#PASSION: “I CONSIDER IT VERY NECESSARY THAT, IN ORDER TO LISTEN TO THE NEEDS OF THE WORLD, WE TURN OUR GAZE INWARD AND FI8ND PASSIONS IN RELATION TO OTHERS AND NATURE.” – IN CONVERSATION WITH CANDELA CAPITÁN

#PASSION: “I CONSIDER IT VERY NECESSARY THAT, IN ORDER TO LISTEN TO THE NEEDS OF THE WORLD, WE TURN OUR GAZE INWARD AND FI8ND PASSIONS IN RELATION TO OTHERS AND NATURE.” – IN CONVERSATION WITH CANDELA CAPITÁN

Interview by Johanne Björklund Larsen
All images courtesy of the artist

Maybe you have seen some of her work as you scroll through social media: femme performers dressed in baby pink full-bodysuits performing erotic movements in front of laptops; shirtless male dancers in black trousers repeating the same somersault over and over again as the sweat drips down their faces; or performers dressed in silver bodysuits and dark sunglasses, swinging increasingly erratically back and forth in their chain-strapped trapezes.
Or maybe you have no idea what I’m talking about, but in that case, I’d suggest you take out your nearest screen and search “Candela Capitán,” the creator behind these works.

Candela Capitán is a Spanish choreographer, dancer and performer. Her work employs the body to explore topics that concern our present and disassemble notions of movement and expression. Throughout her performances, she captures the palpable tension between the organic movements of the human form and the often mechanical, digital context they are set against. This contrast is not just a stylistic choice, but a deliberate effort to question and understand the evolving relationship between our bodies and the increasingly digital world we inhabit.
In an era where screens hold a dominating grip in our lives, Candela Capitán’s work challenges us to reevaluate our relationship with technology and movement. It succeeds with this in a way that feels both unique yet quintessentially now,from the topics it discusses to the aesthetics she employs. It is fun, hypnotizing, exciting, vulnerable and just really, really good.

Johanne Björklund Larsen: Could you tell me about your practice?

Candela Capitán: I am interested in the relationship between artistic disciplines, and that is why I create pieces that explore the languages and discourses of the body through different paths, practices and mediums. My works use various choreographic platforms such as installations, live action, video, online channels, etc.

What currently drives you?

Dreamlike spaces and parallel realities where different contemporary themes are exposed.

What role does passion play in your work?

I believe that art has the ability to convey what is there and what we are unable to express or even find answers to something that is unresolved, something to which you need to give a “body” or bring to life to find its own way out.

How do you think passion manifests in our bodies?

All our movements happen through our passions, and these are in continuous relation to the present, our culture, and our community.

There is this common way of how we tend to think passion is expressed (big emotions, dramatic gestures, loud voices). But I feel this is also a rather limited way of looking at it. Do you think there are other forms passion can take beyond these references?

When I read this question, I can only think of the works of one of the great choreographers in our history, Pina Bausch. I believe she is the choreographer who has worked best on the subject of passion, and undoubtedly, she did it through intense emotions, dramatic gestures, and loud voices, as well as through repetition, sudden falls, accentuation of pleasures, and violence. In “The Rite of Spring” (1975), one of the most significant works of the 20th century that directly addresses passions, we find a stage covered in dirt where, in a ritual within a community, one of the dancers is chosen and must dance to death. Undoubtedly, one of the most passionate and violent gestures in the history of dance is to dance to death, but this mode of expressing passion is present throughout the choreography. Another scene that comes to mind is the endless embrace that cannot be sustained in “Café Muller” (1985), where the choreographer explores the spiral of time, the melancholy that occurs in a place where humans never manage to meet.

There is this prevailing presence of the digital realm in your work. How do you think passion is transformed as we increasingly replace face-to-face contact with interactions happening through digital screens (or maybe it’s not transformed at all?)?

As I mentioned earlier, I believe that passions in culture change as society advances and the way we relate to our environment, others and ourselves evolves. I feel that when we talk about passions, we are not only talking about the feeling of adoration for someone or something. Passions, as Foucault would say, are a technology of the self. I like to give it that focus because it gives me the feeling that the subjectivities of the self and our emotions towards the other also evolve and change, just as machines change as science advances. That’s why in my work, I try to portray the passions that move us today, where new communication and information platforms through new technologies cannot be sidelined. However, I constantly wonder if our way of relating, if our passions in this current reality where everything happens through screens, are becoming emptier or colder, and if they only make us look at ourselves.

In relation to the scene I mentioned from Bausch’s “Café Muller,” I think there is a direct relationship with my first performance, “The Death at The Club” (2018 – in progress). In my performance, the performers are in a kind of self-hypnosis, where they test the resilience of their own bodies through erratic movements for 45 minutes: repeated somersaults diagonally and in a delimited space. The difference between the two works exists because my interest lies in expressing passion linked to a sense of emptiness in a world where the performers have to figure things out for themselves.

What are other ways you think your work plays into/references our contemporary times?

In addition to “The Death at The Club,” I created “19762. Solos y conectados” (2022) and “SOLAS” (2023). In all my works, there is an exploration of the relationship between contemporary society and new technologies, the feeling of emptiness in youth, or bodies trapped in an imposed routine. In all of them, I combine different layers or concepts that stir me.

“19762. Solos y conectados” is my first scenic piece for six bodies connected to a giant industrial carousel that creates circular movements in a kind of perpetuum mobile from which the dancers cannot escape. The carousel is a device of seduction and deceit. A contraption that condemns bodies to routine and with which the performers must deal during the performance. This machine represents the figure of capitalism and traps the bodies in it, forcing them to be both alone and connected at the same time. “19762. Solos y conectados” consists of six chapters and an epilogue, where the dance is entirely choreographed through the suspension of the body hanging from a harness and two chains, using movement phrases following the circular pattern created by the carousel machine. The six chapters and the epilogue allow the audience to easily identify the emotional state of the bodies, their affective place, or their fall into routines and traps.

“SOLAS” is my second scenic piece, a performance that has a direct relationship with “19762. Solos y conectados,” but in this case, it specifically addresses the overexposure of the female body on social media and streaming platforms. In this piece, there are five female bodies, five computers, and an online web platform. Instead of having a machine that physically conditions the bodies, the dancers are absorbed and trapped by their psychic attachment to virtuality and the monetary exchange offered by virtual platform users when they present their bodies and dance in front of the camera. The choreographic composition of “SOLAS” brings together sixteen erotic figures that represent an artistic iconography of Chaturbate, an erotic platform where they connect with the virtual audience while performing.

Finally, what is your passion?

My answer may sound a bit new-age, but

This is not very easy in today’s world, especially in my generation, where we have grown up in front of screens that constantly fill us with information and distract us. I consider it very necessary that, in order to listen to the needs of the world, we turn our gaze inward and find passions in relation to others and nature.