Marcos Morau’s troupe La Veronal had the National Dance Award bestowed upon it by the Spanish Ministry of Culture in 2015 and has produced bizarrely compelling work which defies definition and categorisation, ever since.The Pasionaria of the title is an artificial, futuristic landscape, in which the emotionally divested humanoid inhabitants move in disjointed zombie-like jerks and shuffles, whilst others stomp like automatons and still more possess a physical fluidity which defies gravity.
The complexity and inventiveness on show — where not a twitch is out of place and precision movement is meticulously delivered — is superb. Such multi-disciplinary spectacles aren’t to everyone’s taste, but even the uninitiated will be impressed by the performance skills on display and in a world where diminishing individuality and a moral vacuum has rendered many citizens impotent and at the mercy of autocratic regimes, this futuristic dystopia may not be an entirely fanciful leap of imagination after all.
