Dance Today

COLECCIÓN DESPIERTA DEL MODERNO

FRANCISCO LEMUS

A BOOK THAT EXPLORES AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF THE AVANT-GARDE MOVEMENTS IN THE 1960s: THE EXPERIMENTAL REVIVAL OF MODERN DANCE IN BUENOS AIRES. (COMP.)

DANCE TODAY

EXPERIMENTATION IN ARGENTINE DANCE IN THE 1960s

VICTORIA ALCALA OSCAR ARAIZ

MARIANA BELLOTTO PATRICIA DORIN

DIEGO FISCHERMAN VICTORIA FORTUNA FERNANDO GARCÍA

VIOLETA GONZÁLEZ SANTOS MARCELO ISSE MOYANO ANA KAMIEN

SOFÍA KAUER

KADO KOSTZER

NICOLÁS LICERA VIDAL MARILÚ MARINI LEONE SONNINO SILVINA SZPERLING SUSANA TAMBUTTI TRANSLATED BY KIT MAUDE

M U S E O D E A R T E M O D E R N O D E B U E N O S A I R E S

FRANCISCO LEMUS (COMP.)

DANCE TODAY

COLECCIÓN DESPIERTA DEL MODERNO

Dance Today: experimentation in Argentine Dance in the 1960s / Victoria Alcala... [et al.]; compilación de Francisco Lemus ; dirigido por Victoria Noorthoorn ; editado por Alejandro Palermo; Martín Lojo. - 1a ed. - Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 2023.

256 p. ; 21 x 14 cm. - (Despierta / Victoria Noorthoorn ; Gabriela Comte ; 4) Traducción de: Kit Alexander Maude.

ISBN 978-987-673-624-4 1. Arte. 2. Danza. 3. Danza Moderna. I. Alcala, Victoria II. Lemus, Francisco, comp. IV. Noorthoorn, Victoria, dir. V. Palermo, Alejandro, ed. VI. Lojo, Martín, ed. VII. Maude, Kit Alexander, trad.

CDD 792.80982

Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires Av. San Juan 350 (1147), Buenos Aires

Printed in Argentina

Design and identity of the logo and covers of the collection: Max Rompo / estudio Acorde & Co. / General edition: Gabriela Comte / Graphic design: Pablo Alarcón and Alberto Scotti / Editing: Martín Lojo, Alejandro Palermo and Soledad Sobrino / Translation: Kit Maude / Proofreading: Julia Benseñor / Digital photochromy: Guillermo Miguens

At the closing time of this publication, the Museum of Modern Art has made all efforts to secure the rights of reproduction of the works. Should there be any omission, the institution will contact whoever is necessary.

FRANCISCO LEMUS (COMP.)

DANCE TODAY

EXPERIMENTATION IN ARGENTINE DANCE IN THE 1960s

VICTORIA ALCALA OSCAR ARAIZ MARIANA BELLOTTO PATRICIA DORIN DIEGO FISCHERMAN VICTORIA FORTUNA FERNANDO GARCÍA VIOLETA GONZÁLEZ SANTOS MARCELO ISSE MOYANO ANA KAMIEN SOFÍA KAUER KADO KOSTZER NICOLÁS LICERA VIDAL MARILÚ MARINI LEONE SONNINO SILVINA SZPERLING SUSANA TAMBUTTI TRANSLATED BY KIT MAUDE

INDEX

INTRODUCTION 11 FRANCISCO LEMUS

1. SKETCHES 21 Dore Hoyer: Modernism in Buenos Aires in the Late 1950s and Early 1960s 23 PATRICIA DORIN

Flying Light: Iris Scaccheri and her Dances 29 VICTORIA ALCALA

Iris Scaccheri: A Devastating Dancer 35 MARIANA BELLOTTO

Patricia Stokoe: “Dance for Everyone” 39 SILVINA SZPERLING

The Di Tella and Other Hallucinogens 45 KADO KOSTZER

2. CHRONICLES 51 Modern Dance in Argentina. A Little History 53 MARCELO ISSE MOYANO

Links in the Chain. Fragments of Fragments 63 OSCAR ARAIZ

Order and Adventure: Villanueva’s World 71 FERNANDO GARCÍA

The Dance Laboratory: Susana Zimmermann at the Di Tella 79 VICTORIA FORTUNA

Ballet Music 85 DIEGO FISCHERMAN

3. CONVERSATIONS 91 Interview with Marilú Marini 93 FERNANDO GARCÍA

Interview with Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino 101 VIOLETA GONZÁLEZ SANTOS

4. CHRONOLOGY 145 Dance and Experimentation in Buenos Aires in the Sixties 147 SOFÍA KAUER Y NICOLÁS LICERA VIDAL

BIOGRAPHIES 199 REGISTER 209 20th Century - 1983 - Dance doesn’t Forget 211 SUSANA TAMBUTTI

BIBLIOGRAPHY 235 ABOUT THE AUTHORS 243

INTRODUCTION Francisco Lemus

I

If one were to step back and expand their view, it would be obvious that the development of different strands of modernism, avant-garde art, the neo-avant garde movements of the sixties and all the experiences that occurred during the emergence of contemporary art weren’t limited to a single artistic discipline or practice or filtered through one single form of cultural or intellectual mediation. However, in the course of the 20th century what we consider as ‘art’ has often been overly dominated by the visual field. It is for this reason that the term art is often regarded as meaning visual art, or, to be a little more subtle about it, the production of objects with no use value.

This kind of art is the material that artistic institutions – especially museums of fine and modern art – have incorporated most effectively into their curatorial parameters and collections. In addition, visual (and object) art is what has always been bought and sold by the elites. These two spheres – the institutions and the market – have been key to the consolidation of the art system as it has been for the past half century and will continue to be today if we don’t start to take a more nuanced view that embraces a more vital approach to the field. However, the process, supported by the copious pages of the history of visual art, has been quite dominant. It is not my intention to present a criticism here, but simply a broad description

in order to help us to expand our gaze so as to get to the heart of the subject of this book.

Often, the objective of merging art with life was considered solely in terms of the transformation of reality, a radical change in the state of the world. The utopianism of the avant garde and its heroic ethos – including everything from manifestos to activism – have outshone other ways to consider the relationship between art and life that might not be so grandiose but are just as effective at creating new universes, communicating emotions, bringing together different creative trajectories and reaching new audiences. It is well known that the objective of modernist and avant-garde movements was not just to be total – i.e.: to include all disciplines – but also to expand internationally. Perhaps the greatest legacy of this long journey was the creation of a bold new subjectivity capable of uniting and mixing all the experiences of contemporary life in cities and on tour, rationality and spirituality, painting and bodies, the reaffirmation of the role of the artist in society and approximation to a distant Other.

In that context, modern dance becomes a model case in terms of reducing the omnipresence of the visual, which remains deeply rooted in the processes of artistic institutions and, above all, museums. In addition, the opportunity to consider modern dance within the universe of meaning established by a museum exhibition programme1 makes it possible to revert another very significant history of exclusion: that generated by male hegemony in narratives of modern art. Throughout the 20th century, dance has been one of the disciplines that best provided a space for the cultural and aesthetic 1

In 2023, the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires held the exhibition Danza actual.

Experimentación en la danza argentina de los años sesenta [Dance Today: Experimentation in Argentine Dance in the 1960s], under my curatorship. The exhibition explored an often overlooked episode in histories of the avant-garde movements of the time: the experimentation and renewal of modern dance in Buenos Aires. It also paid homage to the pioneering teachers and women who brought modern dance to large audiences and inspired new generations of young dancers. Several of the authors featured in this book were fundamental to the research carried out in the two years prior to the exhibition.

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expression of women. It was within that sphere that they formed companies, schools, groups and networks that stretched across the planet avoiding the asymmetries and tensions deeply rooted in other disciplines in which Europe and the United States played hegemonic roles.

II

In contrast to other countries in Latin America, during the first half of the 20th century, modern dance was well received in Argentina.2 This is reflected in audiences at local theatres, the opening of schools and the creation of companies and groups that would train several generations of dancers.

The Second World War brought the visits of American companies prevented from touring Europe, and several tours of the continent were organized. In addition, the rise of the Nazis saw many Jewish dancers from Austria and Germany move to Argentina where they introduced new movements and techniques. Notable among these were the dancer Otto Werberg and Renate Schottelius, a choreographer who would become a very prominent teacher of dance for the next few decades. Those who were involved and witnessed the period between the Second World War and the sixties describe it as being the ‘golden years of modern dance in Argentina’3. Previously, in the 1920s and 30s, following the first influx of immigrants – in which the Jewish community of the city swelled – Argentine society 2

For a more extensive history, see the essay by Marcelo Isse Moyano and the Chronology

by Sofía Kauer and Nicolás Licera Vidal in this book.

3

Conversation between the author and the photographer Alicia Sanguinetti, Buenos Aires, November 2022. Since the sixties, Alicia Sanguinetti has specialized in dance photography, continuing the legacy of her mother Annemarie Heinrich, a great German photographer who lived in Argentina in the twenties and promoted dance in all its forms and disciplines.

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grew far more culturally diverse with local customs and cultural habits changing significantly, and this was reflected on the local music, dance and theatre scenes.

In this context, in which different styles and currents emerged and intermingled, two major influences can be identified: the American and European methods. The former is embodied by Martha Graham, whose technique focused on freeing emotions through breathing exercises accompanied by tensing and relaxing the core of the body. The European influence, meanwhile, is represented by Mary Wigman, a German dancer and choreographer who played a central role in the development of expressionist dance – forged in the midst of the rise of modernism in the arts and characterized by improvisation, relaxation of inhibitions and provocative movements that expressed the ‘freedom of the spirit’.

In 1944, the American dancer Miriam Winslow created and directed the first independent group of professional dance in Argentina. Winslow trained the first wave of teachers, which consisted of Ana Itelman, Luisa Grinberg, Cecilia Ingenieros and Paulina Ossona, among others. Ana Itelman stands out especially as a choreographer and trainer of numerous generations of modern dancers in Argentina with her work at her private studio, the Dance Department at Bard College in New York and the Teatro San Martín in Buenos Aires.

In late 1950, The German dancer Dore Hoyer visited Buenos Aires for the first time. Following the success of her shows at the Teatro Colón, in 1959 she was invited to move to the country to form a company at the Teatro Argentino in La Plata. A rigorous teacher strongly influenced by the historic avant garde, her time in the country played a decisive role in the formative years of Oscar Araiz, Lía Jelín, Susana Ibáñez and Iris Scaccheri. In addition, during the first half of the 20th century, several Argentine dancers travelled to the United States and Germany to further their education. They included María Fux and Patricia Stokoe, dancers and educators who added modern dance and bodily expression, respectively, to the range of therapeutic and educational methods available in the country.

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This network of migratory movements, trips, residences, teachers and disciples spread modern dance to different spaces and cities, seeing it added to educational curricula. Bodily expression also began to appear at the most popular theatres, openings of visual art exhibitions and on television, among many other spaces. At the Asociación Amigos de la Danza (Friends of Dance Association), which was active between 1962 and 1966, classical and modern dance were combined for the first time in Argentina, allowing different generations of professionals to work together.

III

The sixties was an extremely vibrant period in cultural, social, and political terms. It was a time when the field of art expanded its creative outlook driven by new avant-garde movements, new media and cultural consumption as well as progressive sexual liberation. In Argentina, which was governed during these years by the democratically elected Radical president Arturo Illia initially and subsequently the military dictator Juan Carlos Onganía, the decade was riven by disputes between progressive culture and military repression and violence.

The cultural scene in Buenos Aires was expanded by the opening of new art galleries and the resurgence of spaces that had been active since the first half of the 20th century. The creation of the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, located on Florida street, catalysed the intellectual and creative synergies flowing so freely at the time. It consisted of five centres which focused on economic and social research, musical studies, visual arts and audiovisual experimentation. The architect and director Roberto Villanueva ran the Centre of Audiovisual Experimentation (CEA) between 1963 and 1970. Villanueva gave carte blanche to the young playwrights, actors, singers, musicians, dancers 17

and models who worked at the Di Tella. The hall of the CEA was a genuine hotbed of experimentation with it being just as likely that a show would play to an empty auditorium as for there to be queues for tickets stretching around the block. Thanks to this diverse programme, the Di Tella was the venue for the debuts of the singer and actress Nacha Guevara, the musical group Les Luthiers and the playwrights Griselda Gambaro and Alfredo Arias, among many others.

This period saw an explosion of experimentation in modern dance. Cross-overs with visual arts, popular culture, mainstream theatrical genres, rock and pop, new technologies and fashion placed the discipline at the cutting edge of the avant-garde scene. The power and vitality that had always been features of modern dance were now combined with aspects of contemporary life. Defiant women, breaking with the social conventions of the time, made dance an experience that transcended styles and promoted innovation related to the body, movement and space. This book, produced by the Museo Moderno, explores how throughout the decade they progressively pushed the boundaries of modern dance through interdisciplinary and dramatic experimentation while also emancipating bodies.

Writing from different perspectives and backgrounds, the authors in this book make valuable contributions to our understanding of modern dance in Argentina with an emphasis on the periods when experimentation came to a peak.

The essays explore both the important legacy of the pioneers of modern dance and its more disruptive strands. The activity of the CEA at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires and other spaces such as the Theatre of the Alianza Francesa and the Asociación Amigos de la Danza, are given pride of place. Works, groups and different working methods contributed to the construction of a contemporary language that established a dialogue in which traditional methods were continued, altered and discarded. This dialogue flourished especially at the Ballet of the Teatro San Martín, which was founded in 1968, a watershed moment for the institutional recognition of modern dance.

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The group Danza Actual – whose members were Ana Kamien, Marilú Marini and Graciela Martínez – stood out for their avant-garde innovation in which they explored the relationship between the body and objects and the production of alternative images. Other significant moments were the creation of the Dance Laboratory bv Susana Zimmermann and performances by figures such as Iris Scaccheri and Oscar Araiz which in the sixties brought modern dance to large audiences.

We have used the name Danza actual as a way into considering the importance of modern dance in Argentina. Their groundbreaking work, which paved the way for contemporary dance and also influenced the development of performance art across the country, can be regarded in retrospect as having profound relevance, expanding the horizons of experimentation and creation into the present and beyond.

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1.

SKETCHES

DORE HOYER: MODERNISM IN BUENOS AIRES IN THE LATE 1950s AND EARLY 1960s Patricia Dorin

The 1930s and 1940s provided a fertile environment for new interpretations of the term modern in Argentine dance through the arrival of dancers and choreographers from overseas and their interactions with local colleagues. For example, in 1941, the Teatro del Pueblo hosted performances by Miriam Winslow and Foster Fitz Simmons from the USA, Renate Schotellius and Ida Meval from Germany, Vera Shaw, a Uruguayan of British descent, the Austrian Otto Werberg and the Chilean Inés Pizarro in the same season. The modern dance scene in the City of Buenos Aires proliferated with terms for different practices whose meanings and associations shifted depending on how the critics and the dancers used them and the specific experience in question. Phrases such as ‘modern German dance,’ and ‘expressionist or Central-European dance’ were used to describe trends in modern dance that – within the international context of the interwar period and the beginning of the Second World War – in fact arose out of a range of different sources.

In the 1940s, ‘modern dance’ in the City of Buenos Aires fell into two overarching categories: German and American. The latter saw

educational and choreographic ties established between some of its exponents and local dancers. These two categories positioned themselves in opposition to ballet but assumed very different forms, with the terms modern and expressionist being the main descriptors of these productions. One current of modern dance experiences consolidated itself around the concept of expression as a desirable quality in dance, given that expression represented a form of authenticity seen – in some cases – as a manifestation of the subjective, or the expression or exaltation of the personality of the dancer.

Towards the middle of the decade, in 1944, the formation in Buenos Aires of the Ballet Winslow – a company founded by the American dancer – spurred the development of a methodology for modern dance in Argentina. Following its dissolution in 1949, the formative tours of some of the dancers in the cast helped to establish a receptive audience for the modern dance scene in Buenos Aires and other cities across the country. In addition, the visits and performances of artists from overseas in the 1940s and 1950s helped to strengthen the dance scene in Buenos Aires. The formative tours of dancers such as Renate Schottelius, Ana Itelman and María Fux – who were not members of the aforesaid company – also contributed to the expansion and consolidation of the modern dance scene in Buenos Aires, which gained in vibrancy as these figures established themselves through their contacts in the hubs of modern dance. Greater proximity to these hubs and their leading figures was a form of validation for these and other dancers on the local scene.

Tours were also an important aspect of the solo career of the German dancer Dore Hoyer (Dresden, 1911 - Berlin, 1967), who was always accompanied by the musician Dimitri Wiatowitsch. Hoyer was part of the Ausdruckstanz – or ‘expressive dance’ – movement in Germany. She studied with leading figures in modern dance such as Mary Wigman (1886-1973) and Gret Palucca (1902-1993) and was a member of their dance companies. She started her career as a choreographer and soloist in 1933. In contrast to other German dancers, who performed more regularly prior to and during the Second World War, 24

Hoyer was more prolific in the post-war period both in her creation of solo performances and her tours outside of Germany. In 1952, she made the first of what would be four visits to Buenos Aires in the fifties, which were followed by further tours in 1953, 1955 and 1958 and included other cities such as Córdoba and Mendoza.1 Hoyer’s solo performances included Caja de muñecas [Doll Box], Pieza para dos violines [Piece for Two Violins], Locura encantada sobre la Ofelia [The Charmed Madness of Ophelia] and the series Mujeres bíblicas: La mujer de Putifar, Ruth, La mujer de Magdala, Judith [Biblical Women: Potiphar’s Wife, Ruth, Magdala’s Wife, Judith]), Pavana para una infanta difunta [Pavanne for a Dead Princess], Arlequín [Harlequin] and Frisos ante el espejo [Friezes in front of the Mirror].

The specialized critics regarded her as a high priest or alchemist of dance, praising her ability to express ‘a mood with every gesture.’2 Towards the end of the fifties, the vocabulary used to describe these pieces shifted from spiritual references to the ability to express their era. The emotion in Hoyer’s performances and their effect on the audience were thus associated with the post-war period, existential angst and pathos.

Those who didn’t get a chance to attend one of these solo dances in the fifties in person were able to view her work through images. These press photos were taken in Germany by the photographer Siegfried Enkelmann and in Argentina by Alejandro Castro and Annemarie Heinrich. The latter, who documented her tours, published their work in different specialized media, meaning that Hoyer’s work became known and interpreted through both her in-person tours and black and white photographs of the dancer.

As a corollary to her four visits to Argentina in the 1950s, Hoyer was hired by the Culture Department in the Ministry of Education 1

It is important to note that by the fifties, several spaces had appeared in Argentina that were receptive to modern dance, which in many cases had been founded and run by Argentine dancers since the mid-40s.

2

Qué sucedió en siete días magazine, Year IV, No. 19, Buenos Aires, 26 August 1958.

Newspaper Archive of the Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno (BNMM).

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of the Province of Buenos Aires to set up and officially direct a modern dance troop based at the Teatro Argentino in La Plata. Although press coverage tended to make the claim that modern dance did not previously exist in Argentina, in fact, by the transition from the 1950s to the 1960s, the scene had spread quite extensively and offered an attractive, fertile environment for Hoyer’s project.

Between 1960 and 1961, the German dancer lived for just over a year in the cities of Buenos Aires and La Plata. Her project was to set up the Dore Hoyer Modern Dance Group and a moving chorus with which she put on, in 1961, the performances La idea [The Idea] and Cadena de fugas [Chain of Fugues] at the Teatro Argentino in La Plata and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.3 In October 1963, eleven years after Hoyer’s first trip to the country, an article in the magazine Primera Plana drew a connection between Hoyer’s arrival and the news of the death of the Russian dancer and choreographer Alexander Sakharoff, describing the German dancer as being ‘a central figure in modern dance’ together with ‘the American Martha Graham and the Mexican José Limón.”4 Hoyer’s last visit to the country did not go unnoticed and was especially welcomed by those who hadn’t seen her solo performances in the previous decade, although the local critics did not give it the same enthusiastic welcome and promotion as in previous years. ‘However, all three performances were sold out and ended with long ovations,’ noted Primera Plana before ending by quoting a phrase by Hoyer during said ovation: ‘I knew that you were interested in more than tango.’5 By the early sixties, the term modern, as applied to dance, still encompassed the divisions, classifications and themes of the previous 3

The Dore Hoyer Modern Dance Group consisted of Susana Ibáñez, Lía Jelín, Angó Domenech, Iris Scaccheri, Ana Cremaschi, Martha Jaramillo, Olga Dewel and Oscar Araiz.

The Moving Chorus featured actors such as Norman Briski, Pablo Herrera and Ángel Pavlovsky.

4

‘Dore Hoyer: Ni jazz ni música electrónica’ (Dore Hoyer: Neither Jazz nor Electronic Music), in Primera Plana, Year II, Buenos Aires, 8 October 1963. Newspaper Archive of the BNMM.

5

Ibid.

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decade. Simultaneously, other more difficult to classify forms arose that sought to move away from inner worlds as a source of inspiration for dance in favour of resorting to seemingly non artistic materials such as textiles, wire and discarded materials in which the body became hidden or distorted, conceived as a medium for action.

In 1964, Hoyer proposed a project to return to the country and found a training institution at the Instituto Di Tella, but it was never realized. By now, the influence of other sixties movements was in full sway in the field of dance and new forms of innovation and experimentation were beginning to take over.

Dore Hoyer committed suicide in Berlin on 31 December, 1967.

Her death came as a shock to the local dance scene, especially those who had been a part of her legendary Modern Dance Group. The training program in La Plata had a strong influence on the careers of Oscar Araiz, Susana Ibáñez and Iris Scaccheri, among others. After her death, those who had been taught by Hoyer in La Plata, became the custodians – consciously or otherwise – of a legacy that in subsequent decades would be of extreme importance to modern dance in Argentina, across the country and beyond.

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FLYING LIGHT IRIS SCACCHERI AND HER DANCES Victoria Alcala

At dawn she flew from the bedroom to the kitchen, she flew from the dining room to the pantry, (...)

What joy to have a woman so light..., to offer us an occasional glimpse of the stars!

Oliverio Girondo, Espantapájaros [Scarecrows], 1932

Iris tears into a fig leaf to feel the white sap on her fingers. She gets an allergic reaction, a terrible rash. She is the youngest of four sisters.

Her parents put up with her restless ways as best they can; she’s forever up a tree. The fig tree is in the garden of their home at Number 1520, Calle 10 in La Plata (Buenos Aires, Argentina). She comes from a middle-class family. Her father, Esteban, plays the violin. Her mother, Celestina, is a homemaker. Iris loves nature. She’ll never harm the mysterious, legendary fig tree again, but she’ll clamber all over the orange trees. It’s her little dance, jumping and swinging from one tree to another. She dances in the garden and invents secret characters in her notebooks. She is a daring, enigmatic girl.

Iris Luisa Scaccheri was born on 16 October, 1939, during a raging storm in the Ringuelet neighbourhood, and was welcomed into a large, musical family. Iris often spoke about her birth. In several interviews she said that before she was born, she was already dancing in her mother’s womb. Her primary school teacher, Élida Jordan, let her run around in the playground to let off steam. At first, her

parents resisted her vocation but by the age of six she was studying theatre, and at seven, dance with Carmen Toledo. She danced her first Jota Aragonesa at the Conservatorio Verdi, on Calle 53 in La Plata. Scaccheri was an eclectic, nomadic dancer, one of the most important Argentine artists of the 20th century.

Her sisters, María Élida (a concert pianist), Hilda René (who had a PhD in French) and Dora Mabel (a singer), gave her the gift of sound. Iris started dancing when she was three, to the melodies of Beethoven and Bach she could hear from the next room. They slipped in through her ears, she said, which is why she started to study scores.

At the age of twelve, she was a devoted fan of Napoleon and had begun to mimic his hairstyle, plastering hers to the side with a ponytail.

She wore a different hat or cap every time she went to the theatre.

She was a peculiar woman: when she wasn’t rehearsing barefoot, she wore dresses and turbans that covered her red hair. As generous as she was inscrutable, she couldn’t conceive of a life without dance: ‘People always said I was rude and wild. But in truth I was free.’

When she was fourteen, she moved to Uruguay to study conscious gymnastics with Inx Bayerthal. She took over twelve hours of classes a week and learned to master her internal anatomy. She joined the ballet of the Teatro Argentino de La Plata. When she was nine, she improvised her first dance to music by Hipólito Ivanov. She started with her breathing and how it resonated with other areas of her body, using it to draw lines in space. She called it The Mass and it marked the beginning of a vision that she would later call ‘DanceArt’. Dore Hoyer saw her dance, gave her a kiss and said that she’d work with her again. In her time at the Teatro Argentino, Hoyer directed her along with a group of dancers known as the ‘Moving Chorus’. It featured artists such as Lía Jelín, Susana Ibáñez, Oscar Araiz, Norman Briski, Anna Cremaschi, and more. ‘You’re a born choreographer,’ Hoyer told Scaccheri. On her death, Hoyer left Scaccheri her choreographies. Years later, Iris would revise Bolero and the audience in Berlin would give her a standing ovation.

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Iris began her career with solo performances and leaped to fame in the sixties. In the dance manuals she’s generally to be found alongside modern Argentine movements and the pop generation at the Di Tella as she was able to train free of the German yoke and was also, of course, influenced by the Buenos Aires theatre scene in which the practices of mise en ouevre were popular among experimental and absurdist, neo avant-garde circles. Iris went further: seeking a unique, chameleonic language, she embodied both the nonsensical nature of freedom and protest theatre. Although she was criticized as anachronistic due to the apparent romanticism of her discourse, Scaccheri shook up the modernist scene by including Duncan-like aspects in her repertory, combining poetry, classical music, the theatre of the absurd, flamenco, tango and expressionism. Discussing Isadora Duncan, she said: I have the legs of today, with muscles, and she had soft legs.

Her entire body was supple. Everyone thinks that Isadora was a dancer of great leaps and pirouettes. She wasn’t. She was the form before there was a form. She was the grey witch, the witch of soft colours. Today’s woman is like a red witch. Determined, aggressive. 1 From the sixties onward, her interaction with Europe would be fundamental. She spent much of her time in Antonio Berni’s painting studio in Paris. But amid her travels and tours, she always maintained two habits: composing her pieces in the house in La Plata and reading and writing in order to create. The house was large, her small study was located in one room, ‘the mouse corner, where only I may tread.’ The house had chancel gates, mosaics in the entrance hall and a garden full of birds whose song she used in works such as Carmina Burana: 1

Cristina Martino, “Iris Scaccheri: «soy loca y atrevida»”. In Siete días ilustrados, Buenos Aires, March 22 1978. Centro de documentación del Teatro Municipal General San Martín, 2016.

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I can’t create in Europe. Something similar is true of other Argentinians who’ve been there. Anyone who says they can renew themselves in France, Italy or Britain is lying. Which is why I always come back.2 Her library contains books by Miguel Unamuno, Franz Kafka and Ernesto Sabato; she drew on several of them to compose Oye humanidad [Listen Humanity]. She also read Artaud, Rimbaud, Susana Thénon, Olga Orozco, Amelia Biagioni, Alfonsina Storni and Alejandra Pizarnik. One could trace a genealogy of Argentine poets only with them. On her nightstand she had several small format books with paintings by Degas, Matisse and Nolde. Scaccheri also played the piano, the castanets and the guitar. She worked with the music of Manuel de Falla, Alicia Terzián and Carlos Gardel. As a compositional strategy, she also adopted the merging of disciplines of the early avant-garde movements, which was continued by the pioneers of modern Buenos Aires dance. She added rhythms and lyrics to her works, revealing the influence of modernists such as Luisa Grimberg and Flora Martínez. The teenagers of the seventies saw her as a witch capable of soaring to the wild rhythms of words. Scaccheri’s hallmark spoke to her sense of place: My broad city with its wide, lonely pavements: the low houses that always make me wonder why they don’t paint the façades. In La Plata there’s more inner life. There’s something like a need for introspection, a different pace, it’s part of my personality. That means that when I work with a finished piece, I’m very quick, almost quicker than others. But when I produce my own things, I go at a Platense pace.3

2

Ibid.

3

Silvia Gsell, “Las primaveras de Iris Scaccheri”. In: La Nación, La Plata, May 14 1992.

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Gardel and Contursi had a presence in the house. Their works could only be interpreted by her although her language also evoked Antonia Mercé, Ana Pávlova, Clotilde and Alejandro Sakharoff. She was a contemporary of Marilú Marini, Ana Kamien and Susana Zimmerman. But she forged a different path: not that of the city centre but its outskirts and disputes. She met Pina Bausch, but she didn’t identify with her. She trained others to find their own language. She gave courses in creativity and movement of the body through text and music in Buenos Aires, Milan, and Avignon. She directed Ingrid Pelicori, Elena Kruk, Aurelia Chillemi, Ricardo Ale, Mariana Pace, and Walter Di Santo, bringing together theatre, alternative education, community dance, bodily expression, opera and painting. She trod alternative paths for dance in Argentina beyond showbusiness. On the day of her death, in July 2014, Marilú Marini said: She was wild. I can attest to that. One of those fully-formed artists who don’t subscribe to any specific movement. She was like a personal explosion of dance. As though suddenly, her unconscious opened up and steam billowed through a crack from the centre of the earth, grabbed you and swept you away. Iris is that current, the wind from the depths.4 Iris Scaccheri was a unique, indestructible dancer. Little has been written about life and her alternative status in the historiography of Argentine dance. A composer, poet, actor, polyglot, conference speaker and artist’s muse. She was a hub through which genealogies of sculptors, musicians, painters, photographers and writers from Argentina and overseas flowed and still do. She established her territory like a girl with a piece of chalk, walking on the edge without being left on the outside. She transcended the modernist and expressionist aesthetics of the time, a phenomenon that the newspapers captured 4

Alejandro Cruz, “Iris Scaccheri: un emblema de la vanguardia en la danza”. In La Nación, Buenos Aires, July 29 2014.

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with headlines that declared her an ‘original, non-conformist, tireless dancer’, a ‘phoenix’ working ‘on the edge’.

Her leaden legs could turn into feathers or stone, and her dances encompass every repertory. Somewhere between Duncan and Mary Wigman, she became a ‘witch with winged feet’, between Vaslav Nijinsky and the Di Tella, she found the avant garde outside of the elite and positioned her dances beyond the traditional realms of Dance: in cafés and plazas, libraries, television programmes and museums.

