facebook, where you’ll find photos to inspire looks and attire.

Storyboard P is a dancer raised in Brooklyn. It would be an understatement to say that he goes beyond street dance. His style of dancing even challenges the most elementary laws of physics, defying gravity and moving in such counterintuitive ways that one can only assume that his body acts as a portal into another dimension. An Afrofuturist universe where time and space fold under the dancing feet.

Storyboard has defined his dance style as “mutant”, drawing inspiration from a variety of subcultural forms as heterogeneous as Jamaican dancehall, flexing from his native Brooklyn, West Coast krumping, the Old Way voguing that LGTB teens used to dance at the Christopher Street pier, or even the mechanical movements of stop-motion animation. His voracious curiosity has led him to collaborate with artists and filmmakers including Kahlil Joseph, Arthur Jafa, Flying Lotus and Jay-Z.

For his performance at CA2M, Storyboard P will alternate between freestyle improvisation and storytelling, exploring the body as a source of empowerment and self-affirmation in the face of loss and structural violence.

This performance will weave together biography, survival, and urban science fiction.

Free entrance until full capacity is reached

This performance has been organised on the occasion of Madrid’s international contemporary art fair, ARCOmadrid 2018, whose curatorial programme this year gravitates around the question of The Future.

CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in conjunction with Mother Spain Silvi ManneQueen and Madrid Voguing Ball - BALLROOM SCENE wish to invite you to the celebrations for the 5th Anniversary of the Madrid Voguing Ball, the 10th Anniversary of CA2M and the closing of the exhibition Elements of Vogue: A Case Study in Radical Performance. This joint celebration will be held on 6 May in the guise of THE OVAH BALL.

The Ovah Ball is not far off, and it’s the moment you’ve been waiting for to show off your creativity and originality and take it to another level. Create a work of art with your performance and your look. This ball is your chance to be the artist, exhibiting your masterpiece...

Inspired by the use of materials and their transformation, participants will be required to create jaw-dropping looks and to fight it out in battles and leave the judges speechless. And if they do say anything, let it be: OVAH!!!

“Take trash and turn it into treasure, take tragic and turn it into magic”

The event will take place in the installation created specifically by the New York artist Rashaad Newsome for holding balls at CA2M, a fabulous world of precious stones, glamour, bling bling and superficial glitter but which is at once a platform for the radical resistance of dancing bodies.

If you’ve already seen the exhibition Elements of Vogue and love ballroom culture and voguing, you won’t want to miss this ball. But if you haven’t seen it yet and love everything about performance, fashion and dance, strutting down the runway like a true model, or if your thing is pure creativity and you want to express yourself freely and be who you really are.... then this is the time and place for you! You can take part as a competitor or enjoy the show as part of the audience: just remember to be who you want to be and that that once you start watching, you too are part of the show!

BE WHOEVER YOU WANNA BE!

We invite you to attend the ball with a look inspired by one of the many options we have chosen. We recommend checking the event regularly on Facebook, for inspirational photos for looks and costumes.

A ball is a safe space where you can express yourself as you want to be, with battles in different categories (voguing, runway, hands performance), with different artists and dancers who face off in front of an international jury.

Host:
Mother Spain Silvi ManneQueen (Spain)

Commentator:
Matyouz LaDurée (Paris)
Judges:
Twiggy Pucci Garçon (NYC)
Mother Leiomy Amazon (NYC)
Archie Burnett Ninja (NYC)
DJ: MikeQ

CATEGORIES

Choose the one that suits you best, be the person who want to be, and compete for those 10s! The sky’s the limit! Below you have a guide to the various categories to INSPIRE your look.

OTA (Open to all): any individual, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, etc.

F A S H I O N

TAG TEAM RUNWAY OTA
TRASH BAGS is the INSPIRATION for designing a look in this category. In addition, you will also have to use METAL to create your accessories. This is your chance if you want to be a real model, without stereotypes or canons. Bear in mind that this is not a fancy dress ball. Creativity, eleganza and xtravaganza are the keywords.

This category is for tag teams and each pair will compete on the runway, looking for 10s. The teams shortlisted by the jury will go on to fight it out in battles, where two competitors will walk at the same time in ballroom style. Judges will be looking for runway technique. Plastic is fantastic but metal is too!!

DESIGNERS DELIGHT OTA
This is your chance to show off your style and taste. You don’t need to dance, just show us your best design, the one that represents who you really are as a designer, using materials like PAPER, CARDBOARD AND/OR POSTERBOARD as your source of inspiration.

Remember that the designer does not necessarily have to walk with the costume, but the outfit must always be created specifically for the model who will be wearing it on the runway.

Don’t forget that this category takes every detail into account: hair, accessories, jewellery and the model’s ability to sell the look to the judges.

Make sure your look looks flawless.

