>> CÈL·LULA #6: FAULA 2025 PREMIERE: 02/10/25 - Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona
3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12/10/2025 - Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona
November 23rd
- Festival Temporada Alta, Girona/Salt
November 28th - CataLANDance, Terrassa
"Where am I when I am not in reality nor in my imagination?" Nostalghia, Andrei Tarkovski
"All tales deal with the unitary substance of the Whole,
- men, beasts, plants and things -, the infinite possibility of metamorphosis of all that exists." Italo Calvino
Within each world, there are many potential worlds. And just like the reflections in the mirror play, we can glimpse the threads that connect us and the bonds that sustain us. FAULA (fable) is a new chapter of the ongoing exploration of the group and what we can build together - between the individual and the collective bodies, interdependence and mutual trust. Now we turn our gaze towards everthing that is fabulous, towards an amalgam of fantastic creatures, in a celebration of all that is extraordinary within us.
ARTISTIC INFORMATION Concept and choreography: Roser López Espinosa / Created with and performed by: María Arronis, Nicholas Baffoni, Nora Baylach, Matilde Casini, Noé Ferey, Genaro Cibils, Patrícia Hastewell, Anamaria Klajnšček / Choreography assistants: Nora Baylach, Anamaria Klajnšček / Apprentice: Irene Rojo / Original music: Mark Drillich / Dramaturgy: Katarina Pejović / Costume: Åsa Gjerstad / Set and lighting design: Cube.bz / Technical coordination: Oriol Ibáñez / Stage operator:Oriol Brusi / Lowland production: Rosa Pino / Executive production: Blanc Produccions
Production: CÈL·LULA #6 Mercat de les Flors, II Pla d’impuls a la dansa Co-production: Temporada Alta Festival With the collaboration of: Graner, dance and performing arts creation centre; La Caldera – Dance creation centre (Barcelona)
Thanks to: Àngels Margarit, Aurora Bauzà & Pere Jou, Jun Komura, Sergi Olivet, Patrícia Bargalló, Roberta Ruggiero, Urša Sekirnik, Lipi Hernández, Domènec López, Rosa Espinosa.
CÈL·LULA emerges as an embryonic project for the production, creation and transmission of dance within the structure of Mercat de les Flors.The objective of this project is to make possible the creation of medium- and large-format works by choreographers who are at the point of maturity and interest in deploying their talent and their aesthetic universe in this stage format. CÈL·LULA thus supports large-scale creation, transmission and circulation of knowledge within the professional community.
FABULATION AS A FORCE
By
Bàrbara Raubert
Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona
Fabulation — in both senses of its Latin root fabula: invention and wonder — is the lens through which Roser López Espinosa approaches Cèl·lula, the Mercat de les Flors’ project supporting the creation of large-format dance pieces, now in its sixth edition.
Roser is a choreographer whose work explores forms that transcend what is strictly human. In 2017, she presented her piece L’estol (Catalan for “the flock”), as part of the first National Dance Production, inviting audiences into the movement of migratory birds — a piece that has lived through many bodies: “It originated from the duet Lowland (2013), was later danced by students at MTD in Amsterdam, and is now part of the Scottish Dance Theatre's repertoire,” explains Roser, a lover of hiking and documentaries. Her close observation of the natural world has led her to perceive a kind of beauty that emerges in delicate and imperfect places, because: “Anything that is alive is never exactly symmetrical or perfect.”
We can easily recognize this in ourselves: far from perfection. And yet, there is another deeply human quality — one that does touch upon the ideal. It is the capacity to imagine — to create other realities that, when projected, become possible. With Cometa (2021), her first family-oriented piece, she explored the cosmos alongside many children, discovering the vast imaginative potential we are born with. As William Blake once said: “Imagination is not a state, it is human existence itself.” But she also noticed how, in adults saturated with images, rules, and conventions, that very capacity begins to fade. Reviving fabulation is at the heart of her latest work.
While fabulating is a way to reconnect with who we are as a species, it also opens the door to becoming something entirely new. Connecting and interweaving bodies has long been a formal obsession in her choreographic research. The results can be perceived as relational experiments — exercises in shared experience with real-world resonance.
For this project, she has chosen to step offstage and care for the process from the outside, working closely and attentively with each performer. Some of them are long-time collaborators, such as Nora Baylach and Anamaria Klajnšček. She has also worked previously with dramaturg Katarina Pejović, costume designer Åsa Gjerstad, and composer Mark Drillich, whom she brought together again because: “Shared history is very important — with just a look, we already understand each other, and that helps so much in the creative process.”
Among other things, the eight performers have worked with the idea of a puzzle — a body made of interconnected bodies, precise yet bordering on disorder. “Collective bodies may resemble a seemingly impossible organism, but they move forward thanks to their potential — what we can achieve together. And at the same time, we celebrate all that is extraordinary in us, that makes us fantastic, unique creatures.” And that is the true wonder: the power to make the (seemingly) impossible possible.
IMAGINING THE UNSEEN
By
Katarina Pejović
The world we share today seems to be exhausting its old forms and formulas up until their last breath. Staring at its own end as we know it, this world asks (or rather yells) for re-defining, re-articulating, perhaps even re-setting all the basic notions of its existence, in order to be able to re-emerge at its new beginning. Needless to say, we humans are the protagonists of this re-process. The steps we are supposed to make do not require grand gestures - on the contrary. It is more about the multitude of small steps interlaced with love and trust, with a different perspective on the individual and the community. Rather than reaching out for radical cuts, it is about searching for new ways of transformation.
This is one such small step.
The prerequisite for its unfolding is, however, the capacity to imagine that which is still invisible, yet unseen. The shape of things to come appears first in our minds, only then to be brought to life. We delve into discovering mutual bonds that bring us together and make us create new forms, impossible to exist without unconditional trust and our surrendering to the group dynamics. We look at how collective movement invokes not only various shapes of community but how on this synergistic journey the intertwining, waving, entangling and disentangling, supporting and suspending, gives birth to fabulous creatures. And although those fabulous creatures might be transient, their short existence makes a lasting energetic imprint in our memory. The mirror in which we see ourselves shifts its perspective, offering us a new reflection. Perhaps even an image that dwells through the looking glass?...
This project is a celebration of the extraordinary in all of us.