Her aura became rolling words: Iris and her determined, nimble flight.

34

IRIS SCACCHERI: A DEVASTATING DANCER Mariana Bellotto

I see dance as a provisional architecture that materializes concurrently in time and space. Choreographies require an arduous creative process and plenty of energy to feed the voracious yearning to capture ‘the instant’. But, alas, then the creations simply vanish the moment after they’re made. Their nature as ephemeral art lends them an immanent power that defies both the market and notions of conservation. There is nothing that can preserved and no score to be interpreted twice in the same way. In fact, memory is the only place where dance can have a lasting existence. It is the recipient of the full impact of each action on the viewer, capable of retaining the emotion and beauty of an artwork forever. Dance is etched into the mind of the spectator, creating a permanent impression to be revived in the future.

Iris Scaccheri’s boldness resounds within me, but also confounds me when I try to evoke her work. It’s not clear to me whether my memory is faithful in figurative terms, whether I can remember her movements and dance precisely. I remember that she contorted into wild attitudes. But I don’t really know exactly if that is what she really did. Reality and fiction merge and I begin to wonder whether

the images aren’t a hybrid of what I saw and what I felt. It’s as though her work wasn’t registered by my retinas, but my cells. It was a comprehensive understanding of art, a distinctive gaze, which led me to interpret things in a special, suggestive, irreversible manner. Iris Scaccheri, the Argentine creator and dancer burned the memory into anyone who saw her dance.

Iris was the key that opened the door to a profound knowledge of dance. Her posture regarding art and its incarnations in dance are a conceptual and creative legacy that had a great impact on me.

Her overwhelming, ephemeral modern dance was rhythmic and raw, turning choreography into a continuous, disruptive act of performance. She combined overwhelming physicality and energy with free, audacious but natural forms.

On the stage, I remember her as red and alone. All she needed was her body to execute a technically impressive, skilful, absolute dance that both projected and understood the substance and synthesis of movement. It could provide artistic depth to imagining, creating and condensing the creative power of dance, gesture and movement. She embodied ‘other things’ beyond technique, virtuoso expression and effect. Apart from her athleticism, Iris struck you with her strange, novel way of understanding ‘movement’.

Her irreverent work introduced us to an understanding of the new dance. It discarded existing corsets while maintaining the same levels of skill, virtuosity and precision although that wasn’t where the brilliance and novelty of her work lay; it lay in how she shook the foundations and forged new paths. She was undoubtedly a pioneer and made us understand how deep dance can reach as an ephemeral object that sparkles and gleams in the memory when it wields its ability to generate profound feelings and stay in touch with sharp, critical thought, generating contradictions with every move.

The poetic and dramatic debates raised by her work form the backbone of her legacy. Her crazy hair and frenetic movements embodied the struggle between chaos and order. Iris danced on the floor, on poetry, on music, against music and in silence. Her dance 36

had the ability to understand these universes and simply inhabit them with mastery, autonomy and commitment. Through experimentation and research into the creation of authentic, expressive movements, Scaccheri sought to create unique, profound artistic experiences whose meaning transcended aesthetics. Her vision of dance was as an ‘art that must convey more than is in plain sight’, and she made a powerful impression on everyone willing to connect with her work.

Her angular, dark and convulsive dance caused great commotion in her public and fascinated me unexpectedly. I was nine or ten when, at the suggestion of my dance teacher Mónica Penchansky, my mother and I went to see her at the Teatro San Martín. I imagine that we saw her perform her version of Carmina Burana, but I’m not sure. I do, however, remember how moved her audience was. I felt a connection with that audience; we left the theatre feeling that we’d seen, felt and heard something new and unfamiliar when we saw her dance. The experience changed my approach to dance forever.

Iris was free to dance her score exactly as she’d imagined she should and to transmit her authenticity and belief that this was how the artistic act should be with great power. With her innovative perspective she sought to create unique experiences in each of her performances. Her disruptive, novel dance left a lasting impression on us, many of whom were inspired by her work. In addition to her technique and freedom, she had an outstanding ability to convey a sensation of transcendence with her performances. Her body flung itself across the space of the stage with such power and energy that it seemed to defy both time and gravity. Her presence on the stage captivated the spectator. The images of her body in movement, her power and her ideas stay locked in the memory, producing a transcendental experience.

Gilles Deleuze said that the temporality of dance is different to the temporality of other arts, as it is movement itself that defines the duration. He argues that dance is an artform that exists on the edge of the senses and intellect, that it can be a unique way of exploring the experience of time. Iris led me straight to the author because I 37

remember her inhabiting the ‘in-between’, the edge and time, with a heightened, gifted artistic understanding and the emotional, intellectual tools that ensure that her dance lasts in the memory, not just as images but as the experience of the edge described by Deleuze.

Dance is a means of exploring the limits of perception, taking the spectator into a state where movement is a sensory experience, not just an image. In that regard, Iris’s body was able to produce a temporality that wasn’t determined by conventional structures of time but arose out of the experience of movement itself, her mastery of space and how she projected something more, something impossible to record in a single image. As a result, I am certain that it was my entire body that experienced the devastating dance of Iris Scaccheri.

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PATRICIA STOKOE: ‘DANCE FOR EVERYONE’ Silvina Szperling

I first came into contact with the universe of Patricia Stokoe in 1968 – at her recently opened studio on Monroe street, in the Belgrano neighbourhood – due to the fact that Rosita, my mother, was of the opinion that I was ‘too quiet’. I had taken classes in bodily expression at the Collegium Musicum but at the start of the school year I rebelled, declaring that I didn’t like Introduction to Music, but I did like to dance.

At the studio on Monroe, to climb the stairs to the entrance was to enter a world of sounds, forms, and colours that made for a very cozy atmosphere. The wooden floor – which all those who were there remember fondly – was perfect for rolling around on, crawling, jumping, shouting, laughing and many other verbs that the martial school system of the time refused to countenance. Thanks to Perla Jaritonsky and Carlos Gianni, space-time was transformed and we were transformed in turn: we formed fleeting friendships, made bodily contact without embarrassment and learned to be present in body and soul. There was a complicity in the air between us: the permissive atmosphere introduced us to new emotions, although we didn’t know how to name them at the time. We took pleasure in assimilating musical, dance

and compositional codes through play: it was the effusive epitome of education through art.

When I was twelve, I moved onto the teenage group: that meant taking classes with Patricia, the little blonde dancer we’d seen strut lithely through the studio halls. When I saw her breeze by, I was struck by an enormous sense of curiosity, an immense desire to share a space with her, great respect and a little fear of someone who spoke in such a strong foreign accent, albeit one sprinkled with flourishes of Lunfardo. It was 1973 and these were turbulent, transitional times when soaring social expectations would in a few years be quashed by violence and the dictatorship. The studio on Monroe street was a refuge, a space of resistance and very serious research. My teenage years coincided with an effervescent period that, in private, translated into the adoption of eutony – the ‘kitchen’ of sensory perception – as a training method. One had to dig into the Atlas of Human Anatomy, imported from the Soviet Union via a translation in Havana, sit for an extended period of time self-perceiving your joints, and practice consensual touch and contact between peers through self-awareness and communication.

Patricia invited experts in education, evolutionary psychology and sociology to join a think tank to strengthen her methodology of bodily expression and shared her discoveries with us, always citing her sources. She thus created two spaces that were fundamental to the practice and how it was taught: Artistic Training and the Teaching Degree in Bodily Expression in which I was part of the first wave.

I also joined the Grupo Aluminé, with whom I – and several other teenage peers – made my stage debut. The smell of the theatre and the backstage at the Teatro Planeta left an indelible mark on me.

I enthusiastically got involved in every new proposal and with each step found that Patricia was right about psychological, physical and social integration. We were one and all, we were a collective but also deeply personal. It was an intellectual, ideological, carnal experience. The school and real life occurred at the studio, at meetings of the working commissions of Aluminé, the teacher training groups 40

and at our house parties. The street and its obstacles, dangers, losses and hypocrisy faded away when we got together.

***

When Pat started to teach me and I was able to get to know her well, I realized that her strong, bony feet spoke of a career in the world of dance, which she occasionally referred to as having ‘Danced in the Royal Ballet during the war.’ All that experience swept us up like a tornado into a space and time that we regarded as legendary. Many years later, during my research for the documentary film Vikinga (2022), I pulled on the thread that connected her to London and her past and found a more human Patricia, who, far from losing her heroic aura, in fact revealed further layers of determination, ideological coherence and perseverance as she strove so hard to establish a scientific method that would allow her to offer ‘dance for everyone’.

In her own words: My youth in Britain. 1938 to 1950. I felt like an outsider.

Studies, discipline, dreams that would start to become tangible simultaneous to the outbreak of the world war. Darkness, bombing raids and everything that came with it. A lot of work. Studies and archetypical experiences and maturing quickly thanks to extremely rich experiences of life and death. A hierarchical artistic life answering the call to raise the spirits and offer hope to humanity. Post war, continued creation from the ashes, expanding the horizons of dance.

From classical ballet to Laban, Feldenkrais, American tap,

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musical comedies, new concepts of Creative Dance and Free Dance. Tours all across Britain and the Far East.1 Following these tours, and an ideological awakening in India having witnessed the plight of the subjects of the British Empire, Stokoe got involved with left wing groups, joined the actors’ union and worked as a choreographer for the Unity Theatre in London. In 1950, during a moment of great depression that followed the war, she returned to Argentina, settling in Buenos Aires with a precarious grasp of Spanish and dual nationality: an outsider here too.

Through another person who had also recently moved to Buenos Aires, the Hungarian musician and architect George Kalmar – who would later become her husband – she joined the circle of the Collegium Musicum de Buenos Aires, took part in the founding of the Camping Musical Bariloche and interacted with other leading figures in contemporary dance in the city: Myriam Winslow, María Fux, Ana Itelman, Paulina Ossona, Cecilia Ingenieros, and Renate Schottelius. The latter was the person who loaned Stokoe her studio so she could continue her creative work in Buenos Aires. And so the Grupo Experimental de Danza Contemporánea (Experimental Contemporary Dance Group) was formed, in which she and Ingelore Meyer implemented a collaborative system of shared authorship.

In the mid-1960s, when her daughters were still young, her husband died in an accident near Bariloche. Patricia continued the educational work she had begun at the Collegium Musicum. In 1968 – at the age of almost fifty – she set up the studio on Monroe street, which is now run by her daughter Déborah Kalmar. There, she developed a teaching method, founded a teacher training course – which laid the foundations for the current Degree in Bodily Expression at the UNA (National University of the Arts) – and directed the Dance company Aluminé.

1

Patricia Stokoe, “Autobiografía sintética. De la pampa a Bombay”, in journal Kiné Nº. 21, April/May 1996 (original interview in Kiné N.º 3, 1992).

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During the dictatorship (1976-1982), the Aluminé group put on shows with social and ecological themes at theatres like the Planeta and the Presidente Alvear, among others. She also took part in community dance initiatives, the most famous of which was Danza Abierta, for which she wasn’t just involved in programming in 1981 and 1982 but was also part of the Subcommittee for Programming and a Juror for the last edition of the cycle in 1983.

A tireless researcher, throughout her career she explored and created new methodologies inspired by somatic techniques (such as eutony), anatomy, education sciences, theatrical games, and eastern philosophies (such as Tai Chi). She promoted groundbreaking initiatives such as the First Congress on Art Education (Havana), the Congress on Artistic Education (at the Centro Cultural San Martín, Buenos Aires) and the Art Education Conferences (in Laprida, Buenos Aires Province), which brought together hundreds of people from the field of arts and the nascent disciplines of psycho-physical therapies. Her publications on methodologies are a fundamental part of her scientific legacy for dance and the people who practice it. In the 1970s, she published La expresión corporal y el adolescente [Physical Expression and the Teenager, Barry, 1974], La expresión corporal [Bodily Expression, together with Alexander Schächter, Paidós, 1977] and Expresión corporal: Guía didáctica para el docente [Physical Expression: a Teacher’s Guide, Ricordi, 1978]. All this energetic research and educational activity – which was always collective, profound and well-sourced – ensured that Patricia Stokoe and physical expression played a key role in the transition from modern to contemporary dance in Argentina by giving physical improvisation a method and leaving a record of it in publications and course notes, as well as in her hundreds and thousands of disciples who continue to grow her legacy.

Patricia Stokoe’s connection with Bariloche and Camping Musical continued until her death. Every summer, Patricia moved to her house on the San Pedro peninsula to replenish her energy, climb mountains and walk barefoot on the stony shores of Nahuel Huapi lake. On the morning she was scheduled to return to Buenos Aires, 43

27 January, 1996, she didn’t wake up. At her funeral, her daughter Déborah sang a spiritual. Her remains rest in the cemetery of Alto, a working-class neighbourhood in San Carlos de Bariloche.

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THE DI TELLA GENERATION 1 AND OTHER HALLUCINOGENS Kado Kostzer

ARCHITECTS ON THE RUN Born in 1929 in Hernando in the Province of Córdoba and educated by Jesuits, Roberto Villanueva studied at the Faculty of Architecture but never graduated. The faculty was an ideal environment, a small, well regarded bourgeois refuge for young people who wanted to make their way in the world of theatre. Jorge Petraglia, Leal Rey, María Julia Bertotto, Amanda González Castillo, Jorge Sarudiansky, Chunchuna Villafañe, and Andrés Percivale, who were all near or actual contemporaries of Roberto, and myself much later, would indulge ourselves leaning over draughting tables, dreaming of the theatre while the traitorous drawing pen or more modern rapidograph taunted us: ‘What are you doing here? Take the plunge!’

It was at university that Villanueva met Leal Rey and Jorge Petraglia, who were both a couple of years older than him. Founders of the Teatro de Arquitectura, they made a name for themselves for daring in 1956 to put on ‒ just three years after its debut in Paris ‒ Waiting for 1

Excerpt from the book by Kado Kostzer La generación Di Tella y otras intoxicaciones, Buenos Aires, Eudeba, 2016.

Godot. The play, which was described as ‘dense’ and even ‘obtuse’ in reviews of the time, over the years has grown clear-cut, almost transparent. Villanueva played Estragon. The role was followed by others with the same group. Roberto’s next step, having dropped out of his studies to the chagrin of his family, was as a director of the Comedia de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, which was based in La Plata. There, he put on productions of plays by Aeschylus, Lope de Vega, Arthur Miller and Discépolo.

It was during these restless years as a young man from Córdoba that Poemas para la amada muerta [Poems for a Dead Lover] by César Magrini was published – in a rather makeshift edition – with illustrations by Roberto Villanueva! Each of these dainty poems was headed by a French-style sketch with a touch of García Lorca the draughtsman about them, conceived with plenty of sensitivity and not much talent by the industrious Roberto. More than once, having regretted giving me a copy, he begged me never to show it to anyone, which I didn’t. I found such a good hiding spot that I was never able to track it down again myself.

This youthful venture into drawings embarrassed him, and his association with Magrini even more so; his verses hardly hit the heights. The previously beloved poet had become the theatre critic for the Cronista comercial, from whose pages he spat fierce and arbitrary denunciations of the Di Tella’s activities. All that resentment, I assumed, must have had its origins in some failed love affair.

Magrini’s fawning could also be excessive; his praise often veered into the comical and he could even embarrass the subject in question. One the most notorious examples was in the eighties, when he claimed that Thelma Biral had outdone María Callas and Greta Garbo in her portrayal of Margarita Gauthier.

The Centre of Audiovisual Experimentation (CEA) at the Di Tella was a gift that the young Villanueva knew how to make use of to its best advantage. The institution’s other two centres, which were also housed in the building, were run by proven veterans in their areas of expertise: the Latin American Centre of Higher Musical Studies 46

(CLAEM), had the well-respected Alberto Ginastera, author of the Canción al árbol del olvido [Song of the Tree of Forgetting] which we had had to sing at school, and the Centre of Visual Arts (CAV) was run by someone who had previously been a key figure at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Jorge Romero Brest, with Samuel Paz as Assistant Director. Recha de la Vega de Paolini and Evangelina Popolizio were his assistants.

At first, Villanueva’s right-hand woman was Ana Ezcurra, whom he’d only ever met over the phone. Later they were joined by Robustiano Patrón Costas, with whom, I suspected, Roberto had been emotionally involved. That was when Ana began to be named in the programmes as hall coordinator. The third member of staff at the CEA was the engineer Horacio Bozzarello, who was then replaced by César Bolaños. Finally, in 1966, after Patrón Costas and Ezcurra had left, Pussy de Olivera appeared, having been educated at the Sarmiento, and proved to be a committed, caring but capricious boss overseeing all of the hall’s operations. Her staff were charming characters.

Juan Carlos Seijo, the hypertensive usher; Enrique Cepeda, a mixture of Atahualpa Yupanqui and a Hollywood Indian Chief, acted as front of house; Fortunato Galeano was a friendly ticket seller and Juan Carlos Barcelo a diligent handyman. Other roles were filled by Jorge T. Fernández, Dante Guzzoni, José María Martínez and Mario Castellazzo. The technical crew included Francisco Cortese, the lighting man; Walter Guth, the sound technician and Enrique Jorgensen, the sound operator, who worked under the engineer Fernando Von Reichenbach, a supervisor and technology lover. The only person the formidable Pussy really feared, rather than respected, was Enrique Oteiza, and he made sure that the CEA was always in perfect shape for the three informal weekly inspections that the engineer and director general carried out each week.

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PLAYING IN THE BATHTUB Graciela Martínez appeared on stage to the soundtrack of a collage of compositions by the British composer John Barry ‒ who was famous for his lively scores for the The Knack and the first James Bond movies. The new, Swinging London sound – which sounded wonderful through the hall’s sound system – and the wardrobe in which a kind of tutu was combined with sportswear – a concept done to death these days – gave the choreography for the opening of ¿Jugamos a la bañadera? [Shall We Play in the Bathtub?] a joyful, almost festive air that would soon, with the following numbers, grow more unsettling, and even macabre.

Boxing gloves, crutches that emanated a melancholy poetry and the white enamel of a bathtub – which lent its name to the title – tipped over to face the audience were the objects the dancer used as means of expression, combining them with her well-trained body to distort their meaning.

Halfway through the show, Martínez ceded the spotlight to Néstor Astarita, a brilliant drummer, for a solo. There were plenty of slides – which were almost obligatory in the hall at the time – with which Copi made his debut on the Buenos Aires scene in Femme assise, a strip that locals in the know followed in Le Nouvelle Observateur, a magazine that was always delivered late to the newspaper and magazine kiosks on Florida street.

Eclecticism was the rule of the day in the soundtracks for the ten choreographies, which were also Graciela’s creation: the aforementioned Barry was followed by a languid ‘Parlez moi d’amour’ by the then unfashionable Lucianne Boyer ‒ a now legendary chanteuse from the thirties and forties. Supé, a composer for those who regarded themselves as afficionados, provided a framework with Napoleón o la campaña militar [Napoleon or the military campaign]. The trilling of the French soprano Mathé Altéry went very well with Martínez’ vision of Miss Paris 1966. Coppelius and her Giselle would be lent an unusual sense of pathos by the dance on crutches. Finally, on the 48

night of 11 July, 1966, I heard Chavela Vargas for the first time! The then still very much intact singer’s keening voice reverberated in ‘Pena Mulata’, which accompanied Yo quiero ser presidente [I Want to be President]. The programme had her misspelled as Chela Vargas.

The next day I searched in vain through the record stores of Buenos Aires for this new revelation. The following Monday – the show was put on once a week – Graciela told me that on a trip to Mexico a few years before to do a show, she’d been bewitched by the singer. Secretive, possessive and unforthcoming, she was reluctant to reveal any more about the artist I was so taken with, not even explaining that her name was Chavela rather than Chela. But it wasn’t long before a traveller from Mexico brought me the long player of Noche Bohemia, which featured that song and eleven more. Forgive me, Pedro Almodóvar! I owe Chavela when her voice was at its peak to Graciela Martínez, not you.

Martínez had come back to the country after spending three years as ‘a guest of the French government’, as the programme had it. I now know that her time in Paris had been taken up mostly with studio time and research. Her sporadic performances had been held in alternative, almost improvised venues, and a few theatres such as the Recamier; but of course everyone back home was convinced that the talented wife of the painter Seguí was a star in France. The show was a variation on Sainte-Geneviève dans la baignoire, which had been quite popular among the Parisian elite.

Backstage, Celia Barbosa ‒ who really was known as Chela ‒ was an old comrade of Graciela from dance groups and anonymously helped the dancer with her many complicated costume changes.

Those of us who knew her could make out her frenetic silhouette in the shadows before each new number. There was whispering in the audience: ‘It’s Chela! Poor Chela! How sad to end up like that!’ said those who saw her help as demeaning. Others thought that her act of friendship only made her greater still.

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2.

CHRONICLES

MODERN DANCE IN ARGENTINA. 1 A LITTLE HISTORY Marcelo Isse Moyano

The importance of researching the history of modern Argentine dance is made doubly urgent by the fact that its rich tradition has been insufficiently documented to date. There was thus a risk that many of the events, people and landmarks of that history would be forgotten. The fact that many of the leading figures of the scene are still with us, thus offering a rich source of information, facilitates study of an area that has been tentatively explored before, but never comprehensively.

The arrival to Buenos Aires of Miriam Winslow – a student of the American Denishawn school – marks the beginning of modern dance in Argentina. Before then, several figures had come to the country but found their opportunities to introduce a new school of dance limited and so met with mixed fortunes. This was true, for instance, of Renate Schottelius, Otto Werberg and Francisco Pinter, among others.

1

Note from the author: This article is based on fragments from my book La danza moderna argentina cuenta su historia. Historias de vida (Buenos Aires, Artes del Sur, 2006), the fruit of extensive research.

If we bear in mind that the strand of dance only appeared in Germany with what was known as Central European free dance in the twenties and in the United States with the invention of new techniques in the thirties, Argentina was in fact lucky to come into contact with the artform when it did. In other latitudes, the avant-garde movement, which many considered to be ‘the art of the 20th century’, didn’t arrive until the second half of 20th century.

So, Argentina is lucky enough to have an extensive history of modern dance. A history that in some cases was executed to a level that more than matched that found in the traditional homes of the artform. Before the forties, dance in Argentina generally took the form of ballet. The Teatro Colón provided a stage for lavish productions, and a home for a traditional classical dance school.

Modern dance had only appeared on sporadic visits. In 1916, Isadora Duncan danced at the Teatro Colón but her time in Argentina didn’t produce a following in the country.

Towards the end of the thirties, Alexander and Clotilde Sakharoff – known as the ‘poets of dance’ – put on shows and gave a few classes. They danced at the Teatro Colón and the now defunct Teatro Odeón. Their musical works included Arrullo de María [Maria’s Murmur], Danza macabra [Danse Macabre], Siesta de un fauno [Siesta of a Faun] and Danza de Delfos [Dance of Delphi]. Years later, they briefly settled in Argentina, forming a group with Argentine dancers who included Paulina Ossona, Estela Maris, Cecilia Ingenieros and Mara Dajanova. By then, the Uruguayan of British descent Vera Shaw was also working in the country, teaching rhythmic gymnastics at the Instituto de Educación Física which introduced new forms of movement related to modern dance, techniques she’d come across in the United States. Another figure from this period was Francisco Pinter who, in addition to dancing at the Teatro Colón, had a small group of students whom he taught the expressive principles of the new strand of dance. The decade also saw visits to Argentina by more exponents of the art such as Ida Meval, a Central European free dance soloist who worked at the Teatro del Pueblo; the German soloist Harald 54

Kreutzberg; the Ballet Jooss, who performed their famous piece La mesa verde [The Green Table] and the Chilean Inés Pizarro, who had been trained in the Jooss-Leeder technique in her home country.

They all awakened interest in modern dance and influenced some of the teachers who would go on to teach these novel methods.

This was true of the Germans Annelene Michiels de Brömli and Otto Werberg, the latter having studied at the Jooss School. During the Second World War, he had been arrested and interned in a concentration camp before being rescued by the Teatro Colón’s teacher and choreographer Margarethe Wallmann, who was travelling through Europe, heard about his plight and managed to bring him to Argentina with a contract to dance ballet. Werberg founded a school and a modern dance group called the Teatro del Ballet.

Similarly, fleeing the situation in Europe, Renate Schottelius came to the country in 1936 having studied at the Berlin Opera and become familiar with the teachings of Mary Wigman. Schottelius, who would later become one of the great teachers of modern dance in Argentina, began her career in the country by taking classes at the National Conservatory, now known as the Escuela Nacional de Danzas, and performing a few solos.

When contracts for foreigners were cancelled at the Teatro Colón, Wallmann formed a chamber group whose members included Paulina Ossona, Emma Saavedra and Ciro Figueroa. The group’s programme consisted of three quartets: one by Hayden, one by Schubert and the third by Villalobos.

Another notable figure from the period was Biyina Klappenbach, an artist and dance soloist who performed at the Teatro Cervantes.

In 1941, the American dancer and choreographer Miriam Winslow, a follower of the Denishawn school, came to the country. It’s still not clear why the choreographer decided to come to Argentina although the reasons may have been political. The fact is that the shows she presented with her partenaire Foster Fitz-Simmons at the Teatro Odeón – which would be repeated on their return in 1943 – and her

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decision to settle and found a company in 1944 marked the beginning of the development of modern dance in Argentina.

Miriam Winslow’s first company consisted of Renate Schottelius, Ana Itelman, Cecilia Ingenieros, Clelia Tarsia, Luisa Grinberg, Élide Locardi and Margarita Guerrero. For the first time, a professional group, the Ballet Winslow, was formed in which dancers would be paid a wage to fully dedicate their lives to dance. Later on, the group expanded to include Paulina Ossona, Margot Cóppola, Angélica Cañás and the male dancers Paul D’Arnot, José Moletta, Enrique Boyer, Henry Brown, Rodolfo Dantón and Aníbal Navarro, a Cuban who was Winslow’s partenaire. During the ballet’s brief life, she oversaw all the productions herself. They went on continuous tours of the provinces and would perform twice daily in Buenos Aires to large audiences. The success of the company was cut short in 1946 due to internal rifts related to the demands of some dancers regarding payment to go on a tour of Europe the choreographer had organized.

After that, Miriam Winslow returned to the United States. However, her group produced the teachers and choreographers who would become pioneers of the new art in Argentina.

Renate Schottelius, who was born in Germany, continued to perform as a soloist and later went to the United States to take classes with José Limón, Martha Graham and Hanya Holm. It was from among her students in the nineteen fifties that the first cooperative group of contemporary dance in Argentina would arise and begin to experiment with collective creation. It was called the Grupo Experimental de Danza Contemporánea (Experimental Contemporary Dance Group, GEDC) and was made up of Susana Sommi, Gerti Sorter, Juan Carlos Bellini, Roberto Trinchero and Patricia Stokoe, who would later focus on bodily expression. This group, which subsequently became known as Renate Schottelius and the GEDC, would perform across the country.

Ana Itelman founded her own school and group, whose members included Estela Maris and Noemí Lapzeson. She then travelled to the United States, where she became familiar with some of the 56

most important techniques of the period. Twelve years later, she returned to Argentina, where she would become the great teacher of choreographic composition for the next generations.

Paulina Ossona initially stood out as a soloist before forming a group called Nueva Danza whose members included Ana María Stekelman, who would later be an important choreographer and director of the Ballet Contemporáneo of the Teatro Municipal General San Martín. In time, the group was reformed and changed its name to Los Coribantes.

Luisa Grinberg was a pioneer of works performed unaccompanied by music but solely to the rhythm of the spoken word. She directed the Ballet Stylos and was the founder of the Centro de Investigación, Experimentación y Estudio de la Danza (Centre of Research, Experimentation and Study of Dance, CIEDA).

The Teatro Odeón and the Teatro del Pueblo provided spaces for all these performers to put on their productions in the City of Buenos Aires. Élide Locardi, after taking the new form of dance into the rest of the provinces, gave up choreography in favour of teaching. Her students included the renowned dancer and choreographer Oscar Araiz.

And so Miriam Winslow’s pioneering dance group would produce the figures who came to dominate the modern dance scene in Argentina for the next two decades, whether it was through dance, creating new pieces or training future generations, passing on the legacy of German expressionism and American technique.

Another important choreographer who appeared at the time was María Fux, a self-taught artist and teacher who worked in Argentina and overseas. She did outstanding work with dance therapy for the deaf and mute.

One extremely significant visitor to Argentina was Dore Hoyer in the late nineteen fifties who enjoyed outstanding success with her shows at the Teatro Colón. A student of Mary Wigman, she came back to Argentina on two more occasions and in 1959 she was 57

invited by the government to come to the country to set up a school in La Plata. She brought German expressionism to the country in its purest form and in her time there trained a small group of talented dancers, as well as a larger group she called a Moving Chorus, which also included actors. Her company put on two productions: La idea [The Idea] and Cadena de fugas [Chain of Fugues]. Political and financial issues brought her contract to an end a short time later and she returned to Germany. However, in her time, the school would train several dancers who would become leading figures on the scene in the coming years such as Oscar Araiz, Susana Ibáñez, Iris Scaccheri and Lía Jelín.

One important and quite distinct teacher and choreographer was Flora Martínez. Director of the group Coreia, she explored combinations of form, colour, music and movement, generating a harmony she called Coreoformografía [Choreoformography]. With this style, the dancers kept their bodies hidden behind choreographic forms.

By the early sixties, the modern dance scene had expanded and was now made up of numerous creators and groups. During this period, Argentine choreographers who had been trained by the previous generation started to seek new paths. There were three landmark events during this period: the opening of the Teatro Municipal General San Martín, the foundation of the Asociación Amigos de la Danza (Friends of Dance Association, AADA) and the creation of the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella. On 23 November, 1961, Buenos Aires saw the opening of the Teatro Municipal General San Martín, which years later would become the home of the country’s first official modern dance company. The night featured performances by many of the country’s leading cultural figures and modern dance was given a slot; the artform’s first official recognition: Renate Schottelius’s group performed her work Estamos solos [We’re Alone].

