The Spanish dancer, choreographer and researcher Olga de Soto (b. 1972) recently presented Reconstrucción de una danza macabra (Reconstruction of a danse macabre) at the Museo Reina Sofía, in Madrid, Spain as part of the institution’s Fisuras (Fissures) programme. The work was exhibited from February 28 - July 1, 2024, and expanded upon an earlier research project of over a decade ago that focused on Der grüne Tisch (The Green Table, 1932), an anti-war ballet by German choreographer Kurt Jooss (1901 - 1979). Reconstruction is curated by Lola Hinojosa, Head of Performing Arts and Intermedia Collection, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, who joins STIR in an interview that explores de Soto’s research on Jooss’ ballet, along with how it connects to our current political climate.

Reconstruction did not present a dance choreography. The exhibition space spanned three rooms - the first featured an exhaustive set of documentation materials covering Jooss’s ballet, the second showed video interviews with dancers and audiences of the work and the final room held an immersive installation consisting of various voices emerging from darkness, within which audience members almost engage in performance art of their own as they move around the space in search of their voices. Discussing the installation, Hinojosa tells STIR, "De Soto has built a darkened space with the choreography of voices that emerge from different points and whose origin the visitor cannot identify spatially, due to the darkness. So the visitor must create their choreography to relate to these voices.” The voices are of four of de Soto’s interviewees who were former performers and audience members of The Green Table. They communicate their experiences with the ballet in four different languages. Through their exposition, the artist explores how the choreography was received, transmitted and interpreted across nations and history.

Beyond the walls of the exhibition, the Reina Sofía also showed two of de Soto’s performances, Paper Lane and Paper Mirage. The curator explains that de Soto’s work is articulated around two lines of exploration. In Hinojosa’s words, “The first is denoted by long processes of research and documentation related to the history of dance and the analysis of considerations such as the reception and transmission of the discipline; the exhibition corresponds to this first line.” de Soto’s second research thread is concerned with the bodily and mental memory of the performer, along with the relationship between the performer, their physical gestures and the materials that they work with. Paper Lanes was performed from May 9-11 and Paper Mirage on June 20-21. The former seeks to create a meditative space that resists the tech-heavy nature of our world by inviting the audience to focus purely on the sound and action of the performance artist tearing a ten-metre-long sheet of paper. Paper Mirage builds on Paper Lanes and seeks to develop a connection between paper and the trees it comes from, reminding audiences of the vegetal world through de Soto’s manipulation of various paper sheets. She especially focuses on the different sounds that are created as a result.

At the beginning, her approach to this choreography was not related to the geopolitical context but rather to her interest in the history of dance. She was a student of one of the dancers who performed the piece. – Lola Hinojosa, Head of Performing Arts and Intermedia Collection, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

Hinojosa discusses the roots of de Soto’s connection to The Green Table, telling STIR, “At the beginning, her approach to this choreography was not related to the geopolitical context but rather to her interest in the history of dance. She was a student of one of the dancers who performed the piece.” At this point, she had primarily an academic interest in dance and focused on researching oral and bodily memory, along with dance archives. However, as de Soto delved deep into the experiences of dancers and spectators of the ballet, she found that The Green Table transcended its original geopolitical era and that it remains a highly relevant dance work for its critique of the violence and deception inherent in geopolitics. While there have been some variations of the piece over the decades, it seems to remain as Jooss intended: mutually assured destruction between a group of masked and suited dancers that exhibit faux politeness and a sense of matter-of-factness as they go about their deeply unnerving movements.

As Hinojosa explains, de Soto found that testimonies for The Green Table have overflowed across sociopolitical contexts right from the early 30s, leading many to consider it a key political dance work from the interwar period in Europe. de Soto’s presentation expands access to the work’s expression of ever-present anxieties around war and human annihilation to newer audiences. The Fissures programme that it is a part of has run for 15 years, opening the Reina Sofía up to two guest artists for exhibitions and interventions every year. Interestingly, Reconstruction is the last exhibition in the series, which makes for a rather sombre note to end the Fissures programme, given the macabre nature of its subject matter. Per Hinojosa, de Soto has found that The Green Table resonates with contemporary geopolitics every time she has worked on it and that this is true for Reconstruction as well.

‘Reconstrucción de una danza macabra’ was shown at the Museo Reina Sofía, from February 28 - July 1, 2024.