BIZARRE OTA
Let your imagination and creativity run wild, and show us your most bizarre creation. Anything goes, but your creation should use materials like CABLES, LIGHTBULBS, OBSOLETE TECHNOLOGICAL MATERIAL, etc. Don’t forget to use the concept of transformation; reinvent yourself and amaze or shock us with your outlandish creation.

Forget happening trends and look in the deepest recesses of your own mind to come up with something totally original. Judges will be looking for the creativity, originality and elaboration of the design.

P E R F O R M A N C E 

OLD WAY OTA
For Old way use elements that keep bonds and ties with the origins of voguing. Create a look using ROPE, KNOTS AND/OR STRING, but keeping the signature elegance of this style. You can cut off your opponent and even use elements… but remember, you cannot touch.

NEW WAY OTA
If New Way is your style, here you have a chance to go beyond the origins and incorporate flexibility, speed and control.
Here the inspiration for your look is a more complex weave made from MESH, NETS AND BRAIDED FABRIC.
Be creative!

HANDS PERFORMANCE OTA
In this category you can show us what you can really do with your hands, telling us a story. Dazzle the judges not only with your story, and add LIGHTING, but nothing with a flame.
All hands on deck!

TAG TEAM VOGUE FEMME OTA:
This is the category to truly shine, and this time it is going to be extra special. Leave the judges with their mouths open, borrowing the inspiration for your look from the painting technique known as “DRIPPING”. Cover your costume with colourful SPLASHES and BRUSHSTROKES.

This category is also for teams in which at least one member will have to be a beginner or virgin (1 year or less), whether the style be dramatics or soft and cunt. Show the judges what you can do as a team. Be creative! If you want to get 10s then impress the judges with your look, dance technique, elements and charisma.

REALNESS: (3 trophies)

Show us your realness and the realness of your look; you can give a second life to your old DENIM or use remnants of old JEANS for your creation. Remember that it is not just a case of dressing up in fancy dress, and show us something new and modern.

• PRETTY BOY REALNESS
• DRAG REALNESS
• FEMME QUEEN (FQ) / TRANSMEN REALNESS

*Note: This category was originally created in the ballroom scene to award a person’s skills in “passing” unnoticed in larger society, given that, at the time, belonging to the LGTB community, and furthermore being Black or Latino, was no easy task in New York City. For example, the challenge for a gay man was to “pass” among people as heterosexual as possible, and so obtain the same privileges in society, like getting a job. Or, for instance, for a transsexual person, the challenge was to appear as “real” as possible, and return home alive without being beaten up. Within this category there are different types of Realness: Thug Realness, School Boy, Transman Realness, Femme Queen Realness, Butch Realness, Butch Queen Up in Drag Realness (BQUID), etc.

F A C E 

FACE OTA: (1 trophy)
Attract all eyes and make sure your beauty is also reflected in your look, using MIRRORS and GLASS for your creation.
Captivate the judges with your facial features, beauty and charisma. Judges will be looking for facial structures, i.e. cheeks, chin, perfect skin, teeth, smile, but also corporal expression, attitude, make-up and clothes.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall ….who is the fairest at the CA2M ball?

• BQ Face
• FF Face

There will be separate judging by subcategories but there will also be a final battle and one single trophy.

Enrolment is free and open until X 26 APRIL.

Maximum 3 categories per person.

The order of the categories will be announced later.

If you want to take part as a competitor you must fill out the following ENROLMENT FORM

The organization reserves the right to consider a category “full” when it believes that there is a sufficient number of participants, with the purpose of motivating participation in other categories. So, hurry up and book your place now!

If you have any questions about categories and looks, send an email to: MADRIDBALLROOMSCENE@GMAIL.COM

“Jinete is not a rider, Jinete is the effect of resisting the flat plains, the experience of making room in this vast world that tries to oust us, nothing that will last for long, without pain and without danger, and still we hope it won’t disappear.” María Salgado and Fran MM Cabeza de Vaca use these words to describe their latest audio-textual research, which revolves around subjective disobedience in the current socio-historical context. Returning to the project in January 2017, the research is currently grounded in an instrumental piece with the same title for oboe and electronic devices performed in 2013 by the SMASH ensemble and published as a music score in the Present Tense Pamphlets collection. On this occasion, Salgado and Cabeza de Vaca’s work is based on three exercises, or fragments, which include installations and performative, sound and text pieces. The first of these is Jinete Último Reino Frag. 3, “a lyrical concert” and at once “an analyrical recital”, which finds in the night “a proposition of distortion, diversion and emotions”, a space for resistance “where things change form so that tomorrow they will not be the same.”

Admission free while places last

Yabba is a cosmos with its own order, its own rhythm and its own systems in movement that invites spectators to enter a new logic. A hybrid of different technologies, an amalgam of entities in constant transformation in time that produces other things in the encounter with those who observe them.