The AADA was founded in 1962 for the purpose of supporting independent creative choreography and bringing together the strands of classical and modern dance, which had previously seemed irreconcilable. The objective was to create shows with new 58

choreographies that would switch between different styles, with Argentine musicians, costume designers and scenographers. Thanks to the Association’s efforts, both established and young choreographers were given a space on which to create new works with a distinctive style. The shows were held on Mondays at the Martín Coronado Hall of the Teatro Municipal General San Martín. Renate Schottelius, Estela Maris, Juan Falzone, Susana Zimmermann, Rodolfo Dantón and Oscar Araiz, among others, put on productions under the auspices of the AADA. One famously successful debut came in 1966 with ‘The Rite of Spring’ featuring choreography by Araiz and starring Violeta Janeiro – who was later replaced by Ana María Stekelman – in the lead role. Towards the end of the decade, the shows moved to the Teatro Coliseo. The Association was disbanded in 1972.

The Centre of Audiovisual Experimentation (CEA) at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella provided a space for the exploration and development of experimental works that would introduce new forms of expression into the world of dance. It played host to dancers and choreographers such as Ana Kamien, Susana Zimmermann, Marilú Marini, Iris Scaccheri, Graciela Martínez and Oscar Araiz. Working together or separately, they shared a desire to break with established methods and create a new, irreverent language. Productions at the Di Tella featured satire, absurdity and playfulness, work with objects, happenings and improvisation, establishing new forms of creativity that competed with the traditional expressionist and American traditions of modern Argentine dance.

On 17 March, 1968, the Ballet Contemporáneo del Teatro Municipal General San Martín was formed under the director Oscar Araiz. It was and continues to be the only official modern dance company in Argentina. The company did not function between 1973 and 1977. It was directed by Oscar Araiz, Ana María Stekelman, Mauricio Wainrot, a triumvirate consisting of Norma Binaghi, Lisu Brodsky and Alejandro Cervera, and then again by Stekelman, Oscar

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Araiz and Mauricio Wainrot, in that order. It is currently2 directed by Andrea Chinetti. Many Argentine and overseas artists produced works for the company, including the Argentines Ana Itelman, Renate Schottelius, Noemí Lapzeson, Margarita Bali, Susana Tambutti, Gustavo Lesgart, Roxana Grinstein, Carlos Casella, Pablo Rotemberg, Miguel Robles, Diana Szeinblum, Carlos Trunsky, and Diana Theocharidis and their respective directors, and Mark Godden, Ginette Laurin, Nils Christe, John Wisman, Robert North, Jennifer Müller, David Parsons, Marc Ribaud, Jean-Claude Gallotta, Serge Bennathan, Richard Wherlock, Donald Mc Kayle, Ton Wiggers, Vasco Wellenkamp and Mauro Bigonzetti from overseas.

From the seventies onwards, new independent groups would appear, meeting with mixed fates. These years weren’t the most conducive for modern dance due to the lack of freedom under the dictatorship. Creativity was often repressed. However, the creation in 1975 of the group Nucleodanza, directed by Margarita Bali and Susana Tambutti, which continues to this day, was a notable achievement.

In the early eighties, modern dance reappeared in a cycle known as Danza abierta (Open Dance) in which numerous artists – both new and established – presented creative expressions of protest against the country’s government.

On the return of democracy in 1983, modern Argentine dance thrived in terms of both quality and quantity and opened up to the world. Notable overseas tours included that of the Ballet Contemporáneo del Teatro Municipal General San Martín across Latin America, the USA and Europe, and a global tour by Nucleodanza.

Oscar Araiz, Mauricio Wainrot, Ana María Stekelman and Susana Tambutti, among others, have directed or created for prestigious companies abroad.

Although modern dance (today known as contemporary dance) is not yet an extremely popular artform in Argentina, more and more young people have in recent years begun to work in, create 2

Editor’s note: the article was written in 2023.

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and research new forms in the field. The generations who followed the pioneers have been welcomed by an art with an extensive history from which they can learn a range of techniques, methods and systems and place them at the service of their creations free of the restrictions and worries caused by political and cultural repression.

Finally, it is important to note that since 1987, the history, theory and aesthetic of modern dance has been studied in a course at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the Universidad de Buenos Aires and the Dance Programme at the same university’s Institute of Performance Art has run since 1992, carrying out significant research in the field. Another important institution is the Universidad Nacional de las Artes (UNA), which is home to the Department of the Arts of Movement, where the artistic discipline is studied and researched. The academic unit also has its own permanent Dance Company dedicated to the study of modern and contemporary dance and a Movement Art Experimentation Group focused more on compositions related to bodily expression, linking back to the free dance that first brought modern dance into being.

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LINKS IN THE CHAIN. FRAGMENTS OF FRAGMENTS Oscar Araiz

On a temporal plane that advances, doubles back, glides and seems to twist itself into knots I have a recurring memory of a psychological and social situation: working groups – both independent and official – and the effect on them of other groups – families, teachers and their respective gazes, objectives and working methods. A chain is thus formed with an invisible origin, like an anchor rising out of the subconscious. Emotional colour tints it sepia: teachers, distributing and serving nutrition at the table, cohabitation, the coexistence of words, movements, smells, company, challenges, dissolutions and transformations.

A sign indicating duration appears – let’s call it a decade. They’re separating marks, like hinges, reconstitutions, journeys and cooking times.

Without wanting to indulge in melancholy, I suspect that it is within this plurality of reticence that I encounter a dynamic of reconstruction.

Artistic education is supported – depending on the social, political and administrative context – by private or official institutions in which generally an individual – a teacher, creator or producer – or a

group – of friends, partners or followers – take the action required to define the educational concept, the creation and its practices.

With regard to music and theatre in its different proportions and combinations I shall solely mention those who, directly or indirectly, contributed to my formation. The arrival of a vocation seems impossible to pin down when the attractions of the visual and audio world and a taste for ordering space get into the waters of childhood and adolescence, periods when one’s inner world is forming and ways of perceiving and making are developing; what is described as an identity.

Until the moment of revelation brought to me by Élide Locardi,1 I was feeling in the dark across adjacent areas: radio, film, painting.

But then, with a degree of impetus, the traveller comes to set their path, their road map, their programme. It’s a zig-zagging journey between teachers, studios, concerts and theatres: formative spaces and events.

As regards dance, it was certainly the arrival of Miriam Winslow to the country that inspired the first generation of modern dance teachers: a watershed moment. I regard as exceptional the artist’s thirst for knowledge rooted in American and European techniques, the sacred dances of India and Flamenco style; her gaze was certainly expansive. Miriam Winslow’s last visit to Argentina was for a creation organized by the Asociación Amigos de la Danza (AADA,

1

An Argentine dancer and teacher, Élide Locardi was part of the first wave of Argentine dancers to come after the founding artists of the discipline. Trained in Classical Dance at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música y Arte Escénico, she studied Dalcroze gymnastics with Lía Sirouyan, and then perfected her technique with Masami Kuni. She was a member of the legendary Ballet Winslow, founded by the American dancer Miriam Winslow in 1941, which was the first professional modern dance troop in Argentina.

Working tirelessly to promote and create dances between 1956 and 1962, Locardi spent time in different cities, including Bahía Blanca, San Salvador de Jujuy and Córdoba. She was a teacher at the National Dance School of Buenos Aires and worked intensively as a trainer, creator and performer of dance in every one of her professional spheres.

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Association of Friends of Dance)2 in 1963, at the recently opened Teatro San Martín, which was run at the time by Cirilo Grassi Díaz.

In 2005, Silvia Kaehler, the dancer, choreographer and teacher, carried out the only comprehensive study of the AADA for her thesis at the Instituto Universitario Nacional de Arte (IUNA), now known as the Universidad Nacional de las Artes (UNA). The text was published in 2012 in the Libros del Rojas collection whose dance section was overseen by Alejandro Cervera.3 The author provided in-depth examinations of the political context – the first steps of the research were done in partnership with Beba González Toledo – the organization and how it functioned, and its theoretical, conceptual and artistic framework. The detailed description of the artists involved reveals that establishing close ties between composers, choreographers, costume designers, photographers, scenographers and artists was a key goal of the Association.

When, in 1968, the writer, art critic and journalist César Magrini took on the artistic direction of the Teatro San Martín, he had already written several enthusiastic articles in the pages of the Cronista Comercial about two of my choreographies: La consagración de la primavera [The Consecration of Spring, 1966], for the AADA at the Teatro San Martín, and Crash (1967), at the Centro de Experimentación Visual Torcuato Di Tella. His admiration led him to invite me to organize a dance performance in his first season, with special guest performers. My counterproposal 2

The institution was founded in 1961 under the government of Arturo Frondizi, by a group of leading figures from the world of dance and art, experts in their specialties and styles. Diversity was the most striking characteristic of the group, and it thrived in an unprecedented atmosphere of shared feeling, respect and generosity. Ekatherina de Galantha, the legendary heir to Ana Pávlova and Sergei Diaghilev, was rightly named honorary president. The Board of Directors included Renate Schottelius, Tamara Grigorieva, Amalia Lozano, Inés Malinow, Rodolfo Dantón, Ernesto Mastronardi, Walter E. Rosenberg, Basilio Ruiz, Harry Finnegan and Oscar Uboldi, and, later, Esmeralda Agoglia, Annemarie Heinrich, Estela Maris, Claudine Bourquin, Wasil Tupin and Victoria García Victorica. Honorary members included Roberto Giachero and the eminent critic Fernando Emery. The president was Luis María Campos Urquiza.

3

Kaehler, Silvia, Asociación Amigos de la Danza 1962/1966, Buenos Aires, Libros del Rojas, 2012.

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was to form a group of dancers who represented different styles that would work for an extended period of time and be regularly paid.

Even though the idea was ‘unprecedented’, it was the next link in the chain: the creation of the Ballet del Teatro San Martín in 1968.

The terms and conditions for the group were contained in less than thirty lines, which outlined a system of periodic contracts granted following auditions, a contemporary repertory with free use of techniques, a single, equal salary, regardless of categories, and a working day of four hours plus a technical class. In March, the auditions were held and resulted in the hiring of Cristina Barnils, Irma Baz, Norma Binaghi, Ana María Conrad, Esther Ferrando, Susana Ibáñez, Lia Jelín, Virginia Martínez, Doris Petroni, Diana Reutter, Ana María Stekelman, Antonio Abott, Daniel Angrisani, Haichi Akamine, Guillermo Borgogno, José C. Campitelli, Mauricio Wainrot and Enrique Zabala. Joining them were Bettina Bellomo, Andrea Bengochea and Freddy Romero. The list of names makes clear the unprecedented range of technical expertise which Carlota Pereyra and subsequently Ilse Wiedmann would be tasked with making work in harmony.

The choreographers Renate Schottelius and Lía Labaronne were hired to put on a range of different projects. Ana Itelman – who was living in New York at the time, and directed the Dance Department at Bard University – was invited to put on Ciudad nuestra Buenos Aires [Our City Buenos Aires]; Renate Schottelius for Recordar: el amor [Remember: Love], with music by Valdo Schiammarella, and Lía Labaronne, to choreograph Movimientos contrastantes [Contrasting Movements] by Alicia Terzián. Agustín Alezzo held a workshop in acting techniques. The first programme opened with Presentación [Introduction], an examination of two technical classes – academic and contemporary – interpreted by members of the ballet from their different perspectives. The simultaneous exercise also reflected the spirit of openness inherited from the AADA. In Ciudad nuestra Buenos Aires, Ana Itelman was undoubtedly inspired by the stimulating atmosphere that reigned in the new 66

company to embark upon this experiment in theatre and dance.

Rubén Szuchmacher remembers: ‘Ana used to say in her final years that what she did wasn’t dance-theatre, but ‘neither theatre nor dance’. A category based on what it wasn’t.’4 Between the new genre – which Itelman pioneered – and the thought developed years later, one notes a deficit in words rather than in the concept. When words are used as stand-ins and cloud the – at times unconscious – intention to reinvent, to indicate intermediary areas that share a story and vocal energy and seek to produce meaning rather than its simulacrum, it’s best to let go of rigid definitions. Itelman practiced and expanded a trend with which we identified. At the time it was essential to understand that this wasn’t a fusion of different languages, it was the presentation of an area from which one could delicately extract some tools from theatre and dance, and not others.

This piece exercised the practice of accumulation, which would reappear later in some scenes from Las casas de Colomba [The Houses of Colomba, 1977] and its scenographic concept. Itelman could also veer to the other extreme of a complete absence of set in the same piece and others such as Dobletres [Doublethree, 1969], set to Suite No. 3 for the violoncello by J. S. Bach, in which the theme of the double arises. After that, the choreographer decided to work on the integration of two groups of performers through a mathematical system, naming one a letter and the other same letter with the prime symbol (’) attached.

In 1968, Itelman put on Casa de puertas [House of Doors] for the AADA at the Teatro San Martín de Buenos Aires. The piece, which was inspired by The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca, brought about a strange malaise in the choreographer – the kind that arise when a work is very demanding and seems to present insurmountable obstacles to the author. However, witnessing its production and taking part in it was a genuine dramaturgical education.

4

Quoted from Lábatte, Beatriz, Teatro-danza. Los pensamientos y las prácticas, Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional del Teatro, 2006, Cuadernos del Picadero, N.° 10.

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Ana prioritized the plot over the theme. Discarding a linear narrative, she cut some of García Lorca’s scenes and characters, reduced the drama to a small number of actions and bestowed upon them their own poetry. Two funeral processions opened and closed the piece elliptically: one was for the death of the father, the other for the death of the daughter. That circularity sealed up the door to Bernarda’s house and reaffirmed what it had always been: a prison of solitude and repression in which the power of the mother was total. The action was concentrated exhilaratingly into seven moments: Procession ( for the death of the father), Lament, Five lonely daughters, The mother, Passionate song, Violent night, Procession ( for the death of the daughter). With just these minimal elements, in a very brief piece, and music by Carlos Suriñach, Itelman had created a brilliant summation of the play quite distinct from the original text.

Together with Casa de puertas, during the first season of the Ballet del Teatro San Martín (1968), Renate Schottelius – the then director of Dance Department of the Boston Conservatory of Music and Dance – arrived to put on her piece Recordar: el amor. Schottelius’s distinctive style presents irreverent inner worlds. In her choreographies, she established ongoing fluctuations between classical order and rupture.

The influence of her time appeared in fractures and, sometimes, in the difficult journey towards the restoration of harmony. She valued proportion and relationships in conflict, but avoided excessive emphasis. Her composition was a kind of mediation between energies.

As she put it, ‘What has been very important to me is the search for different dynamics in movement and their contrasts; the different possibilities of these dynamics both in movement and the construction of space and the development of rhythm, at times against the music itself.’5 Fractures are healed when one recognizes the continuity of history, with a little h. New links would appear on stage subsequently.

5

Account gathered by Néstor Tirri in Ballet contemporáneo. 25 años en el San Martín, Buenos Aires, Teatro San Martín, 1993.

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They included: Expodanza (Expodance, 1970), Danza Confrontación (Confrontation Dance, 1971), Nucleodanza by Margarita Bali (Nucleodance, 1975), the formation of the Grupo de Danza Contemporánea (Group of Contempporary Dance) – subsequently the Ballet Contemporáneo (Contemporary Ballet) – by Ana María Stekelman (1977), Danza Abierta (Open Dance, 1982-1983), and El Descueve (The Fantastic, 1990).

The words fracture and restoration used in the above paragraphs to refer to Schottelius portray a dynamic that seems cyclical but is also distinct: appearance and dissolution, fall and recovery. The fragment of a fragment, breathing, movement.

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ORDER AND ADVENTURE: 1 VILLANUEVA’S WORLD Fernando García

The galleries of the Centre of Visual Art (CAV) of the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella began their long programme of exhibitions with a somewhat misleading show given how the Institute would develop in the future.

El arte antes de la conquista [Art Before the Conquest] gathered together pieces from the collections of the Museo de La Plata and the Museo Etnográfico and might have been seen as the first step of a story about the development of Latin American art from pre-Columbian to folk art, a tale that didn’t materialize. The exhibition, which opened on 7 November, 1963, was overseen by Guido Di Tella with advice by Alberto Rex González (1918-2012), an anthropologist and archaeologist who was working in Catamarca studying the relationship between the indigenous peoples of the Northwest of Argentina and Tiwanaku culture.

It was a beginning not at all in keeping with the Di Tella’s pop-infused legend, largely because Jorge Romero Brest, the modernist mandarin, had no involvement in El arte antes de la conquista. The 1

This text is based on a fragment of a book by Fernando García: El Di Tella: historia íntima de un fenómeno cultural (Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2021).

new director of the CAV didn’t even write the introductory text to the catalogue.

A series of awards and a burgeoning art collection, which ranged from the early Renaissance to modernism – begun by Torcuato, the head of the family clan and SIAM industrial empire – led to the opening of the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella at the show room on Florida 936, which was transformed from a display of motorcycles for sale into a factory of neo avant-garde art, a space that would energize Argentine culture between 1963 and 1970. Before establishing its base on Florida street, the collection overseen by the Italian historian Lionello Venturi was split between the warehouse of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and the mansions of the Di Tella family in Belgrano R. The first three editions of the awards between 1960 and 1962 were held at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, which was still being run by Jorge Romero Brest, who was appointed after the Revolución Libertadora2 to the role of museum director in 1955. President Frondizi would confirm him in the post in 1958 and he would stay until Guido Di Tella’s offer of the job of running the Department of Visual Art at the new institute proved impossible to turn down. By 1963, Romero had become synonymous with the Di Tella, presiding as lead juror of the awards together with Venturi and, after the Italian’s death, his disciple Giulio Carlo Argan.

However, Romero Brest left no mark on the first exhibition held at the space on Florida 936. The person charged with writing the text was Roberto Villanueva, who was born in Hernando, a small town on the plains of Córdoba founded by his own family in 1912, who was almost 34 years old at the time. He had lived in Buenos Aires since he was 13: ‘I had to start secondary school and my parents sent me to Buenos Aires to a boys’ Jesuit boarding school, El Salvador. I was a country boy who’d never been to a city before. But I had a great time. I’m a Jesuit like the Marquis de Sade, Mozart and Buñuel,’ he’d 2

Revolución Libertadora was the coup d’état that ended the second presidential term of Juan Perón in Argentina, on 16 September 1955.

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say in an interview with the Página/12 newspaper3 a long time later, in the 21st century. The photo accompanying the article shows a tired-looking man with a Bohemian appearance, grey hair with a centre parting, glasses dangling at his stomach, and a denim shirt open to reveal a t-shirt with an Andean geometric motif. The gaze captured in the photo exposes the scars of the past: the wilderness years after the Di Tella (‘I spent almost ten years trying to rebuild myself. We hadn’t just closed, the Di Tella was almost a dirty word’)4 and a long exile between 1978 and 1992.

When the CAV held their first exhibition, Villanueva had been named director of the Centre of Audiovisual Experimentation, the CEA. The centre’s path had been erratic at first and Villanueva had come recommended by Nelly, Guido Di Tella’s wife, who had met the Cordobés at the Faculty of Architecture where she was involved in the university drama group (together with Jorge Petraglia and Leal Rey), which put on Waiting for Godot by Beckett in Buenos Aires in 1956.

The Latin American Centre of Higher Musical Studies (CLAEM), run by the prestigious composer Alberto Ginastera and the Laboratory of Electronic Music were the other two departments in the Institute founded by Torcuato’s sons (Guido and Torcuato, who would subsequently be officials in the administrations of Presidents Carlos Menem and Néstor Kirchner), whose overall director, until 1969, was the Engineer Enrique Oteiza, who pulled the strings of the cultural phenomenon from the shadows.

The Master Plan of the CEA would be foregrounded in an article in Primera Plana on 29 December, 1964, which announced a kind of rebirth of theatre on Florida street.

It read:

3

Cecilia Sosa, ‘La lección del maestro’ (interview), Radar supplement, Página/12, 3 November, 2003.

4

Ibid.

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Roberto Villanueva (35 years old, single, director of the Centre of the Arts of Audiovisual Expression5 of the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella) doesn’t hold back when he describes the fourth gallery that will contribute to the ‘miracle on Florida’: it will be opened by the Institute in March on the first floor of its well-advertised6 exhibition hall. ‘Putting on a play,’ says the friendly, courteous Villanueva, ‘will be the second step of our project: firstly, we’ll be putting on showings of experimental cinema7 and, above all, we’ll be seeking a new language for audiovisual performances.’

They won’t be lacking resources: the modern hall has six 8.16 and 35 mm slide and film projectors, all of which can be combined with a huge cinemascope screen.

The internal structure of the hall (designed like a television set with acoustic walls, ceiling scaffolding for lighting, but no grids, screens or a pit) will make this ‘second step’ a real challenge: the Di Tella’s barren architecture, with its exposed 16 metre floor and arch in front of 250 seats, promises to demand the kind of set rarely seen in Buenos Aires.

In photos from the time, Villanueva looks like an office worker or university professor: square glasses and a modest moustache. In 5

Until 1965, the Di Tella was vague about the actual name of the centre. It appears as the ‘Centre of Audiovisual Experimentation’ in the catalogue for the exhibition of pre-Columbian art, but in 1964, at film showings, it was called the ‘Centre of the Arts of Audiovisual Experimentation’, as seen in the Primera Plana article.

6

This emphasis on ‘advertised’ would appear to be an internal joke within Primera Plana, whose advertising department was supported in part by SIAM products and, although the critical reviews were generally authentic, the magazine took the lead in promoting the activities of the ITDT, especially the CAV and the CEA.

7

Before the gallery opened, the first activity put on by Villanueva’s centre was indeed the mini-festival Cine corto argentino 1958/1964 ( from 15 to 19 December, 1964), organized in tandem with the Cinemateca Argentina. The programme was set by Jorge Miguel Couselo, Andrés Rolando Fustiñana (Roland) and Leopoldo Torre Nilsson who chose six emerging Argentine filmmakers: Ricardo Aronovich, Fernando Birri, Enrique Dawi, Simón Feldman, David José Kohon and Osías Wilenski. They also showed twenty-five shorts by guest directors. The films were shown in one of the galleries of the CAV.

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that regard, he’s the antithesis of Romero Brest: there’s no indication that he was trying to cultivate a character, or if he was, it was a prescient vision of Ned Flanders.8 Media outlets looking to stoke the fires of controversies about avant-garde theatre and snobbery would describe him as softly spoken, shy, diplomatic, and withdrawn. Snobbery appeared in the headline for an interview in the magazine Confirmado9 in which, behind Villanueva’s words, one gets a sense of the impact he was having at the CEA following the debut of Luther ( John Osborne) in May, 1965: I think that in Buenos Aires, there’s a negative opinion of the kind of activities going on at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella; a lot of people call us snobs dedicated to producing snobbery for the consumption of other snobs.10 In fact, the only thing we’re trying to achieve is to stay at the forefront of the artistic scene, at the epicentre of the order and adventure dichotomy.

Forty years later, Villanueva would put the CEA’s impact on the Buenos Aires scene in perspective: the Di Tella ‘was there to support concepts that no one wanted anywhere else. It was as simple as that.

Very young people with nothing on their CV, or older people who wanted to do things that wouldn’t be accepted elsewhere. [...] we did Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, for example, with painters, sculptors, musicians and singers. The casting was so open there were even a few actors.’11

8

An animated character from The Simpsons by Matt Groening.

9

‘Instituto Di Tella: ¿Teatro de vanguardia o mero snobismo?’, Confirmado, 2 June, 1966.

10

Villanueva’s words would apparently be echoed in the novel underground FracaZo (Buenos Aires, Ediciones L. H., 1970), in which the publicist and comedian Carlos Marcucci writes: ‘Di Tella: experimental avant gardes experiment with the experimental experience as experienced by other experimenters.’

11

Cecilia Sosa, “La lección del maestro”, op. cit.

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For the next show, Villanueva wanted to put on an Argentine debut: a new author who went against the naturalism hegemonic in the theatrical mainstream. Among the pile of manuscripts that had been sent to his office on Florida 936, he struck gold with El desatino [The Blunder], a text by the writer Griselda Gambaro, who had finally managed to bring her ideas to the stage at the age of 37.

Gambaro marked the beginning of a new form of absurdism in Argentine theatre. She couldn’t be considered to have been raised in the bosom of the Di Tella and yet the fact that she was making her debut at the CEA made her a target of the members of the theatrical scene who thought that Argentine theatre ought to dedicate itself fully to social causes. The group trained under the wing of Alfredo Rodríguez Arias (part of the pop scene) would exacerbate these differences with plays such as Drácula, Futura and Love&Song, a parody of the café concert season that the CEA had put on in 1968 featuring successful shows by Nacha Guevara and Les Luthiers.

The fact is that following Luther, Villanueva didn’t just open the doors to a space that was pushing the boundaries of what constituted a play, but also established the CEA as an environment for the mingling of different disciplines and human talents, a melting pot where underground currents would appear and flourish, expanding underdeveloped facets of (late) modernism.12 This interaction would grow more profound and eventually break down boundaries entirely (was a show at the CEA dance, theatre, or visual art?), turning the Di Tella into a kind of cultural factory, perhaps with a dash of SIAM’s industrial DNA. As Villanueva himself would put it later on, ‘I didn’t know whether the happenings and performances fell under the auspices of the theatre or painting departments. I’d send the proposals for 12

The concept is Marshall Berman’s (drawn from All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity], Verso, New York, 1982) as applied to the process of the Europeanization of Saint Petersburg. His research into the Nevski Prospect, the cosmopolitan artery implanted into the pre-modern Russia of the 19th century, outlines tensions not dissimilar to the Argentine Floridanópolis. (See especially pp. 175-300).

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happenings to Romero Brest and he sent them back to me. There was an interesting fusion […] in the halls, where you’d bump into everyone.’13 Hallways with such traffic would rarely be seen in the future.

From the late nineties onwards, exhibitions on the art and artists of the pop scene spurred an enormous appetite for the period and, most importantly, thrust their images back into circulation. None of that happened with Villanueva’s World, of which there was no film footage to act as testimony. For instance, no recordings were made of Libertad y otras intoxicaciones [Liberty and other Intoxications] the artwork with which the poet Mario Trejo introduced Buenos Aires to Living Theatre.

But did that mean that the CEA was less Di Tellian than the CAV? Not at all. Roberto Jacoby argues that Villanueva was a better exponent of the neo avant garde than Romero Brest. ‘They held between three and five performances in the hall per day, every day!

The hall was non-stop and open to everything. You saw good stuff, mediocre stuff and bad stuff and it was perfect. The experience was much more valuable to me than Romero Brest’s CEA.’ The years at the CEA changed Villanueva. The magazine Análisis mentioned him in 1969 in its gossip column ‘Characters and their whims’ as an archetypical figure on the Manzana Loca: Roberto Villanueva, the director of the Di Tella Theatre, who boasts an unforgettable face, and ferocious intelligence, came to the realization that he had been wearing the same sports coat for ten years and so decided to flaunt a new, lively, lavish wardrobe. ‘It’s my own set, what most speaks to me thus far. I believe in it, make it and perform it.

Now I can’t think what else to do with it than to walk down the street. It’s my contribution to improving the urban environment, refreshing the scenography of the city.’

13

Cecilia Sosa, “La lección del maestro”, op. cit.

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More or less around the same period, Panorama published a photo of the Director of the CEA to accompany an interview. The camera has caught him in a foreshortened perspective leaning over the stage, touching it with one hand while the other holds a lit cigarette.

His shirt and tie have their sleeves rolled up while his previously neatly trimmed moustache is now bushy and his hair, combed back, reaches quite a way down his neck. Ned Flanders unbound, wild and Di Tellian.14

14

The Villanueva of the late sixties would be immortalized as part of the cast of Invasión, a film by Hugo Santiago with a script by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, starring Lautaro Murúa and Olga Zubarry. The Director of the CEA plays Silva, who in one scene recites the ‘Milonga de Manuel Flores’ (lyrics by Borges, music by Aníbal Troilo), accompanied on the guitar by Roberto Grela and Ubaldo de Lío. Over the years, Hugo Santiago’s film has become a cult movie and placed the Di Tella in the Argentine avant-garde family tree: a script by Borges, score by the contemporary composer Juan Carlos Paz (‘Porfirio’) and the ITDT as represented by Villanueva and Leal Rey, credits by Distéfano and music by Edgardo Cantón, recorded at the Laboratory of Electronic Music of the CLAEM.

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THE DANCE LABORATORY: SUSANA ZIMMERMANN AT THE DI TELLA Victoria Fortuna

Both historians of art and culture and specialists in the study of the field of performance have celebrated and reconstructed many of the different ways in which the Instituto Di Tella (1958-1970) transformed the Buenos Aires art scene in the sixties. In general, the focus has been on the visual arts and the happenings associated with the Centre of Visual Art. However, only recently has the dance output at the Di Tella – especially the work of Ana Kamien, Marilú Marini and Graciela Martínez –1 caught the interest of academics, contemporary choreographers and curators. An exhibition at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires calls our attention to a little-known project run at the Di Tella: Susana Zimmerman’s Dance Laboratory.2 Zimmermann’s arrival at the Di Tella coincided with the beginning of her professional career and the end of the Instituto’s status 1

Kamien and Marini were included in the exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985, curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta, and presented at the Hammer Museum of the University of California in Los Angeles, and the Brooklyn Museum in 2017.

2

For further detailed analysis of this project, see Victoria Fortuna, Moving Otherwise: Dance, Violence, and Memory in Buenos Aires, New York, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 41-48.

as the central space of the Buenos Aires art scene. Her training as a dancer began early in classical ballet with Mercedes Quintana, a dancer at the Teatro Colón. By the end of the fifties, she started to concentrate on modern dance and became familiar with several different styles of the genre at the studio run by Renate Schottelius, Dore Hoyer and Kurt Jooss. In the early 1960s, Zimmermann presented her first works at the influential Friends of Dance Association (AADA, 1962-1972), an organization made up of notable dancers from the fields of ballet and modern dance whose objective was to professionalize concert dance and produce new works for the recently opened stage of the Teatro General San Martín. While the Di Tella was encouraging experimentation and cross-overs between genres, the AADA supported modernism in dance.

Zimmermann’s work at the Di Tella began following the so-called Argentine Revolution, the military coup of 1966 which installed the government of General Juan Carlos Onganía. In 1967, she held her first performance at the institute, Danza ya [Dance Now]. Her later works, Polymorphias [Polymorphies, 1969] and Ceremonias [Ceremonies, 1970], were performed in an increasingly repressive political environment. In part as a reaction against the climate of freedom and social change that had marked the early 1960s, the Onganía dictatorship imposed conservative Catholic values through numerous forms of repression and the suspension of civil rights. As part of that project, the government identified the Di Tella as a ‘corrupting influence’ and closed the play El baño [The Bathroom] by Roberto Plate in 1968.3 That same year, the exhibition Tucumán Arde [Tucumán is Burning], held in Buenos Aires and Rosario, denounced government censorship of artistic output and criticized working conditions in the sugar refineries of the aforementioned province.

While the combination of revolutionary politics and artistic output in the late sixties has been widely acknowledged in events such 3

John King, El Di Tella y el desarrollo cultural argentino en la década del sesenta, Buenos Aires, Asunto Impreso Ediciones, 2007, pp. 108.

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as Tucumán arde, similar moves were taking place in the dance community – even at the Di Tella, which was more closely associated with artistic innovation than political statements – but they have tended to be ignored in historical accounts. Zimmerman’s Dance Laboratory, however, brought together dance and politics in innovative ways that attracted the Buenos Aires audience and influenced several different generations of dancers.

The Laboratory was officially set up after the success of Danza ya. Based on structured improvisation, the work began with a series of prompts that changed with each performance and was performed by a diverse group of dancers, actors, musicians, poets and visual artists. Although techniques such as improvisation and the inclusion of random elements in the performance are common in the creative processes of dance today, this interdisciplinary approach was a major departure from the practices prevalent at the time, especially the performances organized by the AADA. Zimmermann came to the Di Tella because of the unique opportunity offered by the Institute to experiment and generate something new, the central goal of a laboratory. Zimmerman’s group embraced collective creation – in contrast to the model of the individual author that dominated in western concert dance – and emphasized the creative process over the final product on stage as well as inviting audience participation.

Zimmerman saw the combination of these aspects in the creative agenda of the Laboratory of Dance as part of her ‘ethical and political position’, an ingrained political awareness brought about by the dissolution of the boundaries between choreographer, performer and audience.

Although Danza ya expressed the aforesaid political and ethical position in the way it was created and executed, the later works of the Laboratory of Dance addressed more explicitly political themes while also expanding the creative methods developed for the performances. Polymorphias, which is based on the scores Polymorphia (1961) and Dies Irae (1967) by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, is a piece dedicated to the victims of the concentration 81

camp at Auschwitz, which explores political violence, group dynamics and potential forms of communication and togetherness. Ceremonias, the final piece presented by the Laboratory, was inspired by the revolts of the French May of 1968. It made its debut in the same month that the Di Tella closed its doors for good.

By way of a conclusion, I shall share an anonymous letter that Susana showed me when we met to talk about the Dance Laboratory. It was sent to her after the performance of Polymorphias and details a spectator’s account of how they experienced the work and the impact it had on them. Although it is only the account of a single spectator, the letter doesn’t just capture the intensity and urgency of the person’s reactions to the show but also the potent effect that Polymorphias had off-stage: testimony to a deeply felt political awareness that the Dance Laboratory sought to generate with its work: I have seen modern and contemporary dance and similar but what you have done is different. When the group lets go, they have tremendous power. I was in my seat but really I was with you, among you. What you do affects every inch of us. But that’s not all. At the end, in Dies Irae, when they come down and join us, asking for help, something very strange happened to me. One of the guys came into my row and walked down it very slowly. It was heartbreaking to see him with his palms out, pleading, asking for another hand.

He passed the other audience members one by one (I was the fourth or fifth). Next to me was a guy in a grey suit, tie and shiny shoes with his fat wife. He stood up in front of him. Listen: the dancer stood in front of him with his palms out and I watched them. The man in the grey suit looked at him and lowered his eyes, his hands were trembling. I swear, I saw it, they were trembling; he had to press them against his trousers, he was livid, he’d have done anything to be a thousand miles away. I couldn’t stand it any more. I reached out my hand and the guy grabbed it hard. We held 82

hands tight. At that moment I couldn’t think of anything, I wasn’t thinking, I just felt. I had to help him because if I didn’t I and all the rest of us would have been plunged into an abyss. I don’t know, I feel, I still feel the warm hand, but it will pass. Go, go hard, you’re on the right path. One day, I’m sure we’ll meet, and we shall shake hands again, but after that I am sure that we shan’t be separated.4 As readers turn these pages, I hope that these words from a fellow spectator help to illuminate even more what it was like to experience Zimmermann’s work in person on its debut.

4

Anonymous letter. Susana Zimmermann’s private collection.

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BALLET MUSIC Diego Fischerman

At the beginning of a conference on German literature in the time of Bach, Jorge Luis Borges said: ‘In De Quincey’s brilliant essay Regarding Murder as one of the Fine Arts, there is a reference to a book about Iceland. This book, written by a Dutch traveller, has a chapter that has become famous in British literature and was once mentioned

by Chesterton. The chapter’s title was “Regarding the snakes of Iceland” and is very brief, curt, and to the point. It consists of the single phrase: “There are no snakes in Iceland.” That is all.’ The writer adds that after some research into the topic of the conference, he was tempted to imitate the Dutch author and declare simply that ‘There was no German literature in the time of Bach.’ I am in turn tempted to cite the Argentine author – how could I not be? – and declare that there was no music for the ballet in Argentina.

But that wouldn’t be entirely fair. Whatever music was composed especially for dance met with the same fate as the majority of Argentine music. It has disappeared. One might think that such a disappearance – and the state’s indolence in that regard – only applies to musicians in the academic tradition – what is generally referred to as ‘classical music’. But one just has to try to find some

vestige of the piano solos recorded by Ariel Ramírez in the late 1950s, for the Victor label – later RCA and now part of Sony – or, to use the example of a case that mystifies the entire world, the lack of an issue of the complete recordings by Carlos Gardel to see that preservation of the national musical heritage has not generally been regarded (by anyone) as a priority in the Republic of Argentina.

Few official dance companies, with their meagre budgets and excessive dependence on pleasing their audience with the most conservative shows in their repertory, have had much influence on the musical choices of Argentine choreographers or even their aesthetics. Forced to compose for small auditoriums and to make shows that without any financial support from the state (save, in recent times, the scanty subsidies given by the ProDanza programme) or private companies, shows have had to get by without original wardrobes, sets or music. Instead the concept of ‘sound design’ has taken precedence: essentially static territory with the occasional beat – reminiscent of a gym or club. Works by Axel Krieger or Ulises Conti together with Diana Szeinblum and the productions put on by the Centres of Experimentation of the Teatro Colón (CETC) and the Teatro Cervantes are among the few exceptions.

It’s impossible to know whether the disconnect between dance and the music scene is a cause or consequence (or both) of official policy, the fact is that it’s unlikely that a creator will be willing to place a group of musicians on stage and commission an original score (and pay for it) when they can barely afford the rent of a rehearsal room for a few hours. It’s interesting, then, to analyze the absence of those who could (and some might think should) have done so. In principle, the two large public companies that perform in the City of Buenos Aires: the Permanent Ballet of the Teatro Colón and the Contemporary Ballet of the Teatro San Martín, whose examples are sadly followed in terms of taste and criteria by most of the other companies in the rest of the country (including the erratic Ballet of the Teatro Argentino in La Plata).

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The virtuous example in terms of the composition of musical pieces for dance was that of the Ballets Russes, the company founded by Sergei Diaghilev which brought together librettists of the calibre of Jean Cocteau, musicians such as Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla and artists such as Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia and Fernand Léger. The businessman knew that he had to promise good pay and decent promotion to the choreographers, composers, dancers, painters and musicians if they were going to work on something that as yet only existed in his imagination. The model of the paid commission for choreographers and composers is still followed by the majority of the big theatres of the world. Not Argentina. In the case of the Colón, the classical repertory is played by live musicians, but new works tend to have a soundtrack of musical collages or music from the popular tradition, of which recordings are played. It’s understandable, it’s unlikely that a choreographer will willingly choose to draw inspiration from a piece of music that an unfamiliar composer hasn’t yet created from a musical category whose systems are alien to them. From the perspective of musical composers, the prospect is hardly more encouraging. Nobody would decide to compose a piece for dance (where and with whom would it be performed?) and especially not if it meant compromising one’s vision about the supremacy of music – and the composer’s intentions – over the other arts and the harsh reality of noises on stage, dancers and choreographers who might potentially proffer the worst of insults and ask the composer to make their music ‘easier to dance to.’

The Ballet Contemporáneo at the Teatro San Martín is to a degree an exception in the field of official dance. It is by nature a company that runs on commissions and although under the long stewardship of Mauricio Wainrot it almost became a private group – dedicated mainly to performing and reviving his pieces – it was also the home of the few new pieces that appeared in official circles.

During the period in which Ana Itelman played a significant role at the company, this was especially true; several works were produced with original music and the repertory expanded greatly 87

in favour of contemporary (and musical) creations in different genres, particularly those hitherto regarded as minor such as the tango, bolero and, much less frequently, rock and pop. Even so, the proportion of original music composed for dance is markedly scarce.

Just a handful of composers of different extractions and aesthetics across fifty years of history. Valdo Sciammarella, Edgardo Rudnitzky, Sergio Aschero, Claudio Morgado, Pedro Aznar, Daniel Sais – in a very unusual work, Danza para cinco percusionistas (Dance for Five Percussionists) by Alejandro Cervera, where the sound was a part of the movement (or its opposite) – Oscar Cardozo Ocampo, Luis María Serra and Ezequiel Izcovich head up this meagre list.

For the company’s fiftieth anniversary, some of those involved reflected on the subject. Cardozo Ocampo, an extraordinary composer and arranger (one simply needs to think of his orchestral arrangements for records by María Elena Walsh) would say, for example: ‘Musicians today have to compete with Stravinsky or Ravel. The Rite of Spring doesn’t just have to be danced by Diaghilev’s ballet; any choreographer can take it on. The decision to commission original music must be quite difficult, I suppose. And the decision to accept that commission as well.’ Cardozo Ocampo, the composer of a great number of scores for film and occasional accompanist to Mercedes Sosa, was responsible for the music in Tangón, a play by his wife, Doris Petroni, which debuted in 1990. ‘At first I was just going to help out selecting the material. Then it moved on to bridging the different pieces together. The concept was based around tango and I didn’t feel entirely familiar with the language. I’d always felt closer to folk, but I also appreciated tango in its own right. Doris was thinking of beginning with a march from the back of the stage and I thought of using Julián Plaza’s arrangement of “La mariposa” for Pugliese’s orchestra. But choreographers tend to have a problem with the fact that the lengths of popular music tracks are too short, about three minutes. That was when the project turned into something entirely different. There was a reference to “La mariposa” but by now it was something else entirely. Then Doris said, “The women need to come 88

in here,” and I started to adapt the piece more and more. The interesting thing is that what started out as limitations little by little got transformed into inspiration.’

Izcovich composed the music for El capote [The Overcoat], a memorable production by Ana Itelman based on the story by Nikolai Gogol. They’d met on the set of a play, Vida, pasión y muerte de Silverio Leguizamón [The Life, Passion and Death of Silverio Leguizamón] in which both had taken part. ‘I knew that I wanted to engage with the sculptural concepts of the choreography,’ remembered the composer. He then went on, almost in passing, to get at what it was (and still should be) all about: ‘We worked for eight months, read parts of the book, talked and listened to music. We gradually entered into each other’s expressive worlds.’ This is precisely what used – but no longer seems – to be the point: complicity. And time for it to develop.

There are, of course, exceptions. Choreographers who have long and fruitful relationships with composers, and relish the opportunity to work with performers on stage and musicians who enjoy envisaging the soundtrack as part of a larger universe. The Argentines Martín Matalon and Pablo Ortiz – both of whom live overseas, one in Paris and the other in Davis, California – have been involved, for example, in numerous theatrical works, several of which have been performed at the San Martín or the CETC. The latter centre especially has produced the most and best of these encounters between artists from different fields, and not just those of music and dance as was shown by the brilliant improvisation in which Gabriela Prado danced with a sound sculpture by León Ferrari. The CETC remains the place where the old phrase that compares talking about music with dancing about architecture loses its meaning. Dancing about architecture, composing about movement or establishing equal relationships (not just settings or accompaniments) between different forms of expression. That’s what it’s all about.

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3.

CONVERSATIONS

INTERVIEW WITH MARILÚ MARINI Fernando García

The following interview, which was held as part of my research for the book El Di Tella: Historia íntima de un fenómeno cultural [The Di Tella: The Inside Story of a Cultural Phenomenon] (Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2021), took place across two separate occasions. The first was in a café on Córdoba avenue, where Marilú Marini was rehearsing the piece Sagrado bosque de monstruos [Sacred Forest of Monsters] directed by Alejandro Tantanian, which made its debut in the winter of 2018. The second was over Zoom from her home in Paris.

The text – which was edited by the author following a transcription of the recordings – was used throughout the book as Marilú Marini’s experiences and deeds were key to an understanding of the Di Tella.

Her involvement began with the formation of the group that performed Danse Bouquet (1965) and continued through to the closure of the Institute (1970), and included unexpected events like her encounter with Jorge Bonino and mingling in Pop Art circles in a studio on Melo street. It is significant that Sagrado bosque de monstruos contains hidden echoes of Las bacantes, the rock opera that Roberto Villanueva conceived for Marilú and Carlos Cutaia, his partner at the time, which was never performed.

FG. Ana Kamien told me about how you conceived of your projects at the Di Tella and the shows at the Alianza Francesa.

What are your memories of the process? And what would you have liked to be different?

MM. My relationship with Ana and Graciela Martínez was important to me, as was the fact that I was married to Oscar Palacio, who was an artist and an architect. There was a desire to give formal and conceptual aspects a presence in dance. To me, the shows we put on at the Alianza Francesa centred around the idea of integrating different artistic languages into our work. And there was also for me personally the goal of breaking with some of the established frameworks of dance, opening it up to new expressive possibilities: allowing the body to express itself in new ways. I think that that was the richness of the experiences at the Alianza Francesa.

FG. How did you move on to the Di Tella? How did you meet Roberto Villanueva?

MM. I remember the Institute opening, we were interested in it from the start. I think we just asked to speak with Roberto. I don’t remember exactly how it came about. The whole period is quite mixed up for me now because it was very dynamic.

Things happened there that to a degree arose out of the work we were doing at the Alianza Francesa: the idea of making use of all that stuff related to the popular imagination, the icons that represented popular culture.

FG. For example?

MM. Comic books, for example. One of the dances from Danse Bouquet was by Wonder Woman. And everything that Ana did with Cleopatra. And there was a number based around Goldfinger. Artists also got involved in that show: Pablo Mesejeán and Delia Cancela, Alfredo Rodríguez Arias, Juan Stoppani and Oscar Palacio.

FG. How did the group come about?

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MM. We met before the Di Tella, at the Galería Lirolay. Everyone exhibited there: Alfredo, Juan, David Lamelas. So we got to know each other. At the Lirolay we did the vivo-dito, a market where I sold dances and other people sold pieces of sculptures. Charly Squirru and Dalila Puzzovio were there too; I think I have one or two photos of the period.

FG. That was what would later be known as the ‘Pop Group’.

MM. Yes, you had to name things and that was what came up.

What do I know...

FG. Ana Kamien told me that Danse Bouquet was also a parody of a Music Hall show playing on Calle Corrientes.

MM. Yes. It was a parody and at the same time tried to make use of the symbols common to the musical comedies to transform them, giving them another perspective. That was the driver.

FG. How was the dance group formed?

MM. They were students of Ana and I. It came together organically in the sense that the people in our group were all personalities. Strong women: Nora Iturbe and her sister Milka Truol. Elsie Vivanco, who had incredible strength.

FG. Did you have to do an audition for Roberto Villanueva so he’d agree to put it on?

MM. I don’t remember Roberto as someone who would try to censor a show or who’d give his opinion after approving a project. He’d say yes and I don’t remember having to perform for the ‘bishop’ to give us his ‘blessing’.

FG. I’d like you to tell me about the house on Melo street.

MM. Well, the house on Melo street was a studio we shared with Alfredo Rodríguez Arias, Juan Stoppani and Oscar Palacio.

Then Oscar left. It was a very active space, where one was free to exchange ideas. Alfredo had already designed some objects and done a dance with us at the Alianza Francesa.

I gave classes there. The house on Melo was always buzzing. There were times when there was a fantastic harmony 95

and others when egos would explode. In any case, I remember the Melo as being very inspirational. It was a period of internal breakthroughs, when I spent all my time working and creating. I can’t tell you where one began and the other ended. When I think of the Melo, I feel that work and invention were always present: that was the climate. It was very alive. In terms of daily life, some lived there, others didn’t, we shared a gas cooker, it was all very cozy: pop bohemia. I didn’t live there, I just had the studio there.

FG. What do you mean by ‘internal breakthroughs?’

MM. They were intimate processes. I think that at the time I grew more independent. Little by little, I became more aware of myself. I separated from Oscar. It was all a transition, which began in Melo one way and ended up another, for me, when I left.

FG. Your generation had to dismantle a lot of rigid, outmoded structures. Did you see it like that? Did you have to rebel at home?

MM. It was difficult with my family too. They were very worried about me living the life I did. They didn’t support me. It was something I had to struggle against. Maybe I was a little paranoid, but I felt judged. My family loved me a lot, but they couldn’t accept that this was my path. I had to make a break with them too.

FG. A lot of people have told me about the parties you held at your flat.

MM. Yes, we got together a lot at the flat we had on Talcahuano and Marcelo T. You went inside from the eighth floor but it was actually on the seventh, you had to go down a staircase.

It was close to the Di Tella, all the galleries... Little by little, we started to hold parties, and a lot of them were memorable: striptease parties, fancy dress. People from the Di Tella met up there, foreign visitors, critics. What we were doing was in a way expressing the joy that came with the work. Once, 96

for carnival week, we spent three days at my house: Alfredo Rodríguez Arias, Juan Stoppani, Pablo Mesejeán, Delia Cancela, and Oscar Palacio. At night we went out in fancy dress and then took photos of ourselves on the terrace, which was on the 20th floor. I remember that in my flat I had a very realistic artwork by Pablo Suárez for a long time, of a woman sitting at a table. It was right there and she looked so alive. It was the kind of house where anything might happen. Once I’d been given a very good television, a very nice one, and we had a party to welcome it. It was one of the first broadcasts of Batman and we all celebrated together.

FG. What music did you listen to?

MM. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones mostly. Rock. I liked The Doors a lot: I’d seen them at Arthur, a club opened by John Lennon’s first wife in New York. That was in 1968; I spent a year living and studying there. It was amazing to see the four of them together. The contrast between Jim Morrison and everyone else was stunning. There was something faded about the other three in the presence of this man who was like a black angel, who dripped with sexuality, in every sense.

It was a kind of necessary contrast: Jim Morrison emanated a great energy, great strength; I think he was very aware that he was divine but it also tormented him. Because the place was small, I could feel them very close to me. I danced to The Doors at the Di Tella when I got back from the USA at a show called 45 minutos con Marilú Marini [45 Minutes with Marilú Marini]. Then I did Marilú Marini es María Lucía Marini [Marilú Marini is María Lucía Marini]), but not in the hall; downstairs in the museum. I danced to music by Manal and Satie; it was like a celebration of dance, of the Dionysiac existence. Nietzsche says that he can’t believe in a god who doesn’t dance and the idea was to interpret that a little. To The Doors I danced a rulo that repeated to a section from ‘Light my fire’.

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FG. How did the life and the partying fit with the country you were living in? Was it an escape?

MM. Everything that was going on was very difficult. I was pretty oblivious and I still am. Which is why what happened with Las bacantes happened. It was something we had to live with in quite a painful way. It took a lot of energy and I think that was why we had to get together and celebrate, to have a place for ourselves. There was a military atmosphere.

Just look at a photo of Onganía… It says it all. They were trying to revive very negative values. Sometimes, I could be a little in denial: I didn’t see, or didn’t want to see what was happening.

FG. Some people say that, when the Instituto Di Tella was closed in 1970 due to Las bacantes, the cast was taken to Police Station 15 in handcuffs. Is that true?

MM. No, we weren’t handcuffed. I was escorted by a policeman to the station, but I wasn’t cuffed. I can’t remember any of us being cuffed. Not at all. I can say that a policeman took me there and his officer, who was very angry with us, stayed at the Instituto to oversee the operation.

FG. So, did you feel safe inside the Instituto?

MM. Yes, of course. The Instituto was a refuge. We could be calm there, even when we went out to protest. We were always working.

FG. You also made La fiesta, hoy [The Party, Today] with Ana Kamien.

MM. Yes, it was a kind of love story between the two characters, Ana’s and mine. I remember it as being somewhat uneven. I think it had some good parts and some parts that were very naive.

FG. How did you come across Jorge Bonino in Córdoba?

MM. We’d gone to dance at the Rivera Indarte theatre in Córdoba and got caught up in a revolution. A military revolution, the kind you had then, and so we got stranded in Córdoba.

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There, we met a group of people among whom was Lolo Amengual and another architect called Di Lorenzi. They were all architect and artist friends of Jorge Bonino. They told me about him, what he did and said we had to go see him. One day, I think it was at Lolo’s house, Bonino gave a conference. I was crazy about it and thought that Bonino had to come to Buenos Aires. When I got back, I told Roberto Villanueva about him and they got in touch. We became close friends.

FG. Then you were both in Ubu in Chains.

MM. Right. Jorge acted in it. It was my first role as an actress, thanks to Roberto.

FG. Marcial Berro told me that there was some tension in the play because the people in his group were homophobic.

MM. Yes, absolutely. There was an atmosphere of macho resentment. It was very painful to see something like that happen.

It was a very unpleasant moment. I think that one night, Marcial, Alfredo and Juan just left the stage. I don’t remember exactly why. I think they didn’t feel that Roberto was backing them and they left.

FG. What else can you tell me about Roberto Villanueva?

MM. I knew him very well. We had a profound relationship, mutual trust, and understanding of what it is to work. And we had fun too, in addition to the work. Roberto was at heart passionate... A repressed, or rather contained passion: it would explode at times. He would suddenly go off like a geyser about something in art or life. He had that rhythm.

And a great thirst for opening up and discovery. With him, I learned about the sacred aspects of art. Because Roberto was a very mystical guy but didn’t subscribe to any specific religion. He came from a Catholic family and studied at the Jesuit boarding school, El Salvador, but he burned with passion. With him, I learned that to be something on stage, you had to be it, not look like it. He transferred all the sacred 99

aspects to the profane. It was similar to Buñuel: mystics who tip all that world upside down and bring the structure with them to the other side. A heretic who believes deeply in his blasphemy.

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INTERVIEW WITH ANA KAMIEN Y LEONE SONNINO Violeta González Santos

This interview was organized as part of the research process for the exhibition Danza actual. Experimentación en la danza argentina de los años sesenta [Dance Today: Experimentation in Argentine Dance in the 1960s] presented at the Museo de Arte Moderno. Over the course of more than a year, Francisco Lemus – the exhibition curator – and I visited the home of the dancer Ana Kamien and the photographer Leone Sonnino. These meetings didn’t just give us access to their huge photographic, sound and documentary archive of the sixties and early seventies, it also featured charming, enlightening conversations that gave us a better understanding of dance at the time. We heard first-hand accounts of the creative processes that went into the creation of iconic pieces such as Danse Bouquet (1965) and La fiesta, hoy [The Party, Today] (1966), together with the overall experience of Danza Actual – the group made up of Ana Kamien, Graciela Martínez and Marilú Marini, which was founded in 1962. Most of this conversation took place in May 2023 in the flat belonging to Ana and Leone, sitting on wooden chairs in their studio to the sound of their cuckoo clock in the background and surrounded by black and

white photos taken by Leone of Ana when she danced in her iconic studio in the San Telmo neighbourhood.

VGS. Ana, how did you get into modern dance?

AK. I’d studied classical dance when I was a girl. A friend of mine who lived in Tucuman told me: ‘A teacher, Renate Schottelius, came to give a class, a seminar... and she teaches modern dance.’ The classes were on Callao and Santa Fe. I went to take one with her and I loved it. You danced barefoot and I’d been doing it on my toes with all the other classical ballet techniques. I was a girl, a teenager. That’s how I began.

VGS. What memories do you have of Buenos Aires in the sixties?

AK. They were extremely creative. The Instituto Di Tella had just opened. I’d taken classes in a seminar on modern dance given

by María Fux at university in a hall they’d set up for it. That was where I met Marilú Marini, we became friends and started to work together. We started to try to organize a show, and later Graciela Martínez joined us; I’d met her at Renate Schottelius’s studio. So the three of us got together and put on a show called Danza actual [Contemporary Dance] at the Instituto de Arte Moderno in the Van Riel Gallery.

VGS. How did you move on to the Di Tella?

AK. Before the Di Tella, we did a show in the auditorium of the Alianza Francesa. There, Marilú heard about the Instituto Di Tella, which had opened on Florida street. We went there and saw that they had a hall for audiovisual performances.

The director was Roberto Villanueva and we told him about our idea to put on a show.

LS. I think it was called the Hall of Audiovisual Experimentation.

AK. Yes, I think that was it. It had about two hundred seats. A hall where I Musicisti, Les Luthiers, Nacha Guevara and us all performed…

LS. And a lot of theatre.

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AK. That too. So Marilú and I went to the Di Tella. Graciela had left for Paris with Antonio Seguí, who she was married to.

VGS. What was the difference between the Instituto Di Tella and the other dance spaces around at the time?

AK. In the other spaces, you put on small shows. The Alianza Francesa was a French language school with a small auditorium. The Instituto Di Tella, in contrast, attracted a lot of artists.

LS. Most of all, there was interaction between the artists: conceptual, dance, theatre, musicians...

AK. Everyone went to see everything. We all saw each other’s exhibitions.

LS. And a lot of people worked together on different things.

AK. And we got a lot of support from the magazines, who covered the shows. It was a place everyone went. The newspapers ran reviews. Good or bad, it didn’t matter, they did reviews and previews.

LS. And in the hall, you were free to do what you wanted. With some limits, of course: you had to convince Roberto Villanueva that what you wanted to do was worth it. Once you’d got him on side, you had days of rehearsals: afternoons, nights, rather strange hours sometimes...

AK. We’d go in the middle of the night!

LS. You’d get a percentage of the receipts and you didn’t have to pay anything. In the independent theatres, you had to pay for the space but not there. It wasn’t a large percentage, if a lot of people came you earned more. Basically, it was the hall and the technical support.

AK. Lighting, sound…

LS. Roberto Villanueva would come on the first night, terribly afraid. (Laughter) AK. What had he let us get up to! He didn’t watch the rehearsals.

LS. He had no idea what he was going to find. He never watched anything previously, he gave you complete freedom.

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AK. He didn’t exert any pressure, he didn’t think to himself, ‘I wonder what they’re doing, what they’re going to put on.’ If he gave you the dates, he came on the first night.

LS. He’d sit in the lighting box and watch the show.

VGS. So it really was a space for experimentation.

AK. Roberto Villanueva was wonderful.

LS. The hall was set up for audiovisual shows. There were projectors that covered the whole stage. It wasn’t really a theatre.

AK. The stage was sixteen metres wide and three deep. For the set we used projections of images made by Leone, which covered the entire backdrop. It was wonderful.

VGS. What role did photography or slides play in the shows?

LS. At the first show put on by Ana and Marilú, they were important, but not essential. They cut from one to another: there were two sets of projectors of 6 x 6 cm slides and they covered for each other, cutting back and forth. I’d told Fernando von Reichenbach that the results might be much better if he found a way to merge them, for one image to fade out, replaced gradually by the other. The guy went to IBM and managed to get them to give him some things they didn’t need any more. I don’t know how he did it technically but he did. He objected that it would change the temperature of the colour. But you didn’t really notice in practice; I told him that the slides were all filtered, transformed, so the colour didn’t matter much. And it worked wonderfully. After that, people used them for a lot of shows.

VGS. Still photographs that blended with one another.

LS. Some were abstract, others were shapes, sections, hairs... they covered everything.

VGS. Ana, if you had to describe Danza Actual, what would you say?

AK. We danced with objects... inside a bag, or with other objects.

There was one with wires that was called Autotriplicación [Selftriplication]. Graciela Martínez had a lot to do with that.

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It was like this: Each of us invented or created a kind of object and did the choreography, or we did it between the three of us. I’d designed a box that covered our heads with a little stretched fabric to let us see. The choreography was called ¿Le gusta el dólar Sr Marciano? [Do You Like the Dollar, Mr Martian?]. Quite prescient.

LS. I wasn’t involved in that at all.

AK. Marilú did a show called Banshee, where she was inside a shapeless bag with things stuck to it. And at the Alianza Francesa, there was one called Juan Sebastián Bag, in which we were all inside a bag, lying on the floor.

LS. A bag that took up almost the whole stage.

AK. Then suddenly the show began. We were all inside the bag – four of us – on the floor. The bag opened with a zip. Suddenly, the floor – or bag – started to move. Then the bag stopped, we moved, we made different shapes inside. With music by Bach. And there was another one that I thought was great: we made the shape of a house... what was it called?

VGS. La supersónica 007.

AK. Yes. The house had a window and underneath a square at the centre, near the ground covered with stretched fabric.

We stuck our elbows out through the windows, showed our faces... we were dehumanizing the body. We didn’t show our bodies. Except in Quetzalcóatl, where I danced with my face covered and a white bodysuit, you could see my body in that. I remember that Antonio Seguí loved Quetzalcóatl and came to tell me. I was surprised.

VGS. What year was that?

AK. 1963. I haven’t forgotten, so young!

VGS. What was the relationship between the choreography and the objects?

AK. The objects inspired us to create the choreography for them.

There weren’t any objects in Quetzalcóatl.

VGS. What about La supersónica 007?

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LS. Yes, in that one plastic objects would fly around first.

AK. Oh, yes, great. We threw plastic objects from the ceiling over the audience: a little plate, a teapot, a cup, a mate gourd... and the audience threw them back. There was a kind of battle between the audience and the things coming from the stage.

VGS. So the objects affected the body and also energized the audience.

AK. Yes, there was interaction.

VGS. And how did artists of the time relate to one another?