Things that transpose images, concepts, ideas, emotions that happen precisely at that moment of encounter with the entities of this deformed and changing cosmos.

A kind of being that is everything and nothing, is full and empty, that takes all forms but which still does not have any yet.
Yabba is there, changing, mutating colour, sculpting forms, unfolding its materiality… This state of constant transformation proposes an attentive gaze that pays attention to the inability to name what is happening. Looking after all these indescribable forms opens up a new possibility of interrelating that is removed from measurable values.

María Jerez with Ainhoa Hernández Escudero, Laura Ramírez, Óscar Bueno Rodríguez, Javier Cruz and Alejandra Pombo

Music by Lanoche, aka Ángela de la Serna

Co-produced by Veranos de la Villa, SZENE (Salzburg) and Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zurich)

Admission free while places last

Modernity defined the perfect spaces for the contemplation of artistic practices. The white cube became the ideal environment for the contemplation of art. In the exhibition of white walls isolated from the outside, the viewer can wander among and stop before works without any distraction whatsoever. As a result, their entire being, and particularly their eye were completely given over to the aesthetic experience. This same «neutrality» would be conferred on the theatre space, in which the black box would be consolidated as the ideal device to eliminate any reference to the outer world that might distract spectators deep in concentration, who in their stillness, would watch the lives of the characters unfold in front of them as if they were seated at a café terrace.

In this cycle of performances, dance and theatre, we present a set of proposals that depart from the idea of performance as a discipline that expands and oversteps the traditional boundaries of not only the practices themselves, but also the conventional exhibition spaces and institutions dedicated to artistic practices. How can dance and theatre be presented in the same museum? To what extent can the specific conditions of presentation inherent to each alter the logic of the museum space? How can the frameworks of meaning contributed by the museum transform these practices? It is in this mind frame that we suggest a program in which the concepts of performance and performativity are analysed on the basis of various proposals. Thus, not only the bodies will perform, but also the images, words and, obviously, the things.

In the definitions given by both Austin, and then Buttler, Derrida or more recently even Maurizio Lazzarato, the term performativity alluded to the linguistic, the identifying and the objectual. Moreover, in recent years, the concept of performativity has also invaded the political terrain. To such an extent that the events protagonised by the bodies of citizens in the squares of a large part of the Mediterranean Arc have been described as performances. And so it would appear to be important to rethink the contributions contemporary artists are making to this practice.

Over a series of six dual performance sessions and the workshop Open space Black Box / White Cube? Thinking about the periphery to be held in the Sala Pradillo in Madrid, we suggest cross-disciplinary encounters through a program of performances grouped into 6 sessions to be expressed around three axes: language, the political body and the performativity of things.

The acts of language: the cycle opens with the piece titled Black by Mette Edvarsen, who quite aptly constructs a series of objects through the spoken word and movement that allude to the blackness of the theatre. Those objects which, painted black, we find in any stage setting, deprived of all color. The artists participating in this block will work with the spoken word to create situations in which those present are accomplices in the construction of meaning.

The political body: according to Butler, the policy of «being together» or the «appearance of bodies in the square», represents an act of bravery by those who risk their physical safety in the simple act of re-occupying the public space, so frequently privatized. What role might bodies play in an impoverished public area in the midst of a crisis of representative democracy? How to deal with issues such as presence, representation and occupation through the work of dance and performance? Here it again becomes essential to rethink concepts such as the «people», «the masses», «the crowd», the performance of me and social choreography.

The performativity of things: the work of these artists revolves around the activation of objects that are apparently insignificant with the intention of triggering new layers of meaning that go beyond positivist materialism. Whether through the use of appropriationist strategies of Duchampian origin, or others closer to the surrealism of objects found, or those from situationist détournement, these creative acts focus on generating new ways of relating to our environment. But in this block we will not just talk about objects, rather we will delve into the meaning of things, those elements that go beyond the radical separation established by modernity between subjects and objects. Thus, things have the capacity to allude to abstract matters, but may also transport us to the world of animism, and naturally, the fetish. Therefore, performance would be that «thing» that refuses to be trapped.

Curated by Pablo Martínez

PROGRAM

THU 27 MAR IITZIAR OKARIZ / METTE EDVARDSEN

SUN 30 MAR TAMARA KUSELMAN/ GUILLEM MONT Y JORGE DUTOR

THU 3 APR AIMAR P. GALÍ/ BLACK TULIP

SAT 5 APR OPEN SPACE (TEATRO PRADILLO)

SUN 6 APR EVA MEYER KELLER/ TERE RECARENS

THU 10 APR PAZ ROJO/ MÅRTEN SPÅNGBERG

SUN 13 APR NORBERTO LLOPIS /RUBÉN GRILO Y SPIROS HADJIDJANO

Free entrance