AK. Very well! Well, not so much the people from the world of traditional dance. They said, ‘Renate Schottelius was exiled from Germany because she had a Jewish mother,’ but it was very dramatic... She danced her anguish, what she’d been through. In her classes, you expressed yourself with your body through dance. They were very good, very tough classes. I came out a wreck, but they were very useful, I enjoyed them.

VGS. How about the visual artists at the Di Tella?

AK. Very good, it was an excellent relationship. And there was collaboration too.

LS. There was a lot of collaboration with the music students. The music department at the Di Tella was quite independent.

There were two kinds of musician: classical, who studied with Alberto Ginastera, and electronic, who were more down to earth, who basically worked with Francisco Kröpfl. We had more contact with them. Gandini I think wrote some music for the interval at Reichenbach’s request… but he said: ‘Don’t tell anyone it’s mine.’ It was fun music with a modified piano.

AK. Yes, and it’s not in the programme. It was in ¡Oh! Casta diva [Oh! Chaste Diva], the show I did with Milka Truol.

VGS. How did the pop theme develop with Marilú?

AK. Wonderfully well. But we were both very traditional. Before rehearsing, we went to the bar on the corner for tea.

I remember when Marilú came to do her shows and invited 106

us; I went and sent tea bags to her dressing room as a memento of old times.

VGS. How about Danse Bouquet? The show had plenty of humour, lots of references to mass and pop culture.

AK. At the time they were putting on Hello, Dolly!, a review. And we did a musical show too, but it wasn’t anything like Hello, Dolly!

LS. There were slides of paintings by Cancela.

AK. Yes, of flowers. Ah, and in the middle of the show, there was a girl who brought on models. Suddenly, she’d come on with a chair, sit with her knees together and legs apart, a model would walk by, and then the show would go on. An interlude.

VGS. How about the music? There was a part with music Palito Ortega, wasn’t there?

AK. Yes, that’s true. And he said he was honoured we were using his music... There was an excellent relationship with the different artists in general. Palito’s a genius.

VGS: At the time of Danse Bouquet, did you and Marilú consider yourselves avant-garde artists?

AK. We just did what we wanted. We didn’t care about anything.

That was it: we did what we wanted and other people did other things.

VGS. Did you want to change the dance scene with Danza Actual?

AK. No, not at all. Graciela left, Marilú left. I was left alone and I started to do a completely different kind of dance. But something continued in my dancing... I wasn’t covered any more but I did use objects. I danced with a broom, a chair... with lots of chairs. At the Embassy Theatre.

VGS. What did you concentrate on artistically after that?

AK. The dance with the broom is an iconic one for me. I did it at the Teatro San Martín, on the fourth floor of the Centro Cultural. I also danced a waltz at the Casacuberta Hall in the San Martín.

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LS. That was Dúo para bailarina y piano forte [Duo for Dancer and Pianoforte].

AK. Yes, with a grand piano.

LS. There was a pianist on stage who played Chopin.

AK. The pianist couldn’t see what I was doing.

LS. First, the pianist played it the way Chopin had intended, then he started doing variations: a kind of boogie, a kind of tango, a kind of march...

VGS. And what were your intentions in choosing a broom?

AK. On the fourth floor of the Centro Cultural, I danced sweeping the stairs.

LS. The stairs were at the back of the stage.

AK. I swept the stairs, the stage and then I let go of the broom and it stayed upright. Then the music began, the funeral march from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. I danced in my bodysuit. Leone did the lighting for all my shows.

LS. Yes, there was still the obsession with dancers dressed in black. And of course, you can’t light black. I told her she always had to wear white. Then I did what she wanted: mixing filters and colours...

AK. Yes, he’s a photographer, so he knows. In that show, I circled the broom, put the broom on my shoulder and marched like I was in the army. Suddenly, I changed position and threatened the audience as though it was a machine gun. Then I put it under my arm like a crutch and lifted a leg. After using it in different ways, I left it standing and did some movements on the floor, circling the broom. In the end, I grabbed it and sat in front of it.

LS. Then the music stopped and another piece began. A kind of march that said ‘The world is over’.

AK. And I went to the wall at the back, as though I was trying to escape. There was a kind of march for a firing squad.

LS. It ended with a shot at the end, bang! And the lights went out.

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AK. When the bang went off, my head jerked back. I remember that the audience got out of their seats and made so much noise that people working in the offices there came out to see what was going on.

VGS. Were they scared?

AK. No. The audience loved it, they were shouting ‘Noooo’. It was unforgettable. A week later, a magazine had a headline on the front page: ‘Ana Kamien is a genius,’ because of that choreography.

VGS. Of course, it had heavy symbolic meaning related to war and violence.

AK. And all the transformations I’d suffered with the broom: sweeping, parading like I was in a barracks, pointing it like a machine gun, using it as a crutch, being a prisoner trying to escape and, finally, getting shot. It had such an impact that they gave me another show. Because at the time you only got one showing, but I got another. I’ll never forget it.

LS. During the dictatorship, with the Disappeared, we didn’t dare end the dance with a gunshot, we replaced it with broken glass.

VGS. Ana, how would you characterize your teaching method?

AK. I took things from my teachers; but in some ways I also had the creative approach Marilú, Graciela and I had produced. I put my students on the dance bar, but without any distance between them, all close together. I had a lot of students at the studio on Balcarce street. I said: ‘Now, improvise.’ It was a lot of fun. They thought it was crazy. None of the classes was the same. I learned that from improvising with María Fux. When I did the seminar with her at university, she gave us the stretches and some moves on the floor, then she’d put on music and say, ‘Dance.’ I asked, ‘What should we do?’ She answered, ‘Whatever you like,’ and I looked at her as though I was asking permission. I found that wonderful. I was used

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to being told what to do, because Renate’s classes were very strict.

VGS. And did the play and free expression continue later?

AK. Yes. In fact, the movement comes because you start to move and things arise. Suddenly, you’re stretching out an arm, moving it left and right, you grab both arms, and then... meanwhile your feet are doing their own thing.

VGS. How long did you give classes for?

AK. For as long as I could. Until I had a hip operation in 2011 and that was the end. María José Goldín and I did something at a cultural centre called Pata de ganso when I was seventy-something. Then I had the operation and couldn’t go on any more.

LS. I was involved in all of Ana’s choreographies, I was like a kind of co-choreographer. And I did the lighting too. I knew the shows, I was a part of them.

VGS. And you also took the photographs, and made the images to be projected.

LS. I barely took any photographs during the shows. At the Di Tella, when La fiesta, hoy was underway, one day I went down and took photographs from the stalls. Otherwise I barely took any photographs of the shows. But I did take photographs in the studio.

AK. Yes, Leone had a space for photography.

LS. The studio on Balcarce street was twenty-one metres by fifteen. Ana had two thirds and I had the other third, separated by matting. There was a white infinity backdrop and a black backdrop. We did photographs for her, for Margarita and Nucleodanza, for Marilú Marini…

VGS. How did you work as a co-choreographer, as you mentioned earlier?

LS. In general, none of the choreographies started with a pre-conceived idea. It all began with a date and we started exploring from there. Ana had ideas and I, with no technical 110

knowledge, had fantasies. Some things didn’t work. I’d suggest they try something or other and sometimes it was too difficult, it couldn’t be done. I worked on the structure, I didn’t have a set role. We worked together.

AK. It was a unit that would suddenly split up...

LS. One thing I believe to be very important is the outsider’s perspective. When a choreographer is part of a show, they don’t see everything. I’d try to provide that objective gaze. I’d share ideas. So much so I was named in the programme as a choreographer, and sometimes I took a bow at the end...

AK. For the broom show, we both waved to the audience.

LS. I don’t know anything about technique, but I had a natural ability to get the best out of people, to get them to concentrate on what was essential. I had a talent as a director.

AK. That’s it. That’s the word.

LS. And I’m not a theoretician either. It was completely intuitive.

AK. And I knew how to dance. Not so much from technique, but because I could stir feelings, I could inspire emotions in the audience.

LS. I’ve always said that Ana has an enormous capacity for projection, although she doesn’t like me to say so. Ana had an enormous presence. She wasn’t especially technical, but she was very strong and could project herself with great power.

Also, Ana had a lot of students who became important figures in the world of dance.

VGS. Everything you did makes for an incredible story.

LS. Some people want to do certain things, others want to be rich. We wanted things to happen with our shows. Sometimes the repercussions went a long way, others it was more limited.

AK. All choreographers want that to happen with their shows.

LS. But it doesn’t happen for everyone, sometimes for mysterious reasons, and sometimes not so mysterious. Some

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people seek fame, to make a name for themselves. We wanted to make things.

AK. I agree with that.

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Edgardo Giménez Santa Fe (Argentina), 1942 Poster for Danza actual [Dance Today], Teatro de la Alianza Francesa, 1964 Colección Museo Moderno de Buenos Aires. Donated by the artist, 2010

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pp. 114-115 Edgardo Giménez Santa Fe (Argentina), 1942 Three posters for Danza actual [Dance Today], Teatro de la Alianza Francesa e Instituto de Arte Moderno, 1964 y 1965 Colección Museo Moderno de Buenos Aires.

Donated by the artist, 2010

p. 116, left Edgardo Giménez Santa Fe (Argentina), 1942 Poster for Danza Contemporánea [Contemporary Dance], by Agrupación Baires, Teatro de la Alianza Francesa, 1964 Collection Museo Moderno de Buenos Aires. Donated by the artist, 2010

p. 116, right Juan Andralis Athens (Greece), 1928 – Buenos Aires (Argentina), 1994 Programme for Danse Bouquet, by Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini, Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1966 Kado Kostzer Archive

p. 117 Norberto Coppola Buenos Aires (Argentina), 1941 – 1991 Programme for ¡Oh! Casta diva [Oh! Chaste Diva], by Ana Kamien and Milka Truol, Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1967 Kado Kostzer Archive

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pp. 118-119 Leone Sonnino Milan (Italy), 1936 Marilú Marini and Ana Kamien performing the choreography of Danse Bouquet, studio photographs, 1965 Costumes: Delia Cancela Stage design: Delia Cancela, Pablo Mesejeán, Juan Stoppani, Oscar Palacio Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino Archive

pp. 120-121 Leone Sonnino Milan (Italy), 1936 Octopus, studio photograph, 1963 Music: Kid Baltan Choreography: Ana Kamien, Marilú Marini Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino Archive

p. 123 Ana Kamien Buenos Aires (Argentina), 1935 Marilú Marini Mar del Plata (Argentina), 1945 Graciela Martínez Córdoba (Argentina), 1938 – Buenos Aires (Argentina), 2021 “Autotriplicación” [‘Selftriplication’], from Danza actual [Dance Today], Teatro de la Alianza Francesa, 1963 Objects: Graciela Martínez Choreography: Ana Kamien, Marilú Marini, Graciela Martínez Photographer: Leone Sonnino Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino Archive

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Graciela Martínez Córdoba (Argentina), 1938 – Buenos Aires (Argentina), 2021 ¿Jugamos a la bañadera? [Shall We Play in the Bathtub?], Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1966 Graciela Martínez Archive Courtesy Sofía Kauer and Nicolás Licera Vidal

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p. 126 Annemarie Heinrich Darmstadt (Germany), 1912 – Buenos Aires (Argentina), 2005 above, left Portrait of Miriam Winslow, 1954 above, right Portrait of Dore Hoyer, 1945 below, left Portrait of Cecilia Ingenieros, 1942 below, right Portrait of Stella Maris performing the choreography from the ballet Sarabande, 1949 Courtesy Estudio Heinrich Sanguinetti

p. 127 Annemarie Heinrich Darmstadt (Germany), 1912 – Buenos Aires (Argentina), 2005 Portrait of Rodolfo Dantón, 1947 Courtesy Estudio Heinrich Sanguinetti

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Alicia Sanguinetti Buenos Aires (Argentina), 1943 Crash, by Oscar Araiz, Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1967 Courtesy Estudio Heinrich Sanguinetti

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p. 129 Susana Zimmermann Buenos Aires (Argentina) 1932 – 2021 Polymorphias [Polymorphies], Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1969 Photographer: Alicia Sanguinetti Courtesy Estudio Heinrich Sanguinetti

Graciela Martínez Córdoba (Argentina), 1938 – Buenos Aires (Argentina), 2021 To Buenos Aires, a piece created in New York within the framework of the tour of the group Danza Actual made of the United States as part of the New Art of Argentina exhibition, organized by the Walker Art Institute of Minneapolis together with the Centro de Artes Visuales of the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1964 Concept and performance: Graciela Martínez Music: Astor Piazzolla Photographer unknown Graciela Martínez Archive Courtesy Sofía Kauer and Nicolás Licera Vidal

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pp. 132-133 pp. 134-135 Ana Kamien Buenos Aires (Argentina), 1935 Marilú Marini Mar del Plata (Argentina), 1945 Two photographs of Danse Bouquet.

From left to right: Marucha Bo, Milka Truol, Laura Mouta and Renata Kestelboim at the performance of the play, Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1965 Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino Archive

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p. 136 Annemarie Heinrich Darmstadt (Germany), 1912 – Buenos Aires (Argentina), 2005 Portrait of Otto Werberg, 1948 Courtesy Estudio Heinrich Sanguinetti

p. 137 Alicia Sanguinetti Buenos Aires (Argentina), 1943 Portrait of Oscar Araiz performing the ballet Concierto de ébano [Ebony Concerto], Teatro Municipal San Martín, 1967 Courtesy Estudio Heinrich Sanguinetti

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Leone Sonnino Milan (Italy), 1936 Studio photograph of Ana Kamien performing the choreography from Juego final [Final Game] on the fourth floor of the Centro Cultural San Martín, 1970 Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino Archive

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p. 140 Marilú Marini Mar del Plata (Argentina), 1945 ‘New sensuality’, a short piece within Danse Bouquet, Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1965] Photographer: Leone Sonnino Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino Archive

Graciela Martínez Córdoba (Argentina), 1938 – Buenos Aires (Argentina), 2021 ‘Miss Paris 1966’, a short piece within ¿Jugamos a la bañadera? [Shall We Play in the Bathtub?], Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1966.

Graciela Martínez Archive Courtesy Sofía Kauer and Nicolás Licera Vidal.

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pp. 142-143 Ana Kamien Buenos Aires (Argentina), 1935 Marilú Marini Mar del Plata (Argentina), 1945 Graciela Martínez Córdoba (Argentina), 1938 – Buenos Aires (Argentina), 2021 Flying Clipper, Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, 1964 Archivo Ana Kamien y Leone Sonnino

p. 144 Graciela Martínez Córdoba (Argentina), 1938 – Buenos Aires (Argentina), 2021 Photograph taken during her trip to Paris, c. 1969 Photographer unknown Graciela Martínez Archive Courtesy Sofía Kauer and Nicolás Licera Vidal

4.

CHRONOLOGY

DANCE AND EXPERIMENTATION IN BUENOS AIRES IN THE SIXTIES Sofía Kauer y Nicolás Licera Vidal

By the end of the 1950s, dance had consolidated its place as a theatrical artform in Buenos Aires and was growing and expanding vigorously. Although ballet – or classical dance – was the dominant form thanks to its development since the twenties at the Teatro Colón, the most prestigious cultural space in the country, an emerging modern dance movement had been growing since the forties and now boasted a generation of dancers and choreographers who were making their names and building followings. In turn, folk dancing – and to a lesser degree, tango – were growing more popular on dance circuits. The new choreographers and dancers who appeared in the sixties and moved into experimental and avant-garde practices – Graciela Martínez, Ana Kamien, Marilú Marini, Oscar Araiz, Susana Zimmermann and Iris Scaccheri – were trained by dancers from previous generations of ballet and modern dance, whose aesthetics and poetics aroused both rejection and attachment.

Of these different genres of dance, ballet was the first to appear in Argentina, during a general drive for modernization in the early 20th century guided by an intellectual elite in Buenos Aires who subscribed

to a French concept of ‘higher’ culture’s superiority over popular art.

In 1913, a performance by the iconic Franco-Russo company at the Teatro Colón gave the local audience a taste for the dance form, leading to the formation in the same theatre of the Dance Academy in 1919 and in 1925, the Permanent Dance Company, the continent’s first official ballet company.

Modern dance started to take root in Buenos Aires in 1944 following the arrival of the American dancer and choreographer Miriam Winslow and the formation, under her direction, of the first professional group to specialize in this type of dance. Although the Ballet Winslow only lasted a few years, it trained the first generation of local modern dancers such as Renate Schottelius, Ana Itelman, Luisa Grinberg, Cecilia Ingenieros and Paulina Ossona, who would then do their own choreographic work and found new companies. María Fux and Patricia Stokoe, prominent dancers and educators from the same generation although they weren’t part of the Ballet Winslow, studied modern dance overseas.

Academic dance, whose beacon was the Teatro Colón, had continued to develop in the tradition of modern ballet, which can generally be characterized as expressive and formal modifications of the neoclassical vocabulary in conjunction with the incorporation of themes from folklore especially but also references to modern life in big cities. Local modern dance, meanwhile, can be generally said to have combined the legacies of American modern dance – as exemplified bv Martha Graham, Ted Shawn, Ruth St. Denis and Doris Humphrey, among others – and German Ausdruckstanz [expressive dance] whose leading figures were Mary Wigman, Rudolf Von Laban, Harald Kreutzberg, Ida Meval, Alexander Sakharoff and Clotilde von Derp, among others.

This chronology charts the emerging dance scene of the sixties, which was linked to different forms of experimentation and innovation. The focus is placed on the work and careers of the dancers and choreographers Graciela Martínez, Ana Kamien, Marilú Marini, Oscar Araiz, Susana Zimmermann and Iris Scaccheri, while also noting 148

both the events that affected the modern dance scene in Buenos Aires and the landmark cultural and political events of the period.

1960

Dore Hoyer, the renowned German dancer and choreographer, was hired by the Ministry of Education of the Province of Buenos Aires to give classes at the Teatro Argentino de La Plata to dancers, actors and physical education teachers and to form a modern dance company. The company consisted of a group of solo dancers: Iris Scaccheri, Susana Ibáñez, Oscar Araiz, Lía Jelín, Angó Domenech, Ana Cremaschi, Martha Jaramillo and Noemí Fredes, and a ‘moving chorus’ featuring dancers and actors such as Norman Brisky and Ángel Pavlosky, among others. Also involved in the classes were the dancers Susana Zimmermann, Cecilia Bullaude, Ana Labat and Doris Petroni. The Dore Hoyer Company and the Modern Dance Group only put on two productions, in 1961 at the Teatro Argentino de La Plata and at the Teatro Colón. The programme consisted of the pieces Cadena de fugas [Chain of Fugues] and La idea.

Dore Hoyer was a disciple of Mary Wigman. Her successful performance at the Teatro Colón in 1952 had led to more professional visits to Argentina – and other countries in South America – throughout the decade, consolidating her reputation on the local theatre scene and its audience.

The sale of the birth control pill in Argentina – together with increasing local debate about birth control generally – was one of the major changes of the decade, having a major effect on sexual habits, gender relations and the concept of the family. The ideal of

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the large Catholic family made up of a legally mandated couple in which the woman was supposed to take care of the household and the man to be the provider began to be challenged more openly as sexual lives grew more active, pre-marital relationships more common and women began to see greater opportunities to combine a home and professional life.

1961

On 23 November, the Teatro Municipal General San Martín was officially opened on Corrientes 1530 with a programme featuring the pieces Estamos solos [We’re Alone] by Renate Schottelius, Juan Carlos Bellini and the Dance Company – representing modern dance; Variaciones concertantes [Concert Variations], performed by the Teatro Colón Permanent Dance Company directed by Tamara Grigorieva with choreography by John Taras and music by Alberto Ginastera – representing ballet – and Sendero de la danza [The Path of Dance], performed by the Argentine Folk Ballet, directed by Angelita Vélez y Shulco – representing folk dances. These were accompanied by plays and concerts.

From 20 to 30 November, the exhibition Arte destructivo [Destructive Art] was held at the Galería Lirolay. Conceived by Kenneth Kemble, the experimental initiative brought together artworks made out of destroyed objects in different ways by visual artists inspired by the concept of destruction as a life drive and the call for an artistic sensibility in the face of the mass extermination threatened by the Cold War. The dancer and choreographer Graciela Martínez took part in the exhibition, writing concrete music for everyday objects. Shortly

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afterward, she would include these kinds of sounds in her own work, recorded and made by the dancer herself.

The exhibition would feature the visual artists Antonio Seguí – Martínez’s partner– Enrique Barilari, Silvia Torrás, Jorge Roiger, Jorge López Anaya, Luis Alberto Wells and Kemble himself.

The Galería Lirolay had opened its doors a year before, on 22 August, 1960. Founded by the French couple Mario and Paulette Fano, and run by the French artist and critic Germaine Derbecq, the gallery was part of a circuit of spaces that encouraged the work of young artists linked to experimentation and new artistic trends such as Marta Minujín, León Ferrari, Rubén Santantonín, Dalila Puzzovio, Delia Cancela, Pablo Mesejeán, Nicolás García Uriburu and Edgardo Antonio Vigo, among others, in addition to those who participated in Arte destructivo.

The dancer and choreographer Flora Martínez created the Koreja group with whom she created performances that combined dance with the visual arts.

Around this time, the founding of the first private television channels, along with the state-run Canal 7 and the professional and middle classes’ increased access to electronic and domestic appliances began to establish television as a mass communications platform that reflected and facilitated the cultural changes of the decade. The increased availability of soap operas, musical programmes, news bulletins and advertisements created a flow of images of bodies, hairstyles, poses, objects and shapes that established a hegemonic paradigm and represented an era.

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1962 On 29 March, the Armed Forces overthrew the constitutional government of Arturo Frondizi. José María Guido took control as provisional president of the Senate.

In the months of July and November, Iris Scaccheri presented at the Teatro Argentino de La Plata a programme entitled Recital de danza expresionista [Expressionist Dance Recital] which consisted of a series of brief pieces: Poema de amor [Love Poem], Movimientos [Movements], Borrón [Smudge], Estudios [Studies], Asturias, La masa [The Mass] and Canto a la raza negra [Song for the Black Race]. It was one of her first performances as a dancer and choreographer. It is notable that, throughout her career, she always performed her own solos.

This show included the piece La masa, a spontaneous improvisation she first performed at the age of nine; she considered it her first piece and, remarkably, continued to perform it for several years.

Graciela Martínez presented Danza actual [Dance Today] for the first time, a programme of brief experimental choreographic pieces in which her body was hidden or altered inside objects she’d created using elastic fabric, seams, wires and in some cases internal lights in a combination of dance and visual art. The pieces included experimental sounds she made and recorded herself such as concrete music made using everyday objects and classical music distorted by scratching the record, in addition to electronic and atonal compositions by musicians such as Juan Carlos Paz, César Franchisena and Jorge López Anaya. The shows were held on 26 November and 3 December at the Instituto de Arte Moderno of the Van Riel Gallery.

The programme consisted of the pieces El cimarrón [The Runaway], Fin de la guerra Nº 1 [End of War No. 1], Nuevo mundo [New World], Fin de la guerra Nº 2 [End of War No. 2], 2 + 2 = 15, 1° Núcleo [1st Nucleus], 2° Núcleo [2nd Nucleus], La muerte del cisne [The Death of the Swan], 50 Megatones [50 Megatons] and La cosa [The Thing]. The first four pieces came from a previous programme entitled Danzas y 152

pantomimas [Dances and Pantomimes], which she’d performed from 1958 to 1961 in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Peru – the performance in Lima in 1961 came at the invitation of the Cultural Director of the Ministry of Foreign Relations of Argentina, Rafael Squirru, the former director of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires.

The latter six pieces were recent creations.

That year, Graciela Martínez performed the solo La muerte del cisne [The Death of the Swan] on the Canal 7 programme Noches de ballet [Ballet Nights].

The Instituto de Arte Moderno (IAM), founded by the art lover and patron Marcelo De Ridder opened in July 1949 with the exhibition El arte abstracto en Francia [Abstract Art in France]. Its first base was at Paraguay 665, where exhibitions of painting, sculpture and photography were held. The next year, a second base was opened in one of the halls of the Van Riel Gallery, at Florida 659, which was dedicated to dance and theatrical works, performances, conferences, concerts and film screenings. The IAM ran at both locations until 1952 after which it only continued in the theatrical space under the name Instituto de Arte Moderno of the Van Riel Gallery. The hall played host to pieces by Ana Itelman, Renate Schottelius, María Fux, Luisa Grinberg, Francisco Pinter, Graciela Martínez, Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini, among other choreographers and dancers. Conferences were also given by Jorge Luis Borges, Tomás Maldonado, Ernesto Sabato and Ana Itelman. The visual arts gallery exhibited works by Joaquín Torres García, Enio Iommi, Lidia Prati and Norah Borges, among many others.

On 14 December, Graciela Martínez held a performance of Danza actual at the Teatro Argentino de La Plata, organized by the Culture Department of the Ministry of Education of the Provincia de Buenos Aires.

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p. 154 Photo shoot by Edgardo Giménez for the programme for Danza actual [Dance Today], by Graciela Martínez, Instituto de Arte Moderno, 1962. Edgardo Giménez Archive.

p. 155 Programme for Danza actual [Dance Today], by Graciela Martínez, Instituto de Arte Moderno, 1962. Photography and design by Edgardo Giménez. Graciela Martínez Archive.

Courtesy Sofía Kauer and Nicolás Licera Vidal.

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On 11 June, the Teatro Municipal General San Martín hosted the first season of shows by the Asociación Amigos de la Danza (Friends of Dance Association, AADA), an institution founded to encourage the development and integration of classical and modern Argentine dance and to support independent choreography. The AADA had a permanent cast of dancers who performed works by guest choreographers. Oscar Araiz, Ana María Stekelman, Susana Zimmermann, Ana Labat, Doris Petroni, Juan Falzone and Lía Jelín were given the opportunity to put on their first productions by the AADA. The founding members were Tamara Grigorieva, Ekatherina de Galantha, Amalia Lozano, Roberto Giachero, Renate Schottelius, Fernando Emery, Inés Malinow and Carlos Santillán. The Board of Directors included artists such as Annemarie Heinrich, Miguel Ángel Rondano and Estela Maris, among others. The official headquarters for productions by the AADA continued to be the Teatro San Martín until 1971. They then moved to the Teatro Coliseo. In 1972, the AADA was disbanded.

After being part of a select group of solo dancers directed by Dore Hoyer at the Teatro Argentino de La Plata, Susana Zimmermann travelled to Germany to study with Kurt Jooss at the Folkwang Schule in Essen having received the first grant awarded for modern dance by the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (National Fund for the Arts). On that trip, she studied at schools run by Mary Wigman and Dore Hoyer in Berlin, and Rudolf von Laban in Britain.

Luisa Grinberg founded the Centro de Investigación, Experimentación y Estudio de la Danza [Centre for Research, Experimentation and Study of Dance, CIEEDA], which was dedicated to the organization of seminars and study groups and also ran a Theatrical Dance Company.

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1963

The famous Instituto Torcuato Di Tella (ITDT) opened its doors on Florida 936. It played host to the Centre of Audiovisual Experimentation (CEA) run by Roberto Villanueva; the Latin American Centre of Higher Musical Studies (CLAEM), run by Alberto Ginastera and the Centre of Visual Art (CAV), which had Jorge Romero Brest at the helm. The ITDT was a central hub of a cultural scene of art galleries, theatres, universities, bookshops, shops and cafés located on Florida, Paraguay, Esmeralda and Charcas streets, where artists, intellectuals and students would congregate.

At the CEA, Roberto Villanueva introduced a highly experimental programme that combined different expressions of dance, theatre, performance and audiovisual art. Its stage played host to dance pieces by Oscar Araiz, Iris Scaccheri, Graciela Martínez, Marilú Marini, Ana Kamien, Susana Zimmermann and Cecilia Bullaude, and shows by Nacha Guevara, Les Luthiers, Griselda Gambaro, Norman Briski, Alfredo Rodríguez Arias, Mario Trejo, Roberto Villanueva and Jorge Bonino, among others, in addition to film cycles such as New American Cinema, which included films by Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage and Lionel Rogosin.

The experimental new trends in dance that appeared there maintained close relationships with the CLAEM and the CAV, not just in terms of collaboration on soundtracks, costumes and sets but also when it came to including dance at biennials and tours outside of the ITDT. The CAV was one of the central spaces – attracting attention nationally and internationally – of the modernizing movements in the visual arts throughout the decade. From that institution, Romero Brest was a firm supporter of new waves such as pop art, minimalism, new realism, kinetic art, media art, conceptual art and happenings through artists such as Julio Le Parc, Marta Minujín, Rómulo Macció, Emilio Renart, Delia Cancela, Pablo Mesejeán, Roberto

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Graciela Martínez, Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini rehearsing the choreography of one of the pieces for Danza actual [Dance Today], 1963. Graciela Martínez Archive. Courtesy Sofía Kauer and Nicolás Licera Vidal.

Jacoby, Edgardo Giménez, Dalila Puzzovio, Luis Felipe Noé, Antonio Seguí and León Ferrari, among many others.

Meanwhile, the CLAEM focused on developing contemporary classical and electronic music through grants given to young students and teaching invitations to leading musicians such as Gerardo Gandini, Fernando von Reichenbach, Francisco Kröpfl, Ginastera himself, and foreign guests such as Oliver Messiaen and Luigi Nono, among others.

The ITDT was financed by one of the largest companies in the country, SIAM-Di Tella, a famous manufacturer of electrical appliances and cars.

On 20 May, Graciela Martínez presented Danza actual as part of a dual programme with the dancer Paulina Oca at the Casacuberta Hall of the Teatro General San Martín, sponsored by the Sociedad Argentina de Artistas Plásticos (Argentine Society of Artists). In the first part of the programme, Paulina Oca presented the solos Baguala, Saeta [Dart] and Tientos, and Graciela Martínez, 2 + 2 = 15, El cimarrón and Núcleo. The second part consisted of Nuevo Mundo, 50 Megatones and La cosa by Martínez, and Pasos en la nieve [Footsteps in the Snow], Cuando el viento [When the Wind], Catedral [Cathedral], Maternidad [Maternity] and Metamorfosis [Metamorphosis] by Oca. On 29 July, and from the 5th to the 12th of August, Martínez performed Danza actual at the Instituto de Arte Moderno of the Van Riel Gallery. The poster was made by Edgardo Giménez.

Alongside her solo performances of Danza actual, Martínez invited Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini, dancers she’d met not long before at Renate Schottelius’s modern dance classes, to put on a production together made up of trios and individual solos by each of them under her overarching concept. The performances would appear between 19 and 26 of August at the Instituto de Arte Moderno. The first part of the programme consisted of ¿Le gusta el dólar Sr Marciano? [Do You Like the Dollar, Mr Martian?] – a joint choreography with objects created 160

by Ana Kamien and electronic music by Kid Baltan – Mutación [Mutation] – a choreography by Marilú Marini with concrete music by Luc Ferrari – and Había una vez [Once Upon a Time] – a choreography

by Graciela Martínez with electronic music by Tod Dockstader. The second section featured Edad interior [Inner Age] – a joint choreography with objects created by Martínez and electronic music by Hebert Eimert – Quetzalcóatl – a choreography by Kamien, with percussion

by Lou Harrison – and Lo que vendrá [What is to Come] – with choreography and objects by Marini and concrete music by H. Cowell. The third and final section consisted of the pieces La visita [The Visit] – choreography and objects by Martínez and electronic music by Hilda Dianda – Extraño cuatro [Strange Four] – choreography by Marini, objects by Oscar Palacios and concrete music by Michel Philippot – and Autotriplicación [Selftriplication] – a joint choreography with objects

by Marilú Marini and concrete music by Pierre Henry.

In the second half of the year, Graciela Martínez published a manifesto text regarding Danza actual in the magazine Eco contemporáneo which outlined the poetic and aesthetic principles that guided the creations grouped under that title and started to become a classification for a new type of emerging dance rather than the name of a specific show: ‘Danza actual arose out of a need shared by the all the arts to break with the old myths and academic categories [...] Danza actual seeks to restore dance’s legitimate rights, it cannot be limited by theme or literary anecdote but is based on an idea or gesture. [...] Danza actual is a unit of pure movement, colour, form, rhythm, space based around an idea [...] We are undermining the conventional forms of the human body in order to express a voluminous essence. The human body played with as a moving mass, discarding the anecdotal, which requires bare faces, legs and arms [...]’ The text was accompanied by interviews with Martínez, Kamien and Marini.

The magazine Eco contemporáneo was founded in 1961 by the Argentine poet and journalist Miguel Grinberg as part of a countercultural gesture that identified with the Movimiento Nueva Solidaridad, 161

which was built on a network of magazines, letters and gatherings of artists and writers and promoted inter-American fraternity and ‘awakening of consciousness’ as a contribution to the cultural revolution that was believed to be imminent.

Towards the end of the year, as part of a nine-month grant given by the French government, Graciela Martínez moved to Paris. For the next few years, she would continue to return to Argentina to organize and present new productions.

On 13 and 18 December, Ana Kamien, Marilú Marini and Aida Laib presented Danza actual at the Theatre of the Alianza Francesa.

That year, Iris Scaccheri performed different dances on three occasions at the Teatro Argentino de La Plata. On 13 July, she performed Impresión [Impression], a piece she would perform again in the same space and at the Teatro Colón in 1965, together with Bosquejos [Sketches]. On 18 October, she performed Recital de danzas [Dance Recital], which included pieces presented the previous year such as Poemas de amor [Love Poems], Cantos a la raza negra [Songs for the Black Race], Asturias and Masa [Mass], and new ones such as Extranjera A y B [Foreigner A and B] and Juegos [Games]. On the third date, she danced La idea en su segunda forma [The Second Form of the Idea]. As she herself pointed out, most of the time the titles of her pieces only served to distinguish them from one another as the important thing was what was communicated on stage, winning her a large number of followers who were enchanted by her dance and interpretations.

At the end of the year, Scaccheri went to Germany, hired as first dancer for Faust, a work by Dore Hoyer for the Frankfurt Opera.

She later presented her dances in several productions in Germany, France and Spain on what would be the first of many tours held in Europe over the next few decades.

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Presidential Elections On 12 October Arturo Illia was sworn in as constitutional president of the Nation.

By 1963, mass culture had grown markedly more youth driven and the musical programme El Club del Clan had become an icon of the explosion that came with the popularization of television and the success of a music industry focused on young people and fashion, making celebrities out of Palito Ortega, Violeta Rivas and Johnny Tedesco. Although the show had to tone down the more erotic aspects of the new wave of rock and twist music, off the TV screen more spaces appeared where dance functioned as a means for young people to explore their sexuality.

1964

Graciela Martínez toured Danza actual across the United States at the invitation of Jorge Romero Brest as part of the travelling exhibition New Art of Argentina, which included artworks by Julio Le Parc, Luis Tomasello, Sarah Grilo, Clorindo Testa, Luis Felipe Noé, Jorge de la Vega, Antonio Seguí, Dalila Puzzovio, Marta Minujín, Antonio Berni, Rubén Santantonín and Gyula Kosice, among others.

Inspired by the coming together of different materials and images in American pop culture, during her time in America, Martínez created four more solos: Far West, To Buenos Aires, Made in U.S.A and I Want to be President. The new pieces were added to the programme before Danza actual, which included 2 + 2 = 15, Wild Horse, 50 Megatones, La visita, La muerte del cisne and La cosa.

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pp. 164-165 Graciela Martínez in ‘To Buenos Aires’, a piece from Danza actual [Dance Today], which premiered in the United States within the framework of the exhibition New Art of Argentina, 1964. Music by Astor Piazzolla. Graciela Martínez Archive.

Courtesy Sofía Kauer and Nicolás Licera Vidal.

p. 166 Graciela Martínez in ‘Made in USA’, a piece from Danza actual [Dance Today], American premiere within the framework of the exhibition New Art of Argentina, 1964. Music by Maurice Jarre. Graciela Martínez Archive. Courtesy Sofía Kauer and Nicolás Licera Vidal.

p. 167 Graciela Martínez in ‘I Want to be President’, a piece from Danza actual [Dance Today], American premiere within the framework of the exhibition New Art of Argentina, 1964.

Music by Chavela Vargas. Graciela Martínez Archive. Courtesy Sofía Kauer and Nicolás Licera Vidal.

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On the tour, Martínez took part in the exhibition openings at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and the Art Building Auditorium at the University of Texas (Austin), and also performed at the American State Department Auditorium (Washington D. C.) and the Bonino Gallery (New York).

Following Graciela Martínez’s departure for France, Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini continued to present and create new pieces for Danza actual. On 5 and 12 May they held performances at the Theatre of the Alianza Francesa (TAF), together with the dancer Aida Laib. The programme consisted of the dances: Quetzalcóatl, Dos tiempos [Two

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Times], Mutación 1, Mutación 2, Mutación 3, Danza and Promenade, in the first part and Waltz Waltz Waltz, ¿Le gusta el dólar Sr Marciano?, Autotriplicación and Flying Clipper, in the second part. The music played was by Miguel Ángel Rondano, Luc Ferrari, Pierre Henry, Tod Dockstader, Lou Harrison, François B. Mache, H. Cowell and Kid Baltan. The poster and programme were designed by Edgardo Giménez.

p. 168 Ana Kamien, Marilú Marini and Aida Laib in ‘Flying Clipper’, a piece from Danza actual [Dance Today]. Music by Tod Dockstader. Teatro de la Alianza Francesa, 1964. Photograph

by Leone Sonnino. Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino Archive.

p. 169 Mercedes Robirosa in La supersónica 007 [Supersonic 007], by Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini, Teatro de la Alianza Francesa, 1964. Photograph by Leone Sonnino. Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino Archive.

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On 13 May, Graciela Martínez performed in France in a shared programme with the Lille Opera, which included the pieces 50 Megatones and Fantasie à trois, the latter with the French dancer Annick Maucouvert and the Uruguayan dancer Teresa Trujillo.

Marilú Marini and Ana Kamien presented Danza actual at the II Bienal Americana de Arte, known as the ‘Córdoba Biennial’. The event, which took place from 25 September to 12 October, was organized

by Industrias Kaiser Argentina (IKA) together with the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. IKA was a car manufacturer, a subsidiary of Kaiser Industries in the United States. The first edition had been held in 1962. It was presented as part of the cultural activities of the company in order to promote pan-American policies backed by the Organization of American States (OAS) during the Cold War. The biennial was part of an institutional initiative to support local artistic output and exchange between different countries across the continent with an emphasis on modernization. Jorge Romero Brest and Rafael Squirru were members of the jury.

On 10 August, Susana Zimmermann presented Huis Clos, co-directed with her colleague Ana Labat. It was the first of two productions by the Zimmermann-Labat partnership for the AADA. The piece was inspired by the eponymous text by Jean-Paul Sartre in which, as the programme states, the goal was to ‘create a hell with just three characters.’ On stage, Labat and Zimmermann, together with Juan Falzone, played avatars of both victims and executioners.

Oscar Araiz presented a work with the AADA for the first time on 21 September: El unicornio, la gorgona y la manticora o Los tres domingos del poeta [The Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore or the Three Sundays of the Poet]. The production featured Oscar Araiz, Susana Zimmermann, Ana Labat, Estela Maris, Doris Petrone, Teresa del Cerro, Irma Baz, Emilio Fumei, Greta Aloisia, Elizabeth Lázara, Héctor Estévez, Oscar Tártara and Enrique Zabala dancing on stage.

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Oscar Araiz joined the company set up by the choreographer Ana Itelman to put on a show at the Golden Room of the Copacabana hotel in Río de Janeiro. For two months, they performed daily. The show was important to Araiz’s developing career as he established a relationship with Itelman and was given a privileged insight into her choreographic process.

1965

On Saturday, 18 September, the CEA of the Instituto Di Tella presented its first dance production: Minino maúlla y baila [Minino Meows and Dances] by Cecilia Bullaude, a dance show for children based on six stories by the Argentine writer Fryda Schultz de Mantovani.

A week later, on 23 September, the CEA presented Danse bouquet by Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini. Structured like a music hall show, the piece – which was intended to tear down the ‘pretensions’ of classical and modern dance – featured different, heavily pop-influenced scenes full of references to films, television, comics and their stars, exploring the relationship between high art and popular culture. The first part of the programme consisted of Presentación [Introduction], Vestida de novia [Wedding Dress], Violeta, New Sensuality, and the second part of Marvila la mujer maravilla contra Astra la superpilla del planeta Ultra y su monstruo destructor [Marvila the Wonder Woman against Astra the Super-Pill from the Planet Ultra and her Destructive Monster], Cleopatra and Danse bouquet. The on-stage performers were Ana Kamien, Marilú Marini, Marcia Moretto, Marucha Bo, Alejandra Da Passano, Nora Iturbe, Renata Kestelboim, Laura Mouta, Milka Truol, Elsie Vivanco, Facundo Bo, Horacio Pedrazzini and the model Sunny Moia.

Delia Cancela designed the wardrobes, Pablo Mesejeán, Oscar Palacio and Juan Stoppani made the slides projected in the background and Miguel Ángel Rondano arranged the musical collage.

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p. 172 Marilú Marini and Ana Kamien in the short piece “Marvila la mujer maravilla contra Astra la superpilla del planeta Ultra y su monstruo destructor” [‘Marvila the Wonder Woman against Astra the Super-Pill from the Planet Ultra and her Destructive Monster’], from Danse Bouquet. Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1965. Photograph by Leone Sonnino. Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino Archive.

Susana Zimmermann and Ana Labat presented Primera aproximación [First Approach], their second co-directed production, at the AADA featuring Silvia Kaehler, Beba González Toledo, Rodolfo Dantón, Diana Tomasetig and Ana Labat, with music by Manuel Juárez.

Labat and Zimmerman also founded Ballet de Hoy (Ballet of Today) – which would later be joined by Oscar Araiz – which presented dance pieces for children including La danza panza [The Belly Dance], with music by María Elena Walsh and Danza tic, danza tac [Tic Dance, Tac Dance] which won awards at several festivals.

Between February and May, the company La Siempreviva – made up of Edgardo Giménez, Marilú Marini, Carlos Squirru, Dalila Puzzovio, Juan Stoppani, Alfredo Arias and Miguel Ángel Rondano – presented at the Teatro de la Recova a series of happenings entitled Microsucesos [Microevents]. The happenings included parodic and humorous performances that alluded to popular culture and the mass media: a musical collage prepared by Rondano mixed together advertising jingles and fragments from television and radio broadcasts; Marini danced Scherezade parodying a famous advertisement for La Malagueña oil featuring the actress Zulma Faiad; Squirru appeared dressed as a bottle of Crush soda; Arias was dressed as a nun being caressed by a pair of hands from behind the backdrop; Giménez was dressed as a rooster and handed out Knorr stock cubes to the audience. Direct interaction between the audience and the sketches was combined with scenes and labyrinthine journeys through cardboard, rubber and cellophane which set the ironic tone intended by the artists.

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Following the tour of the United States, Martínez returned to Europe, where she performed on the 5th and 9th of March at The Comedy Theatre in London. The programme featured some pieces from Danza actual and newer works that would subsequently be included in her production ¿Jugamos a la bañadera? [Shall we Play in the Bathtub?] The programme featured Wild Horse, 50 Megatons, The Thing, Death of a Swan, Far West, To Buenos Aires, Made in U.S.A, I Want to be President, Giselle and Mr. London.

On 24 May, Graciela Martínez starred in a happening entitled Le Group Panique International présente sa troup d’éléphants dans quatre “Ephémères” by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Fernando Arrabal and Roland Topor, at the 2nd Festival of Free Expression in Paris. In addition to performing with Jodorowsky, Martínez included fragments of choreographies from Danza actual.

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pp. 174-175 At La Siempreviva’s Microsucesos [Microevents] happening, Marilú Marini parodied a television commercial for La Malagueña cooking oil that starred Zulma Faiad, Teatro de la Recova, 1965. Edgardo Giménez Archive.

1966 On 28 June, the Armed Forces implemented a military coup to overthrow the constitutional government of Arturo Umberto Illia. The next day, Juan Carlos Onganía took power undemocratically. 29 June saw La Noche de los Bastones Largos [The Night of the Long Clubs].

On Monday, 4 July, Oscar Araiz presented his version of the Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky at the AADA. In this piece, Araiz presented the results of the aesthetic development he’d shared previews of in Ritos [Rites] from 1961 and Cantata para América mágica [Cantata for Magical America] from 1964, which took primitivist approaches 175

to forms of modern and classical dance. The production featured Violeta Janeiro as protagonist and a varied cast of dancers trained in different techniques.

The following year, the artwork was censored by Onganía’s dictatorship having supposedly scandalized conservative sections of society with the erotic content of the choreography. The ban followed a performance on 17 May, 1967 at the Teatro Colón as part of an official event paying homage to Prince Akihito of Japan, which was attended by the de facto president and his wife María Green de Onganía.

The same year, Araiz also directed three productions for the AADA: Ebony Concert by I. Stravinsky; Crucifixion, accompanied by an African American choir and the Halo duo with music by Tomasso Albinoni.

The latter piece was also performed at the Teatro Argentino and, in 1967, at the Festivals of Holland with the Royal Ballet of the Netherlands.

On 9 July, as part of the celebrations for Independence Day, the Teatro Colón presented a new version of the ballet Estancia [Estate] by Alberto Ginastera with choreography by Oscar Araiz. It was the first time that Araiz directed the Permanent Ballet at the Teatro Colón.

Ginastera had composed the score having been commissioned by the American businessman and intellectual Lincoln Kirstein in 1941, although it only made its debut in 1952 at the Teatro Colón with choreography by Michel Borowsky. The piece – inspired by Martín Fierro by José Hernández – sought to portray gaucho life in the Argentine pampas. It starred Esmeralda Agoglia, José Neglia, Norma Fontenla and Gustavo Mollajoli together with the dance company.

On 8 November, Susana Zimmermann presented Amor humano [Human Love] at the Teatro San Martín her first piece made independently of Labat, as part of the AADA. The piece was inspired by 176

love poems by authors such as Antonio Machado, Miguel Hernández, Lope de Vega, Federico García Lorca, Leopoldo Lugones, Rafael Alberti and Francisco de Quevedo, among others, all recited by the actress María Casares. It was performed by Estela Maris, Rodolfo Dantón, Doris Petroni, Héctor Estévez, Oscar Araiz, Ana Labat, Gabriel Sala, Silvia Kaehler, Oscar Tártara and Beatriz Amábile. Amor humano was also performed in 1967, at the French Association of Choreographic Research and Study in Paris.

Graciela Martínez arrived from France to present ¿Jugamos a la bañadera? which was performed on 11 July at the Instituto Di Tella.

The work consisted of a series of solos in which Martínez drew on a range of pop and media references. The choreography, wardrobe, objects and sound were the work of the dancer. Cesar Magrini, the art critic who would later be named director of the Teatro San Martín, wrote a review for the newspaper El Cronista Comercial: ‘The show is knowing and pitiless: a systematic mockery of a world that might be false but is nonetheless consoling. The spell against beauty is too obvious, too universal to remain unmoved, or to deny it.’ The show was made up of the pieces En el ring [In the ring], La supersónica 007 [Supersonic 007], Mr. London, Yo quiero ser presidente [I Want to be President], El Sr. X [Mr X], ¿Quiere bailar conmigo? [Do you Want to Dance with Me?], Napoleón o la campaña militar [Napoleon or the Military Campaign], Giselle, Miss Paris 1966 and ¿Jugamos a la bañadera? During the intervals, comics by Copi and other slides by Leone Sonnino, Humberto Rivas and Roberto Alvarado were shown.

In November, Martínez performed the work in Río de Janeiro.

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p. 178 Graciela Martínez in ‘Giselle’, a piece from ¿Jugamos a la bañadera? [Shall We Play in the Bathtub?], Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1966. Graciela Martínez Archive.

p. 179, left Graciela Martínez in ‘007’, accompanied

by Néstor Astarita playing free jazz on the drums, a piece from ¿Jugamos a la bañadera? [Shall We Play in the Bathtub?], Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1966. Graciela Martínez Archive.

p. 179, right Graciela Martínez in “El Sr. X” [‘Mr. X’], a piece from ¿Jugamos a la bañadera? [Shall We Play in the Bathtub?], Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1966. Graciela Martínez Archive.

Marilú Marini was the host of the performance Striptease featuring Graciela Martínez, Oscar Palacio, Cristina Astigueta and Lea Lublin, among others. To a soundtrack of the Rolling Stones, Sony and Cher, Cristina Astigueta and Oscar Palacio performed Cortame el bizcochuelo [Cut the Cake for Me] wearing edible costumes; the dancers Chela Barbosa and Lea Lublin danced in outfits made from papier maché and lampshades and Graciela Martínez undressed, as part of the show, the French art critic Michel Ragon.

In October, Graciela Martínez, Marilú Marini, Copi and other artists appeared in an anti-happening entitled Participación total [Total Participation] – or, as it was known in the media, Happening para un jabalí difunto [Happening for a Dead Boar] – by Eduardo Costa, Raúl Escari and Roberto Jacoby. This work of the new ‘media art’ consisted of the promotion in the media of a happening that never actually happened. The objective was to expose the role of the media in constructing reality and how it determines the moment when an artwork comes into being and when it is received by the viewer.

On Sunday, 11 October, the Instituto Di Tella hosted Prune Flat, a performance by the American artist Robert Whitman, adapted

by Marta Minujín. On stage, she, together with Marilú Marini and Marucha Bo, dressed in white, imitated the movements of a film projected onto their bodies.

On 20 October, Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini presented La fiesta, hoy [The Party, Today] at the Instituto Di Tella. In this pop dance work, the choreographers addressed the phenomenon of fashion and popular culture with a production that made references to runway shows and music hall. The work also explored formal aspects of dance through movements and bodily shapes that sought to project ‘coolness’ and ‘impassiveness’. The different scenes, which didn’t feature a climax, told a story involving alien abductions and paradisiacal landscapes. The programme consisted of La fiesta [The Party], El gabinete [The Cabinet], 180

Otro lugar [Somewhere Else], La isla [The Island], La llegada [The Arrival] and El encuentro [The Meeting]. In addition to Kamien and Marini, the show featured Marucha Bo, Nora Iturbe, Sara Iturbe, Mónica Lutzeller, Chiquita Reyes, Milka Truol and Roberto Brando. The wardrobe and set design were overseen by Oscar Palacio, Leone Sonnino made the slides and Miguel Ángel Rondano wrote the music, which was produced at the ITDT’s Laboratory of Electronic Music.

Marilú Marini, Marucha Bo, Sara Iturbe and Mónica Lutzeller in two photographs from the short piece “Otro lugar” [‘Another Place’], part of La fiesta, hoy [The Party, Today],

by Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini, Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1966. Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino Archive.

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p. 182, left Programme for Pop Dance, by Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini, 1966. Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino Archive. pp. 182-183 ‘Octopus’, a piece from Pop Dance,

by Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini, 1966. Studio photographs. Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino Archive.

Iris Scaccheri presented Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, her first full length work. Some sources state that the debut took place at the Teatro Argentino, while others the Teatro Colón; the fact is that the work’s success saw it continue to be performed for several decades in Argentina and overseas. It was put on again at the Teatro Argentino in 1968, 1972 and 1990 and at the Teatro San Martín in 1972, 1976 and 1982. Previously, other exponents of German expressionist dance such as Mary Wigman and Ernst Uthoff – a dancer at the Ballet Jooss based in Chile and co-founder of the Chilean National Ballet – had performed other versions of Orff ’s cantata.

Running alongside the 3rd American Art Biennial Córdoba – the ‘IKA Biennial’ – held between the 15th and 30th of October, was the First Argentine Festival of Contemporary Forms, also known as the ‘Antibiennial’. This alternative event, organized by Jorge Romero Brest, arose 182

as a response to the small amount of space the Biennial granted to output other than painting and consisted of actions, installations, objects, dance and artworks that challenged traditional conceptions of art. Graciela Martínez presented, together with the TIM Teatro from Rosario, the show Allá en el rancho grande [Over There on the Big Farm]; Marilú Marini presented a work called Escenario con bailarina y bailarina con escenario [Stage with Female Dancer and Female Dancer with Stage], and Ana Kamien and Chela Barbosa were also involved.

The company La Siempreviva of which Marini was a member, presented the El rayo helado [Frozen Lighting] happening. The festival also featured Marta Minujín, Oscar Bony, Cancela-Mesejeán, Edgardo Giménez, Roberto Jacoby, and Dalila Puzzovio, among many others.

In November, Ana Kamien and Marilú Marini presented Pop Dance together with the dancers Milka Truol and Nora Iturbe at the Teatro 183

Rivera Indarte in Córdoba, and at the TIM Teatro in Rosario. At the latter performance, the title of the show changed to De Buenos Aires con Pop Dance [To Buenos Aires with Pop Dance]. The programme included choreographies from Danza actual and other more recent ones from the shows Danse Bouquet and La fiesta, hoy: Octopus, Mutación 1, Mutación 3, Autotriplicación, Quetzalcóatl, Juan Sebastián Bag, Waltz Waltz Waltz, Viva! ¡Viva!!!, Cascaflores [Flowershells], La mínima [The minimal] and La supersónica 007.

1966 saw several incidents that reflected the turbulent times. It was the year when mini-skirts and tight trousers grew in popularity, clothing used by the youth – a new increasingly prominent cultural category – to redefine eroticism in the public sphere, causing much worried debate about morals and sexual activity. It was also the year that Juan Carlos Onganía led a coup whose goal was to restore Christian family values that conservative circles regarded as being under threat. These political changes also saw interference in autonomous public universities in order to depoliticize student movements, another facet of the growing rebellious counterculture that sought to challenge political and cultural authoritarianism, which grew more reactionary in turn..

1967

Oscar Masotta, the Argentine intellectual, art critic and psychoanalyst, published El “pop-art”, a book that compiled a series of conferences he had given a few years earlier at the Instituto Di Tella. Reflecting on 184

works by American and Argentine artists, the text presented an interpretation of pop art not as object-based realism or an expression of the absurdity of reality but an indication of the impossibility of coming into direct contact with pure reality: the lack of bodies, images or things that haven’t previously been filtered through language, the profusion of symbols and the system of codes that make up culture.

At a similar time, Masotta also published Happenings?, a text that considered these kinds of actions from the perspective of semiotics and structural anthropology in which the brief history of happenings was recounted from their initial vigour to their demystification and redirection into ‘media art’ as anti-happenings. The publication – based on a series of conferences and experiences held during the cycle Acerca [de]: “Happenings” [About Happenings], at the Instituto Di Tella between the 25th of October and the 9th of November – also included texts by Roberto Jacoby, Marta Minujín, Raúl Escari and Eliseo Verón, among others.

On 1 August, Ana Kamien and Milka Truol presented ¡Oh! Casta diva [Oh! Chaste Diva] at the Instituto Di Tella. With just the two of them on stage, the artwork was presented in music hall format with different choreographies parodying the idea of the diva in opera and ballet, mixing the music of The Beatles, forms of classical dance and comic pantomimes. The programme consisted of The Royale Beatleworks Suite, Allá arriba y a lo lejos [Up There and Far Away], Mulita, Cascaflores, Casta diva and Finale. Music by John Lennon, Paul 185

McCartney, Olga Praguer, Maria Callas, Oscar Pettiford and Miguel Ángel Rondano was played. María Julia Bertotto designed the wardrobe and Leone Sonnino the slides.

On 11 September, Susana Zimmermann presented Danza ya at the Instituto Di Tella which she made with the Laboratory of Dance – a group she ran at the ITDT from that year to 1970, when the institution closed. Zimmermann’s concept for the Laboratory of Dance pioneered experiences of improvisation and choreographic creation in front of an audience, lending a new meaning to the notion of an ‘open artwork’. The programme text read, ‘This is a group experience produced while you are participating in it. Dancers, actors, musicians, poets, and artists have gathered to produce total communication using selected stimuli as references. Some of these stimuli come from the everyday world, others are the result of more complex aesthetic development, but all offer an experiential response at this exact moment, right now.’ Over seventeen artists appeared on stage. In 1968 it was performed at the Teatro Odeón in Montevideo.

On 10 November, Crash! by Oscar Araiz, debuted at the Instituto Di Tella. Presented as an ‘entertainment in one act and 22 scenes with no curtain’ and starring Araiz together with the group Los Biuty Pipls (María Julia Bertotto, Esther Ferrando, Lía Jelín, Ana María 186

p. 185 Ana Kamien and Milka Truol in ¡Oh! Casta diva [Oh! Chaste Diva], Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1967. Photograph by Leone Sonnino. Ana Kamien and Leone Sonnino Archive.

p. 186 Programme for Danza ya [Dance Now],

by Susana Zimmermann together with the Dance Laboratory she directed at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1967. Graphic design by Rubén Fontana. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Archive.

p. 187 Programme for Crash, by Oscar Araiz together with the group Los Biuty Pipls, Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1968. Graphic design by Juan Carlos Distéfano. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Archive.

Stekelman, Tony Abbott and José Carlos Campitelli), the piece was a humorous mixture of clichés from classical and modern dance with robotic movements, striptease, projections of Belle Époque magazines, silent cinema and a sound track that ranged from The Beatles to football chants. The magazine Primera Plana described it as ‘a ferocious attack at the clichés of dance’, while César Magrini, in El Cronista Comercial, noted that ‘The Crash! in the title must allude to the rupture of our time.’ The show was so successful that performances continued into the following year.

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Marilú Marini travelled to New York, where she stayed for a year, studying at Merce Cunningham’s school. She was invited to perform at the Judson Memorial Church and the New York School of Visual Arts.

In August, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performed four shows at the Teatro San Martín as part of a tour of South America.

1968

On 2 March, Marilú Marini presented 45 minutos con Marilú Marini [45 Minutes with Marilú Marini] at the Instituto Di Tella. On her return from the United States, Marini chose to perform a solo piece with a more austere, self-referential set in which she started to explore the relationship between body and words. The programme consisted of three sections: Presentación [Introduction] – with music

by The Doors– Danza de series [Dance Series] and Explicación y reconstrucción [Explanation and Reconstruction]. Photographs by Leone Sonnino and Humberto Rivas were projected.

At the same time, Marini began to perform as an actor on the invitation of Roberto Villanueva for Ubu in Chains by Alfred Jarry, directed

by Villanueva and featuring Lorenzo Amengual, Tommy Bar, Marcial Berro, Facundo Bo, Jorge Bonino, Amanda Castillo, Edgardo Di Angelo, Gioia Fiorentino, Kado Kostzer, Hugo Midón, Alfredo Rodríguez Arias and Juan Stoppani, among others, with music by Carlos Cutaia and Nacha Guevara.

Marcia Moretto was part of the cycle Lunes y martes [Monday and Tuesday] at the Instituto Di Tella, with the work Ella es Marcia [She is Marcia].

The cycle gave an opportunity to new creators to experiment with their concepts. In the programme, the artist wrote: ‘The show is developed 188

Photograph of Marilú Marini for the programme for 45 minutos con Marilú Marini [45 minutes with Marilú Marini], Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1968.

Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Archive.

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from dances with no plot [...] I’m interested in everyday, normal movements and sporting movements [...] it will be somewhat out of time, but from the future.’ The objects were created by Alfredo Rodríguez Arias and the wardrobe by Delia Cancela and Pablo Mesejeán.

On Tuesday, 1 October, Iris Scaccheri – back in Buenos Aires following a fifteen-month tour of Europe during which she danced at different theatres in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy and Spain – appeared at the Instituto Di Tella with Danzas [Dances]. The programme consisted of Hombre-brazo [Man-Arm], Larva-Agua [Larva-Water], Larva-Tierra [Larva-Earth], Amarillentos (a y b) [Yellows (a and b)], Este pedazo [This piece], Kartaca, A ei, Amarillentos (c y d) [Yellows (c and d)], Kuajo, K., Este camino [This Path], Larva-Aire [Larva-Air], Kuá, ¿Qué dice la gente? [What do People Say?], O-Arca, Sapo-Pájaro [Toad-Bird] and Juguete (para niños mayores) [Toy ( for older children)].

Graciela Martínez in Miss Paris. Music

by Mathé Altéry. Nord Aviation factory, Paris, 1968. Graciela Martínez Archive.

Courtesy Sofía Kauer and Nicolás Licera Vidal.

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As part of the student protests and worker’s strikes known as the ‘French May’, Graciela Martínez took part in a cycle of artistic activities to support the protests at the Nord Aviation factory in Paris, where she performed the pieces Sobre el ring [On the Ring], Miss Paris, Madame et son enfant and ¿Jugamos a la bañadera?

In September, Martínez presented Contratodo [Againsteverything] at the Teatro SHA of the Israelite Society of Buenos Aires, from the end of the month and into October. In addition to Martínez, the show featured the dancers Ana Kamien and Lizzie Longobardi along with three jazz musicians playing live. The artwork involved the interaction between the dancers’ bodies and large, inflatable quadrilaterals in different shapes and colours designed by Martínez, exhibiting once again the choreographer’s multidisciplinary artistic interests.

Leone Sonnino contributed to visual and lighting design. Martínez told the newspaper Confirmado that the ‘French May’ uprisings prevented performances of the work at the Teatro Nacional Popular in Paris.

The Ballet del Teatro San Martín was founded under the directorship of Oscar Araiz, a role offered to the choreographer by the theatre director César Magrini after watching the pieces Crash! and Rite of Spring. The company continued in the tradition of the AADA, combining different forms of classical and modern dance. Productions performed during its first few years included Ciudad nuestra, Buenos Aires [Our City, Buenos Aires] and Odi et amo by Ana Itelman; El unicornio, la gorgona y la mantícora [The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore], Concierto de ébano [Ebony Concert], Crucifixión [Crucifixion], and Symphonia and Beat Suite by Oscar Araiz, and Recordad el amor [Remember Love] by Renate Schottelius.

The end of the year saw the collective show Tucumán arde [Tucumán is Burning] at the Rosario and Buenos Aires headquarters of the Confederación General de los Trabajadores de la Argentina (General 191

Confederation of Workers of Argentina, CGT), which protested against the crisis in the north of the country following the closure of the sugar refineries. The event was part of a series of actions carried out by avant-garde artists seeking to combine their creative practices with the revolutionary process. It also represented a drastic rupture with the institutions with which they had been involved up until then, mainly the Instituto Di Tella. While emerging dance artists were not a part of this radicalization, their works were made against a background of tension between art and politics.

The counterculture of which they were a part – linked to the pop, rock and hippie movements – was rejected by both left-wing and Peronist sectors who regarded them as superficial and foreign as well as conservative groups who regarded them as a threat to traditional values.

1969

Following a long period at the company Ballet du XXe Siècle with the renowned French choreographer Maurice Béjart at the Théâtre Royale de la Monnaie in Brussels, Susana Zimmermann returned to the Instituto Di Tella. On Monday, 21 April, she and the Dance Laboratory presented the work Polymorphias [Polymorphies], which consisted of two parts, the second of which, called Dies Irae, played music by Krzysztof Penderecki that paid homage to the victims of Auschwitz. Texts from the Book of Revelation, Aeschylus and Sophocles were quoted. The CEA handed over their facilities for research and development into changing the traditional role of the spectator, choreographer and audience. The work was thus performed over many months, several times a week.

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p. 193, left Programme for Polymorphias [Polymorphies], by Susana Zimmermann and the Dance Laboratory, Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1969. Graphic design by Rubén Fontana.

Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Archive.

p. 193, right Programme for Oye humanidad [Listen Humanity],

by Iris Scaccheri], Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1969.

Graphic design by Juan Carlos Distéfano and Rubén Fontana. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Archive.

On 6 September, Iris Scaccheri – back from a European tour on which she presented the work Magdalena at the Volksbildungsheim in Frankfurt – presented Oye humanidad [Listen Humanity], at the Instituto Di Tella. In the programme, Scaccheri writes: ‘One mustn’t think or strive, they must be quiet and let whatever is going to germinate to germinate.’ The texts, soundtrack and choreographies were

by Scaccheri. The work consists of fifteen scenes: Gente que habla [People Talking], Azul y gris [Blue and Grey], Sin forma [Formless], Se fueron los pájaros [The Birds have Gone], Hombre llevado [Taken Man], “Jueguillo” [Little Game], Ver al grillo y la hormiga [See the Grasshopper and the Ant], Cabeza, pie, hacelo [Head, Foot, Do it], ¿Cómo puede ser?

[How Can that Be?], Nudodesnudo [NudeUnnude], Y vuelvo al cuento [And I get Back to the Story], Genio seré [I’ll be a Genius], Hombre pegado [Stuck Man], Hombre llevado 2 [Taken Man 2] and Hoyo humanidad [Humanity Hole]. She later performed the work at different theatres in Europe including The Place in London. She was then hired by the Fondo Nacional de las Artes to tour Tucumán, Mendoza, Chaco, Córdoba and Rosario in Argentina.

In September, the Ballet of the Teatro San Martín held its first international tour of Europe, putting on artworks by Oscar Araiz, Ana Itelman and Gloria Contreras at the Biennial of Young Art in Paris, and The Place Theatre in London, ending with shows in Madrid and Valladolid.

1970

On Saturday, 9 May, Susana Zimmermann presented Ceremonias [Ceremonies], the last artwork she made with the Dance Laboratory at the Instituto Di Tella. The press release described the work as a protest against an alienating world in which its everyday ceremonies were confronted with revelatory ceremonies.

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p. 195, above Programme for María Lucía Marini es Marilú Marini [María Lucía Marini is Marilú Marini], Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual, Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1970.

Graphic design by Rubén Fontana.

Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Archive.

p. 195, below Still from the film Ana Kamien (1971), by Marcelo Epstein.

Colección Museo Moderno de Buenos Aires. Donated by the artist, 2022.

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The CEA also hosted the production Espectatraje [Spectasuit] by Gioia Fiorentino with choreography by Marilú Marini, a costume show featuring Jeanine Demonet, Liliana Fernández Blanco, Marcia Moretto, Marini and Fiorentino with a soundtrack by Carlos Cutaia.

The last dance performance at the Instituto Di Tella was María Lucía Marini es Marilú Marini, in the Hall of the Calle Florida headquarters with music by Chopin, Manal, Max Roach, Satie, Spooky Tooth and Vanilla Fudge in which the artist sought to bring together classical culture and the counter-culture. It made its debut on Monday, 25 May, followed by another performance on Sunday, 28 June, at 4PM with 86 spectators, the last ever show for the production and the Instituto Di Tella itself.

By the end of June, operational issues at the Institute following censorship by the Onganía administration’s military government and the imminent bankruptcy of SIAM-Di Tella led to the closure of the art centres at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella.

That year, the Centro Cultural San Martín hosted the Expodanza 70 cycle, organized by the dancer and choreographer Juan Falzone, in which different choreographers on the local scene presented their artworks followed by a conversation with the audience.

Ana Kamien and the audiovisual artist Marcelo Epstein made the film Ana Kamien, in which the dancer performs different fragments, some of modern dance pieces and others more similar to Danza actual. The 10 minute 16 second short, made in collaboration with Leone Sonnino, is considered the first ever Argentine dance video.

Toward the end of the year, Iris Scaccheri presented Se hizo carne [It Materialized] in the Casacuberta Hall of the Teatro San Martín. Press reviews describe a warm reception for the work in which dance seemed to be a medium for ritual bodily expression of irrational authenticity.

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1971

By the middle of 1968, following the rise of the Ballet del Teatro San Martín, the activities and impetus of the AADA had begun to decline.

In 1971, the Teatro San Martín withdrew its support and the AADA moved to the Teatro Coliseo. A year later, the association was dissolved. The Ballet del Teatro San Martín also paused its institutional activities that year, meaning that the dancers were re-hired by the Teatro Cervantes. In 1977, following several inactive years, the company was renamed Grupo de Danza Contemporánea del Teatro San Martín and in 1986, Ballet Contemporáneo del Teatro San Martín.

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5.

BIOGRAPHIES

Below is a series of brief biographies of some of the leading figures from the dance scene mentioned throughout the book.

Oscar Araiz (1940). Araiz was born in the town of Punta Alta,

Buenos Aires Province, and when he was ten, his family moved to Buenos Aires. His mother, a writer, gave him an education in which art played a major role. After his family moved to Bahía Blanca, he started taking classes in modern dance with Élide Locardi, a former dancer in Miriam Winslow’s company. When the family returned to Buenos Aires, Araiz decided to commit to dance. He continued his education with Renate Schottelius at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de La Plata and was admitted to the Ballet School at the Teatro Argentino. In 1960, he was selected to join Dore Hoyer’s group. In 1961, he presented Ritos [Rites] at the Teatro Argentino, his first professional work as a choreographer. In 1962, he travelled to Europe where he lived for a year. He returned to Argentina in 1963 and immediately moved to Brazil to work for a season with a group of dancers selected by Ana Itelman. In 1968, he founded the Ballet del Teatro San Martín; in 1979, he was named director of the Ballet Estable del Teatro Colón; from 1980 to 1988, he was the director of the Danse du Grand Théâtre de Genève (Switzerland); between 1990 and 1997 he directed the Ballet Contemporáneo del Teatro San Martín together with Renate Schottelius and Doris Petroni; from 2002 to 2003, he was the dance director of the Teatro Argentino de La Plata.

María Fux (1922-2023). Born in Buenos Aires to a family

of Russian Jewish immigrants, when Fux was thirteen, she started taking classes in classical dance with the Russian dancer Ekatherina de Galantha. Influenced by Isadora Duncan, she became interested in finding a new means of non-verbal communication through body movement, developing an original method of dance therapy that now bears her name. Between 1960 and 1965, she was the Director of the Seminar on Dance Therapy at the Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Between 1965 and 1990, she performed at the Teatro San Martín and gave seminars in dance therapy throughout Argentina. Her educational institutions provide training for physiotherapists, occupational therapists, phono-audiologists, doctors, dance and gymnastics teachers, psychotherapists, psychologists and teachers who work with people with disabilities.

Dore Hoyer (1911-1967). Born in Dresden (Germany), Hoyer

was a dancer and choreographer in the tradition of expressionist dance.

She studied with Gret Palucca, formed part of Mary Wigman’s company and was the director of the State Theatre of Oldenburg and the dance company at the Hamburg Opera. In 1952, she visited Argentina for the first time. Her artistic and educational work was a major influence on many major figures on the Argentine dance scene such as Iris Scaccheri and Oscar Araiz.

Ana Itelman (1927-1989). Born in Santiago (Chile), Itelman

moved to Argentina with her family as a young child. Having graduated from the Conservatorio Nacional de Música y Arte Escénico, she was a member of the Ballet Winslow and completed her training in the United States with artists such as Martha Graham, Louis Horst, José Limón, Merce Cunningham, Alwin Nikolais, Erwin Piscator and 202

Lee Strasberg. She was a professor and director of the Dance Department at Bard College in New York. In the 1970s, back in Buenos Aires, she founded the Café Estudio de Teatro Danza de Ana Itelman where she trained a generation of professionals in dramatic creation, choreographic composition and improvisation. She collaborated regularly with the Contemporary Dance Group at the Teatro San Martín and also taught at the same institution’s Contemporary Dance Workshop.

Lía Jelín (1934). Born in Buenos Aires, Jelín trained as a dancer under renowned teachers such as Martha Graham in Israel and Renate Schottelius in Argentina. She has worked as a director, producer, performer, choreographer and dancer at projects of theater, dance, musical theater and television. She has won many awards, including the ACE, the Trinidad Guevara, the Florencio Sánchez and the Premio Fondo Nacional de las Artes.

Ana Kamien (1935). Born in Buenos Aires, Kamien studied

classical dance for three years. In the late fifties, she took classes with Renate Schottelius and in 1961 with María Fux – moments she considers fundamental for her understanding and furthering of modern dance. After finishing school, she found a job working at a bank and continued her dance training. She met Marilú Marini at classes given by María Fux and Graciela Martínez at lessons run by Renate Schottelius. In 1963, she was invited by Graciela Martínez to be part of Danza Actual. She is married to the artist Leone Sonnino.

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Marilú Marini (1940). Born in Buenos Aires and raised in

Mar del Plata, where she studied classical dance throughout her childhood, Marini attended the Universidad de Buenos Aires to study Sociology and Psycho-pedagogy where she came across the classes given by María Fux, whom she regards as her foundational influence.

She continued her training with Patricia Stokoe, Renate Schottelius and Estela Maris. Before joining Danza Actual, she, Ana Kamien and other dancers formed a modern dance group called Burbuja, which produced works for children.

Born in Buenos Aires and raised in Córdoba, Martínez started her classical dance training as a child and in her youth also learned engraving and painting. She started to create and present her own choreographies between 1957 and 1958, when she married the artist Antonio Seguí. Together, they travelled across Latin America, during which time she performed Danzas y pantomimas [Dances and Pantomimes] in Peru, Colombia and Mexico. Once they settled in Mexico City, she studied modern dance with the American dancer Xavier Francis and the Danish dancer Bodil Genkel. In 1960, they returned to Córdoba and in 1961 moved to Buenos Aires. During that year, Martínez started a new process of artistic experimentation that would produce the first pieces that eventually became Danza actual.

Graciela

Martínez

(1936-2021).

Iris Scaccheri (1939-2014). Born in the city of La Plata, as a

girl Scaccheri took classes in Arabic, folk, Spanish and classical dance.

When she was seventeen, she travelled to Uruguay to train with Inge Bayerthal – a German teacher and dancer taught by Rudolf von Laban – who gave dance classes based on the conscious gymnastics method.

She studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in La Plata and the Escuela 204

de Danzas Clásicas del Teatro Argentino, and was part of the group directed by Dore Hoyer with whom she danced, in 1961, the pieces Cadena de fugas [Chain of Fugues] and La idea at the Teatro Colón.

Born in Flensburgo (Germany), Schottelius came to Argentina at the age of fourteen. She joined the Ballet Winslow and trained generations of noted dancers.

On her travels overseas, she attended classes with Martha Graham, José Limón, Hanya Holm, Doris Humphrey and Louis Horst. In Buenos Aires, she founded the Asociación Amigos de la Danza and was a teacher, choreographer and artistic advisor at the Ballet Contemporáneo of the Teatro General San Martín and the same institution’s Dance Workshop. She also worked tirelessly training dancers as well as developing and promoting modern dance in public and private institutions.

Renate

Schottelius

Patricia

Stokoe

(1922-1998).

(1919-1996). Born in Buenos Aires to

British parents, Stokoe was raised on the estate they ran near the Buenos Aires town of Coronel Suárez. In 1938, she went to Britain to study classical and modern dance. during the Second World War, she gave her first classes at schools in London. In the post-war period, she returned to Argentina where she ran the School of Bodily Expression at the Collegium Musicum de Buenos Aires. Influenced by avant-garde movements and Isadora Duncan’s free dance concepts, her educational methods were focused on bodily awareness, exploration of movement, expression and improvisation. She published several important reference works on bodily expression.

205

Born in Hernando (Córdoba), Villanueva studied Architecture at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. He worked as a theater director, actor, adaptor and scenographer. Considered one of the great innovative masters of Argentine theater, he directed the Centre of Audiovisual Experimentation (CEA) at the Instituto Di Tella from 1963 to 1970. There, he supported the careers of groundbreaking Argentine artists such as Marilú Marini, Nacha Guevara and Kado Kostzer. Persecuted by the dictatorship, he lived in exile between 1978 and 1992. He directed over a hundred plays in Spain, France, Brazil and Argentina, receiving numerous awards for his work including the ACE, FNA, María Guerrero and the Trinidad Guevara, among others.

Roberto

Villanueva

(1929-2005).

Miriam Winslow (1909-1988). Born in a small seaside town in the United States, Winslow trained as a dancer at the Braggiotti Denishawn school, one of the most important in Boston. On her travels, she studied classical Spanish dance and Flamenco with José Otero and was introduced to expressionist dance by Mary Wigman and Harald Kreutzberg. Having formed an artistic partnership with Foster Fitz-Simmons, she went on numerous tours across the United States, Canada and South America. In 1944, she moved to Buenos Aires, where she trained the first generation of teachers and dancers in modern dance and formed the Ballet Winslow. In 1961, she returned to the United States to concentrate on sculpture.

Susana Zimmermann (1932-2021). Born in Buenos Aires, Zimmermann trained in classical and contemporary dance with renowned teachers from Argentina and overseas. Between 1962 and 1968, she was part of the Asociación Amigos de la Danza. She created and directed the Ballet de Hoy together with Oscar Araiz and Ana 206

Labat, and directed the Dance Laboratory at the Instituto Di Tella de Buenos Aires. As an avant-garde and experimental artist, in the seventies, she organized multi-disciplinary experiences. After 1976, she worked in different European countries as a choreographer and teacher, managed different cultural spaces and wrote several books about dance.

207

6.

REGISTER

20th CENTURY - 1983 DANCE DOESN’T FORGET

So many choreographers, teachers, dancers, so many names, so many stories, so many languages, so many different traditions, so many anonymous artisans.

‘Must a name mean something?’ Alice asked doubtfully.

‘Of course it must,’ Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh.

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

The 1,983 names that we have brought together here belong to those who, through their everyday activities, work and participation in different aspects of the artistic field of dance, were and are active agents of our time. These 1,983 names are just the beginning of an infinite list of artists who made it possible for there to be a history of dance in Argentina. To name them is to place each of them in a context of belonging; it is also a recognition of their place in this artistic domain.

Of course there are many, many more... This is only the beginning of the “Nombrar” [‘Naming’] project. The world of dance does not forget that 1983 is also a symbolic date for all the people of Argentina.

Susana Tambutti

Acknowledgements

This archive exists thanks to the generosity and valuable information provided by my colleagues who, from different parts of the country, have recovered names that I may never have arrived at without their invaluable help. My thanks to Ariel Rivadero and Carolina Navarro (La Rioja), Evangelina Argañaraz Raiden, Soledad Argañaraz Raiden and Silvana Carsillo (Catamarca), Gabily Anadón (Misiones), Sandra Reartes (Salta), Fernanda Gómez Murillas (Río Negro), Marilyn Granada (Chaco), Mariana Sirote (Neuquén), Patricia and Paola Sabbag, Beatriz Lábatte, Patricia Reginato and María Aguilera (Tucumán), Paulina Antacli (Córdoba), Ariel Tejada, Gabriela Moggia, Mercedes Molina and Cristina Prieto (Buenos Aires), the Fundación Movimiento Federal de Danza and, especially, Marcelo Isse Moyano.

212

A Abbove, Blanca María Abelenda, Josefina Aberastain, Judith Abrodos, José Acosta, Amelia Acosta, Guillermo Acosta, Martha Acosta, Norma Beatriz Acuña, Daisy Adamova, Adela Admella, Isabel Agoglia, Esmeralda Agras, Elsa Aguer, Jorge Agüero, Luis Agüero, Silvia Agüero, Susana Aguerre, Gabriel Aguilar, Daniel Aguilar, José Aguilar, Olga Aguilera, Juan Raúl “Lito” Aguilera, Pablo Aizenberg, Eda Akamine, Haichi Alarcón, Mariela Alarcón, Rodolfo Alaria de Paula, Oscar Alfredo “Alfredo Alaria” Albarracín, Carmen Albarracín, Fabiana Candela Albarracín, Liliana Alberti, Gabriela Alcántara, Alicia Alcaraz, Emiliano Alé, Ricardo

Alfie, Melanie Alfonsín, Eduardo

Andreoni, Patricio Angelova, Nadia

Alfonso, Cinthia Alfonso, Ricardo Allué, Anahí Almada, Carlos Almonacid de Peñaloza, Paula Aloia, Ana María Aloisia, Greta Alonso, Elba “Taca” Alonso, María Amelia Alonso de Zambrano, María Luisa Altamiranda, Marcelo Altamirano, Germán Altez, Julio Alvarenga, Verónica Álvarez, María Joaquina Álvarez, Pilar Alventosa, Adriana Alves, Claudio Alves, Paola Alzuarena, Patricia Amábile, Beatriz Amado Díaz, Juan Manuel Amantea, Adriana Amarante, Jorge Amat, Mirta Amaya, Nazarena Amaya, Roberto Ambartsoumian, Vagram Amicon, Aída Amuchástegui, María Anadón, Gabilí Anastasi, Victoria Anchával, Héctor Anchipi, Mariela Andisco, Luciana Andrade, Adolfo

Angiel, Brenda Angió, Gabriel Angrisani, Daniel Anllo, María Elena Anne, Giselle Annum, Yamil Anselmi, Paula Antacli, Paulina Antelo, Marcelo Aldo Antenucci, Mariana Antoszewski, Gabriela Antúnez, Elizabeth Aón, Walter Humberto Appelhans, Walkiria Aprile, Claudio Araiz, Oscar Aramayo, Ivana Aramburú, Teresa Aranguren, Tamara Araolaza Bergh de Buis, Cristina Arbert, Jorge Archimaut, Valeria Arcos, Estela Arévalo Schiavo, Verónica Argañaraz, Diego Argañaraz, Ximena Argañaraz Raiden, Evangelina Argañaraz Raiden, Soledad Argüelles, Paula Valeria Arias Marchisio, Mavi Arias, Rubén Aricó, Héctor Arienti, Teresa Aristimuño, Rocío Armas, Inés Armen, Grigorian Arnedo, Mauricio

Arnoldi, Patricia Arquimbau, Eduardo “Gloria y Eduardo” Arquimbau, Gloria “Gloria y Eduardo” Arrascaeta, Natalia Arrieta, Luis Arruga, Mónica Arteaga, Facundo Arteaga Rodríguez, Lourdes Aruj, Silvia Asaff, Michelle Asaff, Néstor Astarloa, Mabel Astesiano, Dalmiro Astrova, María Elena Astrova, Mura Ávalos, Gabriela Avellaneda, Eduardo Averastein, Manuel Ávila, Marcela Ávila, Máximiliano Ávila, Nelson “Nélida y Nelson” Avril, May Ayala, Santiago “El Chúcaro” Aybar, Mónica Ayos, Víctor Ayusa, Claudia Azcurra, Ana

B Baamonde, Gerardo Baamonde, Marisa Bagli, Vanina Baglivo, Lucio Bahamonde, Florentino Baldassari, Leonor

Baldassarre, Luis Baldó, Daniel

Barrionuevo, Christian Barrionuevo, Graciela

Baldonedo, Carlos Bali, Margarita Balli, Marixa Balladini, Cecilia Ballerini de Messad, Mercedes Ballero, Amanda Ballvé, Sofía Balmaceda, Julio Balmaceda, Laura Balmaceda, Miguel “Nelly y Miguel” Balmaceda, Nelly “Nelly y Miguel” Balois Pardo, Juan “Cacho” Baltzer, Teresa Bandi, Carlos Baña, José María “El pibe Palermo” Barañao, Silvina “La Colo” Barba, María Emilia Barba, Silvia Barberio, Gabriela Barboza, Alejandra “Vidala” Barboza, Patricia Barceló, Alicia Barceló, Antonio Barceló, Hernán Barcelona, Virginia Barenstein, Adriana Bares, Nacha Barneix, Claudio Barnils, Cristina Barreta, Claudia Barreto, Teresita Barrientos, Alberto Barrientos, Pascual Barrientos, Sandra

Barrionuevo, Silvia Barrios Vidal, Alejandro Barroso, Miriam Barvié, Myrta Bascourleguy, Graciela Beatriz Basille, Adriana Bassi, Nerina Basso, Marimi Basteiro, Osmar Basualdo, José Luis Batiuk, Valencia Bauthian, Claudia Baz, Irma Bazán, Claudia Bazán, Natalia Bazán, Pamela Bazilis, Silvia Beccaceci, Laura Bedetti, Luis Alberto Belfiore, Liliana Belga de Muslera, María del Carmen Belleggia, Raúl Alejandro Belli, Claudio Bellini, Juan Carlos Bellomo, Betina Belloni, Patricia Bellotto, Mariana Belmonte, Sonia Benavídez, Mariel Silvina Bendersky, Etel Beneyto, Sonia Bengoechea, Andrea Benítez Coll, María José Berdischevsky, Carla Bermúdez, Josefina Bernaldez, Dafne

Bernárdez, Mercedes Bernich, María Elena “Malena” Bertotti, Graciela Bertuol, Gustavo Besio, Olga Betelú, Andrea Bettini, Mary Bezenzette, Fabiana Biagini, Liliana Bianchi, María Fernanda Bianquet, Ovidio José “El Cachafaz” Biasotto, Luis Bilous, Vanina Binaghi, Norma Binda, Alicia Binetti, Quio Bisogno, Mey-Ling Blaires, Vanesa Blanco, Fernanda María Blanco, Graciela Blanco, Rafael Blanzaco, Roberto “Bobby” Blostein, Mirta Blutrach, Mariana Bocca, Julio Bochkovsky, Sara Bogado, Aurelio Bogado, Daniel Bohn, Giselle Bolívar, Ricardo Bolívar, Nicolás Bolster, Silvia Bombardieri, Regina Bonagiunta, Elide Bonansea, Natalia Bonard, Eliana Bonilla, Mariela Borazzo, Alba

Bordón, Gabriel Bordón, Paola Borgogno, Guillermo Boris, Ofelia Borowska, Irina Bórquez, Carlos “Los Bórquez” Bórquez de Mayoral, Elsa María “Los Bórquez” Bosch, María Boschi, Gisela Boselli, Carolina Botello, Polly Bottirolli, Andrea Bóveda, Emma “La Francesita” Bóveda, Ricardo Boyer, Henry Bozzo, Cristina Brandauer, Sandy Brandán, Miguel Jazz Brandon, Milita Bravo, Gustavo Bravo, Raúl Jorge Brepe, Eduardo Briceño, Andrea Brígido, Mónica Brikman, Lola Brinda Castría, Gabriela Britos, Violeta Brizio, Mónica Brizuela, Nicolás Brizuela y Doria, Susana Brodsky, Lisu Brodsky, Manón Bros, Diego Browne, Patricia Brunelli, Silvia Brusco, Marina Buchara, Magali Bucino, Miguel

Buffa, Lilia Bulla de Oviedo, María Bullaude, Cecilia Bulnes, Esmeé Bulnes, Isabel Burgos, Ariel Burgos, Guillermo Burstyn, Diana Busolini, Giovanna Bustamante, Arturo Argentino “Tino” Bustamante, Carina Bustamante, Luis Buy, Ángel

C Caamaño, Eduardo Caballero, Jorge Caballero, Juan Pablo Cabanne, Analía Cabello, Rafael Cabral, Hilario “Master Gaucho” Cabrera, Claudia Cabrera, Graciela Cabrera, José Luis Cabrera, Sonia Cabrera de Wildemer, Elsa Cabría, Claudia Cáceres, Omar Caffarena, Silvio Caivano, Claudio Calermo, Anselmo Calicchia, Silvana Calicchio, Omar Calneggia, María del Carmen Calveyra, Pedro Calvo, Leonor

Camarucci, Mercedes Cambiasso, Mariela Cammertoni, Walter Campana, Teresita Campidoglio, Hebe Campitelli, José Carlos Campodónico, Cristina Campodónico, Hebe Cámpora, Amira Campos Carrizo, Carlos Campos, Victoria Candal, Raúl Cano, Bernarda Canobbio, Alma Canosa, Ángela Canudas, Elena Cañás, Ángela Cao, Nené Capasso, Diana Capello, Juan Carlos Capponcelli, Silvia Capriotti, Fabiana Capurro, Teresa Caravajal, María Ester Cardamone, Eva Cardell, Silvana Cardenas, Esteban Carey, Marisa Caride, Rita Carioni, Sonia Carlé, Andrea Carli, Didi Carlovich, Virginia Carman, Francis Carmona, Nelly Caro, Ernesto Carou, María Belén Carpintero, Graciela Carranza, Patricia

Carreño, Liliana Carretero, Inés Carrizo, Gustavo “El Negro” Carrizo, María Teresa Carrot, Gerardo Carsillo, Silvana Carte, Marcelo Caruso, Alfredo Casacci, Norma Casares, Margarita Casaretto, Clotilde Casaretto, Glenda Casella, Carlos Casella, Nelly Caseta, Stella Casinerio, Raúl Casper, Graciela Cassano, Eleonora Cassettari, Amílcar Castagno, Gladys Castello, Ernesto Norberto “Pupi” Castillo, Gema G. Castillo, Karina Ana Castría, Elba Castro, Daniel Castro, Emmanuel Castro, Irene Castro, Luis Castro, Selva Castro, Marcela Castro, Margarita Castro Merlo, Ana Paola Castro Videla, Alejandra Castro Videla, Astrid Castronovo, Pablo Cataldi, María de los Ángeles Catino, María José Cattalin, Luciana Beatriz

Cattáneo, Juan Caviglioli, Yolanda Cazón, Mariela Cebeyra, Marcelo Ceccarini, Marisol Cejas, Andrés “Tanguito” Cejas, Guadalupe Cejas-Calfuqueo, Marcela Celiberti, Rubén Cendali, Gerardo “Piraña” Cendra, Nélida Centurión Yedro, Marcela Cepeda, Liliana Cepeda, Olga Cerdá, Esteban Cerdán, Sofía Cerdán Aguirre, Raúl Cereceda, María Juana Ceriani, Alejandra Ceruse, Andrea Cerusico, Blanca Nieves Cervera, Alejandro Cervila, Antonio Soares Césari, Alfredo Cesio, Valerio Chacón, Coco Chagra de Gruber, Fulvia Chaile, Erika Chaiquin, Beatriz Chalup Raiden, Silvia Graciela Chama Lewensztajn, Andrea Chapman, Moira Charmiello, Alba “Titi” Chayán, Rubén Chazarreta, Andrés Checenelli, Raúl Mario Chiecher, Lucrecia Chillemi, Aurelia Chinetti, Andrea

Chinetti, Marcela Chinetti, Marcio Churba, Alberto Cicaré, Daniel Ciceri, Daiana Cide, María Cecilia Ciliento, Osvaldo Salvador Cipollone, Martin Cipriano, Marta Clos, Cecilia Cochella, Viviana Codega, Sebastián Codina, Nora Coel, Tita Coelho, Miriam Coelho, Noemí Cofone, Elena Coll, Adriana Collini Sartor, Gustavo Collo, Alba Lutecia Colombino, Daniel Colque, Adolfo Colque, Malena Colussi, María Marta Comínguez, María Emilia Comotto, Natalia Concado, Graciela Concari, Lorena Condoleo, Juan Miguel Condro, Lucas Conforte, Laura Conrad, Ana María Constantino, Alicia Contreras, Gabriel Contreras, José Benito Contreras, Marcelo Contreras, Nino Copello, Carlos Copes, Juan Carlos

Cóppola, Margot Corani, Miriam Corcione, Tony Coria, Eduardo “Peque” Cormio, Blanca Coronel, Mirta Corpucci, Romina Corrales, Jorge “Chupete” Corso, Gustavo Cortazzo, Sergio Cortés, Cristina Cortés, Damián Cortés, Narciso del Carmen “El Pampa” Cortiglia, Pierina Cortiñas, Nieves Corzi, Miriam Cosentino, Elbio Cosentino, Norberto Costamagna, Miriam Costanzo, Nora Coufis, Andreas Couto, Liliana Cragnolini, Miguel Ángel Cramer, Mónica Cremaschi, Ana Crespo, Cecilia Criquet, Marcela Crisafi, Graciela Cristófaro, Rodrigo Cruzado, Alicia Cruzado, Susana Cuadra, Maximiliano Cuadra, Rodrigo Cucchetti , Laura Cuéllar, Malén Cuello, Leonardo Cuello, Rubén Cuestas, Leonardo

Cuevas, Juan Cúneo, Miriam Cutaia, Carola

D Dacal, María Elena Daglio, Claudia Lorena Dagué, Fernando Dai Chee Chang, Mabel Dajanova, María Dal, Patricia Dalbene, Nina D’Albo, Guido Dalmasso, Laura D’Alu, Susana Dana, Giselle Dantón, Rodolfo D’Arnot, Paul Da Silva, Ángela Dasso, Pablo Deambrogio, Federico de Aira, Laura de Barelli, Ricardo de Benedetti, Guido de Chapeaurouge, Elizabeth de Chazal, Matilde de Chazal, Mercedes de Erlés, Esther de Fazio, Guillermo “Hermanos Macana” de Fazio, Enrique “Hermanos Macana” de Galantha, Ekatherina Delavalle, Hugo de la Vega, Leticia del Cerro, Teresa del Grande, Dora

Dell’Aquila, Ada Della Mea, Luis Dellabora, Adrián Deller, Leonora Delmagro, Cristina de los Santos Amores, Juan del Pino, Jorge del Río, Teresa del Río, Thelma de Luque, Paula del Valle, Miguel del Valle, Doris del Valle Lacroix, Amelia del Valle Tula, Cristina de Marco, Miguel Demarchi, Patricia de Martinelli, Dolores Demicheli, Olga de Oddonetto, Ermelinda Deporte, Estela Dermitzakis, Jorge Derwell, Olga de Seijó, María Elena Desse, Pablo de Trabalón, María Deutsch, Ana Devin, Nora Díaz, Alberto Díaz, Alejandra Díaz, Armando “Lulo” Díaz, Claudia Díaz, Esperanza Díaz, José Antonio “Pepe” Díaz, Juan José Díaz, María Cecilia Díaz Colodrero, Yeya Díaz de Gotelli, Nora Diez, Gaby Di Falco, Diego

Dimitrievich, Roberto Dinzelbacher, Carlos “Los Dinzel” Di Pardo, Tito Dobarganes, Susana Dobrito, Carina Doglio, Roxana Domenech, Angó Domenichini, Esteban Martín Domínguez, Ana María “La Negra” Domizzi, Analía Donzelli, Elisa Dopazo, Ana María Dornido, Liliana Dorrego, Angélica Duarte, Manolo Duarte, Manuel “Mingo” Duarte, Mercedes Dubini, Inés Duby, Chola Duch, Esperanza Duende, Sara Duggan, Teresa Du Haut Bonnet de Sagués, Genoveva Durán, Beatriz Durán, Francisco Durante, Beatriz D’Urso, Carolina Dutto, Silvia Dvorak, Milka

E Eberhart, Paula Echaniz, Cintia Echelini, Cristina

Economo, Ruth Eidelberg, Alejandra Eleta, Ángel Elías, Cecilia Elías, Miguel Ángel Elizalde, Patricio Elizondo, Paula Engel, Heidi Enhart, Olga Entín, Gabriela Erbsen, Andreas Erman, Estela Ermocida, Lorena Erroz, María Soledad Escobar, Daniel Escobar, Diego Espósito, Carolina Estanga, Darío Estévez, Carlos Alberto “Petróleo” Estévez, Cecilia Estévez, Evangelina Estévez, Héctor Estévez, María Eugenia Estévez, Mariana Estrin, Silvia Etchebehere, Paula Etchegoyen, Violeta Etchembaum, Rada Etchepare, Lorena Etcheves, Claudine Eugenio, Mónica

F Facal, María Verónica Facetti, María Luisa Faiad, Zulma Falagan, Enriqueta

Falcoff, Laura Falcón, Héctor Falcone, Susana Falkemberg, Alma Falsea, Marina Falzone, Juan Fantacone, Marcela Fantini, Isis Far, María Marta Farías, David Farías, Magalí Farías, Sandra Farrace, Olga Fehler, Erica Feintuch, Verónica Feld, Rosana Felici, Alberto Fermani, Pablo Fermanian, Diana Fernández, Andrea Fernández, Daniel Fernández, Daniela Fernández, Dolores Fernández, Fabián Fernández, Flavio Fernández, Gachi Fernández, Jovita Fernández, Lía Fernández, Margarita Fernández, Mecha Fernández, Perla Fernández, Soledad Andrea Fernández, Viviana Ferradás, Nelly Ferrando, Esther Ferrari, Beatriz Ferrari, Debra Ferrari, Silvana Ferrari, Víctor

Ferraro, Susana Ferrazano, Érica Ferrazano, María Ferreira Morais, Leandro Ferrer, Patricia Ferreti, Alba Ferreyra, Graciela Ferri, Olga Ferrucci, Liliana Fertino, María Cristina Fidalgo, Laura Figaredo, Cecilia Figueroa, Cecilia Figueroa, Ciro Figueroa, Juanqui Figueros, Nena Filgueira, Mario Filimonov, Víktor Filippini, Gioconda Finn, Gerardo Fiorani, María Angélica Fiordelmondo, Omar Fiorino, Daniel Firmani, Manuel “Manuco” Firmani, Marita Firpo, Gustavo Firpo, Jorge Fischenich, Susana Fiuri, Alicia Fleitas, Federico Fleitas, Nenúfar Flores, Betty Flores, Carlos Augusto Flores, Lila Folco, Silvina Fonseca, Mario Fontán, Rodolfo Fontana, Marisa Fontelles, Héctor “Pocho”

Fontenla, Norma Fonzalida, Germán Forlin, Sandra Forneri, Lucía Forsi, Nachi Fortino, Viviana Fouroulis, Fedra Fracchia, Mónica Frágola, Beatriz Fraguela, Leticia Francou, Estela Fredes, Noemí Frenkel, Ana Frexas, Nela Frías, Luciano (Mónica y Luciano) Frías, Mónica (Mónica y Luciano) Fritzsche, Pier Frúmboli, Mariano “Chicho” Fuentes, Liana Carmen Fuentes, Néstor “Bagual” Fuentes, Nina Fumei, Emilio Furioso, Mirta Fusari, Lucía Fusari, Valentina Fuster Castro, Emelina

G Gabin, María José Gago, Andrés Gaiani, Evet Gaitán, Marcela Galán Rojas, Raquel Galante, Laura Galera, Fernando

Galindo, Manuel Galindo, Marisa Galizzi, Mario Gallardo, Griselda Gallardo, Rubén Gallardo, Tomás Galleani, Lydia Gallo, Katty Galoto, Soledad Galt, Iván Galván, Roberto Galván, Verónica Galvé, Daniel Gamas, María Esther Gamboni, Margarita Games, Natalia Gana, Hugo Gancedo, Adriana Gandini, Fabián Ganem, Hilda Gangitano, Matilde Garat, Ana García, Amalia García, Ana García, Carolina García, Graciela García, Horacio García, Jorge García, María Delia García, María Laura García, Rafael “El Negro” García, Yonne García Arocena, Yerutí García Blaya, Jimena García Cardo, Susana García Gálvez, Elsa “Alexandra Golovina” García Millán, Vanesa García Satur, Alberto

Gargantini, Aldo Luis Garófalo, José Gass Medhi, Silvana Gatto, Anabela Gatto, Laura Gatto, Raúl Gavito, Carlos Gay, Laura Gay, Romina Gayoso, Nidia Gazola, Agostina Gelman, Ruth Gelosi, Hernán Gesualdi, Cristina Gesualdo, Cecilia Ghitti, Roberto Giachero, Roberto Gianbuzzi, José “El Tarila” Giancaspro, Marina Giammaria, María Giannantonio, Cecilia Gigli, Fabio Gilardenghi, Diana Gili, Sonia Giménez, Alfredo Giménez, Pedro Giovine, Lilian Giralt, Ana Giroldi, Emilce Giromini Droz, Mario Girona, Cristina Giusto, Silvia Giusto, Víctor Glanc, José Glanc, Yaroslan Gnavi, Esther Godoy, Irma Godoy, Mora Godoy, Raúl

Goicochea, Marcela Goldín Lapacó, Celina Goldín, Daniel Goldín, María José Goldkuhl, Teresa Golic, Ruth Gómez, Antonio Gómez, Estela Gómez, Hugo Gómez, Guillermo “Kuly” Gómez, Paquita Gómez Carranza, Hugo Gómez Comini, Cristina Gontscharoff, Margarita González, Claudio González, Isaid González, Graciela “La leona del tango” González, Laura González, Mercedes González Cortés, Marcela González Gonz, Susana González López Del Cerro, Adela González Toledo, Beba Gopkalo, Igor Gordillo, Celia Gordillo, Valeria Gorostegui, Cristina Gorrieri, Anná Gotelli, Beatriz Goyechea, Laura Graham, Margarita Graham, Peggy Graib, Pablo Gramuglia, Guillermo Granada, Marilyn Grassi Díaz, Cirilo Grassi, Eugenio

Grieco, Miguel Grigorian, Armen Grimaldi, Sonia Grinberg, Luisa Grinberg, Silvina Grinstein, Roxana Groba, Haydée Guajardo, Adriana Guantay, Silvia Gude, Néstor “Trapito” Guerra, Ana Valeria Guerra, Maximiliano Guichendúc, Norberto Guida, Sandra Guidobono, Juan Emilio Guidotti, Claudia Guillén, Juan Cruz “Fierro” Guillén, Maia Guiser, Ismael Gurquel, Alfredo Guterman, Cecilia Gutiérrez, María Candela Gutiérrez Firpo, Enrique Gutiez, Marcela Guzmán, Froilán

H Haedo, Leonardo Hakimián, María Rosa Halpern, Sandra Hammerschmidt, Andrea Hansen, Laura Helling, Eduardo Helou, Verónica “Saida” Hennings, Elizabeth Hernández, Héctor Hernández, Marinés

Herón, Gregorio “El Pampa” Herrera, Benigno Herrera, Estanislao Herrera, Florentino Herrera, Paloma Herrera, Patricia Herrera, Roberto Herrera, Silvia Herzcovich, Liliana Hidalgo, María Cristina Hochbaum, Sergio Hochman, Gerardo Hodgers, Silvia Hoffmann, Claudio Hoth, Ana María Huerta, Marta Hünicken, Adda Hurtado, Celina

I Iacovisky, Sandro Iaros, Katia Iasparra, Viviana Ibáñez, Cristina Ibáñez, Eduardo Ibáñez, Susana Ibarra, Américo Ibarreta, Enrique Idígoras, Verónica Iglesias, Clotilde Iglesias, Marcelo Iglesias, Norma Incrocci, Lelio Indart, Susana Ingenieros, Cecilia Ingrey, Magdalena Insúa, Nora

Iotti, Carolina Irinova, Nora Iripino, Marcelo Iruskibelar, Fabián Isoba, Liliana Isoldi, Stella Maris Italiano, Eduardo Itelman, Ana Iturbe, Nora Ivanoff, Liliana

J Jaenish, Ariel Jaime, Ana María Jaime, Silvio Jaime, Zaida Jakas, Caro Jakas, Evangelina Janeiro, Violeta Jaramillo, Martha Jaraz, Diego Jelín, Lía Jiménez, Aníbal Jiménez, Hugo Jiménez, Omar Jorge, Edgardo José, Ana Laura Juárez, Silvina

K Kadjberounian, Gaik Kaelher, Silvia Kalmar, Deborah Kamien, Ana Kaplan, Delfy

Kazda, Gloria Kees, Pablo Leandro Kerche, Cecilia Kipen, Claudia Kirowa, Olga Klappenbach Caprile, María Delfina “Biyina” Kleimann, Maricel Klies, Mabel Kluczkiewicz, Cintia Kogan, Karina Königsberg, Beatriz Kovadloff, Valeria Kozlov, Andrey Kremer, Vivi Kriner, Dora Kristel, Ada Kruk, Elena Kuitka, Nora Kurchan, Leticia Kuttel, Verónica

L Labaronne, Cynthia Labaronne, Lía Labat, Ana Lábatte, Beatriz Labougle, Bebe Lafica, Rafael Lafleur, Julieta “Lala” La Fox, Ambar La Fox, Peter Lagarde, Susana Laguzzi, Viviana Lakis, Silvia Lamagni, Mariana Lamas, Alejandro

Lamberti, Patricia Lanceros, Daniel

Lestingi, Tony Letamendia, Ignacio

Landa, Mónica Landi, Gino Langa, Judith Lantermo, Marta Lapparo, Emir Lapzeson, Noemí Larea, Emiliano Larici, Miriam Larrosa, Delfino Larumbe, Carmen Larumbe, Néstor Lastra, Rodolfo Latrónico, Leticia La Valle, Claudia Lavalle, Claudio Lavalle, Marta Lavallén, Alejandro Lavandina, Cacho Lawrie, Lorna Lázara, Elizabeth Leal, María Eugenia Lederer, Juana Ledoskaia, Natalia Lefel, Claudia Lefevre, Andrea Leiva, Maximiliano Diego Lema, Juan Carlos Lemarchand, Verónica Silvia Lemos, Blanca Lemos, María Luisa Lena, Fabián Lencina, Karina León, Mariana Leone, Diana Lértora, Graciela Lescano, José Lesgart, Gustavo

Leyland, Gloria Liberatti, Sandra Libertella, Alejandra Licitra, Oscar “El Arisco” Licitra, Virginia Lieban, Daniela Litvak, Gerardo Litvak, Verónica Lizarraga, Alba Lizarraga, Cecilia Lobato, Eber Lobato, Mariel Locardi, Élide Lombardero, Macaria Lombardo, Darío Lombardo, Dino Lommi, Enrique Longo, Claudio Longo, Daniel Longobardi, Lizzy López, Antonio López, Julio López, Lila López, Nancy López, Pilar López, Sonia López del Cerro, María Adela López Frugoni, Eugenia López Júlvez, Encarnación López Morera, Luis López Pensa, Oscar López Piamello, María Cristina “Cris” López Ungido, Misael Loras, Robertino Lorenzo, Agustina Lorenzo, Francisco

Louzau, Héctor Lovera, Oscar Lozano, Amalia Lozano, José Luis Lozano, Martha Lucena, Claudia Lucero, Alfredo Luciani, Graciela Luciani, Verónica Lugones, Juan Carlos Luna, Lito (Salta) Luna, Pochi Luppi, Marcela Luraschi, Mariano Luraschi, Sonia Lusiardo, Tito Lutecia Collo de Duyos, Alba Luz, Vivian Lynch, Ethel Lynch, Federico

M Machaco, Mario Machado, Diana Maciel, Alfredo Maestro, María de los Ángeles “Cuky” Magán, María Rosa Maggi, María Elena Maggio, Fabiana Magnari, Anita Maguna, Inés Maidana, Carmen Maidana, Julio Maidana, Silvia Mairena, Manolo Maldonado, Marita

Maldonado, Sandra Malinoff, Roxana

Martínez, Yanina Martínez D’Ors, Jorgelina

Malkeson, Bella Malvagni, Delfy Mamaní, Valentina Manaker, Paula Mancini, Magdalena Mancini, Romina Mancini, Teresita Mandelbaum, Isi Mangini, Marcelo Manonellas, Ruth Manqueo, Oscar Mantiñán, Alejandra Manuel, Pascual Marchioni, Gustavo Marchisio, Susana Margenat, Beatriz Marini, Marilú Marinoni, Luis Mariño, Edith Maris, Gustavo Maris, Rodolfo Esteban Markova, Mara Márquez, Alicia Marti, Ángela Martin, Egle Martín, Melina Martin, Nora Martínez, Aurora Martínez, Flora Martínez, Graciela Martínez, Ismael Martínez, Jorge Martínez, Liliana Martínez, Mabel Martínez, Orlando Manuel “Orlando Paiva” Martínez, Virginia

Martini, Juana Martino, Francisco Martinoli, Lidia Martorelo, Analía Mascardi, Leticia Masetti, Marcela Mastracchio, Olga Mastrazzi, Lydia Mateo, Raúl Mateos, Patricia Matienzo, María Laura Mattioli Zartman, Cecilia Maucieri, María E. Maurín, Alejandro Mayo, Hilda Mayoral, Héctor Mazza, Sofía Mazzei, Omar Mazzuca, Silvina Medici, Pablo Medichi, Estela Medina, Luis Medina, Noemí Meira, Chichi Mela, Leila Sofía Melillo, Alicia Méndez, José Mendoza, Flavio Meneses, Víctor Menguele, Cecilia Menta, Haydée Nélida “Nélida Lobato” Merayo, Alcira Mercado, Edgardo Mesa, Carmen Mestrovic, Luis Metz, Andrea

Meval, Ida Meyer, Ingelore Miatello, Sibila Michal, Mónica Micheli, Jorge Migale, Priscila Milian Rey, Gerardo Millán, Mónica Miller, Virginia Miñones, Teresita Miqueo, Carmenza Miramontes, Leticia Miranda, Martín Miranda, Miguel Ángel Missé, Gabriel Mochen, Elsa Moggia, Gabriela Mognaschi, María Rosa Mohr, Héctor Moletta, José Molina, Norma Mollajolli, Gustavo Molliní, Sergio Mon, Nazarena Mones Ruiz, Cecilia Monicat, Roberto Monsegur, Teresa Montagnoli, Emilia Montanio, Carlos Montaña, Silvia Monteagudo, Marta Monteleone, José Domingo “Pepito Avellaneda” Montellano, Tito Montenegro, Griselda Montenegro, Violeta Montequín, Diana Montero, Dante Montero, Raúl

Monti, Alicia Monticelli, Santiago Montoya, Marcela Montoya, Piruja Montoya, Yolanda Morales, Lilian Morales, Olga Morales, Rodolfo Morán, Joaquina “La china Joaquina” Morchio, Rita Moreno, Alberto Moreno, Federico Moreno, Germán Moreno, Jorge Moreno, José Manuel Moreno, Olga Morero, Rodrigo Moret, Laura Moreto, Marcia Morieli, Estela Moro, Gustavo Morra, Alberto Daniel Moscheni, Beatriz Mouzo, Raúl Moyano, Norma Mujtar, Natalia Muñecas, Ana Paula Muñoz, Alicia Muñoz, Imanol Muñoz, José Muñoz, Marta Murúa, Malena Muzyca, Nadia

N Nader, Teresa

Nani, Ana María Naranjo, Juan Narciso, Jorge Narova, Cecilia Narváez, Valeria Narvaja, María Naschi, Graciela Natoli, Gisela Paula Navarro, Armando Navarro, Cecilia Navarro, “El Negro” Navarro, Mario Jesús Navarro, Nora Naveira, Gustavo Nazareno, Adriana Nebbia, Pamela Nebrada, Rubén Neglia, José Neglia, Sergio Negroni, Daniel Neira, Rubén Neme, María Celia Nercessian de Sirouyan, Lía Neuhaus, Susana Neumayer, Nydia Neyla, Eduardo Nieto, Marta Nievas Aciar, Nahuel Nigro, Salvador Noblega, Ana María Nocera, Silvia Nocito, Ana Noia, Gabriela Nonino, Emilia Nori, Luciano Notari, Valeria Nouche, Renée Nova, Susana Noval, Carla

Novich, Ricardo Nunziata, Sandro Núñez de la Rosa, María O. Núñez, Ely Nuño, Liliana

O Obedman, Diana Oca, Paulina Ocampo, Omar Ocampo Alcora, María Oddone, María Elena Olea, Lelia Olguín, Nora Olguín, Rodolfo Olivari, Jimena Oliver, Adrián Olivera, Raúl Ricardo Olivier, Aida Olivieri, Florencia Olmedo, Juan Carlos Olmedo, Karina Olmos, José Luis Onis, Leonor Opatich, Ida Orcaizaguirre, Jorge Martín “Virulazo” Orfila, Elena Orlando, Alicia Ormache, Claudia Inés Ortega, Gabriel Ortega, Rita Ortigoza, Luis Ortiz, Juan Manuel Ortiz, Pedro Osatinsky, Carlos Ossona, Paulina

Ostrovsky, Yamil Otaola, Marisa Ovejero, Graciela Oyarbide, Juliana Oyola, Mónica Oyola, Silvia

P Pachano, Aníbal Pacotti, Ruth Padilla, Ana Padilla, María Eugenia Padula, Nora Padula, Patricia Paez, Edith Paganelli, Elvio Palacios, Ernesto Palindra, Noemí Palladini, Noemí Palma, Virginia Palomino, Miguel Ángel Palumbo, Cleo Panader, Carmen Panal, Silvia Pantuso, María Panunzio, Aníbal Paoli, Marcela Papparella, Susana Parada, Benjamín Parafita, Inés Pardo, Rodrigo Parente, Alejandro Parets, Adriana Parola, Aymara Parra, Olga Pascal, Patricia Pascuzzi, Marcela

Pashkus, Ricky Passalacqua, Ana María Passaro, Teresa Pastocchi, Ariel Pastor, Darío Pastorive, Néstor Pattin, Mariano Patiño, Yeny Pazzaglini, Carina Pedernera, Mariana Pedrazzoli, Miriam Pelizza, Vilma Pellegrini de Requeijo, María Angélica “Chichita” Pelletier, Juan Manuel Pellicori, Fernando Peloso, Marita Peluso, Pamela Pelypenko, Hala Penchansky, Mónica Peralta, Elisa Peralta, Fabián Peralta, Lidia Peralta, Lyde Pereda, Flavia Pereira Parodi, Irupé Pereyra, Carlota Pereyra, Luis “Los Pereyra” Pereyra, Luis Benjamín Pereyra, Luis Segundo Pereyra, Marta Pereyra, Norma “Los Pereyra” Pereyra, Silvia Pérez, Héctor Pérez, María del Carmen Pérez, Naldo Pérez, Oscar Alberto Pérez, Vilma Pérez Carmena, Clara

Pérez Catán, Marta Pérez Fernández, Joaquín Pérez Fernández, Néstor Pérez Román, Orfilia Pérez Roux, Valeria Pérez Tranmar, Soledad Perillo, Silvina Perkins, Graciela Perlusky, Alejandra Perotti, Marta Perrota, Hilda Perrusi, Mónica Persi, Gabriel Pérsico, Fabiana Perusin, Gloria Petcoff, Pety Petroni, Doris Petruzzio, Darío Peyrou, Silvia Piaggio, Carina Piazza, Diana Picasso, Marita Píccolo, Sandra Picetti, Marcia Pico, Carlos Picón, Melisa Elín Piedra, Graciela Pimentel, Mabel Pinca, Noemí Pinczinger, Isabel Pino, Silvina Pinter, Francisco Pintos, Richard Piquín, Hernán Piriqui, Pérez Pisano, Gabriela Pistarini, Lucrecia Pitino, Donatella Pizarro, Inés

Platanía, Jorgelina Plaul, Matías Plebs, Milena Pletikosic, Sergio Poberaj, Natacha Pochi, Luna Polo, Lucía Ponce, María Delia Ponieman, Viviana Ponssa, Gloria Pontieri, Aída Pontoriero, Claudia Portalea, Gerardo Postermak, Julián Postolowsky, Loreley Pouso, Fabiana Povoli, Mónica Prado, Gabriela Prado, Stella Maris Prancevic, Inés “Los Bórquez” Prantte, Rodolfo Prates, Cristina Preguerman, Laura Prestifilippo, Aida Prieto, Cristina Pritz, Silvia Pucci, Gabriela Puentes, Nora Pugín, Cecilia Pugliese, Domingo “Mingo” Pugliese, Ester Pulozzi, Laura Puyol, Carlos

Q Quadri, Alicia Queiró, Celia

Quenardelle, Alicia Quintana, Marta Quintana, Mercedes Quintella, Marisa Quinteros, Inés Quinteros, Nuris Quiroga, Guillermina Quiroga, Marisa Quispe, Horacio

R Rabboni, Rosa Rabuffetti, Emilia Racedo, Sandra Radrizzani, Javier Raffo, Cecilia Raggio, Elisa Ramicone, Nelly Ramírez, Claudia Ramírez, José Antonio Ramírez, Olkar Rampoldi, Inés Ramski, Teresita Randisi, Elida Juana Ranieri, Cinthya Rasmussen, Roland Raspanti, Martha Ré, Norma Reale, Leonardo Rearte, Nélida Reartes, Renée Reartes, Sandra Rebenque, Juana Rebolini, Sergio Reboredo, Carola Reech, Reina Reggiani, Sandra

Reginato, Patricia Rego, María Nieves “María Nieves” Regueiro, Leandro Reis, Roberto Remonda, Rosita Revelli, Mónica Rey, Eliseo Reyes Lemos, Héctor “Mataco Lemos” Richardson, Robert Riso, Rita Ríos Saiz, Graciela Risso, Cecilia Risso de Cancellieri, Carmen Micaela, “Carmencita Calderón” Rivadero, Ariel Rivarola, Carlos “Los Rivarola” Rivarola, María “Los Rivarola” Rivas, Ricardo Rivas, Sabino Rivero, Maquelita Rivero, Marcela Riviera, Rita Rivó, Laura Rizzo, Blanca Rizzo, Fabio Roatta, Laura Roberto, Fedra Robles, María Luisa Robles, Miguel Robles, Nora Robles, Paula Rocchietti, Carolina Rocco, César Rodríguez, Alicia Rodríguez, Ariel “Los Rodríguez”

Rodríguez, Cecilia “Los Rodríguez” Rodríguez, Elizabeth Rodríguez, Marcela Rodríguez, Nathalia Rodríguez, Nélida “Nélida y Nelson” Rodríguez, Paula Rodríguez, Rodolfo Rodríguez Faves, Victoria Rogovsky, Diana Rojas, Cesar Edgardo Rojas Lemos, Clara Rojo, Ethel Rojo, Gogó Rojo, Susana Roldán, Elina Roller, Silvia Rolón, Irma Roma, Fabiana Román, Dolores Romano, Fernanda Romany, María Luisa Romero, Daniel Romero, Estela Romero, Freddy Romero, Gabriela Ronco, Claudia Rosati, Leandro Rosenthal, Liliana Ross, Osvaldo Rossetti, Giuliana Rossetti, Raquel Rossi, Coty Rossi, Ivana Rossi, Ludmila Rotemberg, Pablo Roygt, Néstor Rozensztroch, Carolina

Ruanova, Ángeles Ruanova, María Ruanova, Matilde Rubini, María Lidia Ruggeri, Mariela Ruiz Díaz, Rodolfo Rúpolo, Vilma Rusconi, Pedro Alberto “Teté” Rusina, Alicia Russo, Gustavo Russo, Lucía Rzeszotko, Sara

S Saavedra, Carlos Orlando “Pajarín” Saavedra, Ema Saavedra, Jorge Juan “Koki” Saavedra, Juan Sabalza, Pablo Sabbag, Patricia Sala, Gabriel Saladino, Stella Maris Salamanca, Daniela Salas, César Abel “Teté” Salas, Fabián Salas, Margarita Salina, Ramón Saltiel, Andrea San Martín, Antoinette San Martín, Godofredo Sanabria, Carlos Sánchez, Atilio Sánchez, Beatriz Sánchez, Concepción Sánchez, Luciano Sánchez, Mabel

Sánchez, Pablo Sancho Miñano, Ana Carolina Sandán, Paulette “Paulette Christian” Sandoval, Carlos Sanguinetti, Inés Sannine, Rodolfo Sans, Ana Sansinanea, Jorge Santamaría, Elvira “Virulazo y Elvira” Santamarina, Carlos Santelli, Carmen Santesteban, María del Carmen Santillán, “El Pardo” Santillán, Juan “El diablillo santiagueño” Sapya, Marta Elena Sarabia, Claudio Saraceno, Natalia Sarachu, Graciela Saravia, Miguel Ángel Saravia, Omar Sarhán, Oscar Sarmiento, Irupé Saucedo, Jaquelina Saval, Nadia Savio, Alicia Sawinski, Alicia Scagliusi, lvana Scaccheri, Iris Scal, Liber Scandroglio, Sebastián Scaramozzino, Carmelo Schapiro, Paula Scher, Noemí Schiaffino, Carlos Schmid, María Elena “Astrova” Schottelius, Renate

Schraiber, Beatriz Schubert, Eudoxia Schuf, Silvia Schuttemberger, Rubén Schwartzer, Claudia Sciangula, Cristina Scilingo, Emilce Amalia Scott, Lilian Sedler, Liliana Segni, Lidia Segovia, Dora Seijas, Adrián Sendín Vizcaya, Magdalena “Charito de Madrid” Señorán, David Seró, Helda Serrano, Josefina Serrano, Mercedes Serrano, Miguel Servera, Andrea Servera, Cristina Setien, Christian Shocron, Vicky Sibolich, Patricia Sierra, Juan Pablo Sierra, María Alicia Silva, Lucia Silva, Mario Silvera, Cristina Silvera, Mabel Silveyra, Carlos Simoes, Alejandra Sinopoli, Alejandro Sirolli, Stella Maris Sirote, Mariana Sisti, Sandra Soares, Isa Soares Netto, Daniela Sobral, Ricardo

Solanas, Luis Solarz, Paula Soler, Carolina Soler, Dionisio Solís, Jorge Solís, Marcelo Solmoirago, Rodolfo Sombra, Pedro Sommi, Susana Soñez, Ramiro Sorbi, Rodolfo Soria, Nigelia Soria Arch, Silvia Sorter, Gerti Sosa, Fabián Sosa, Juan Tránsito “Chato” Sosa, Myriam Sosa Guerrero, Analía Sotelo, Marcela Span, María Angélica Spivak, Diana Spletzer, Alice Spritz, Dalila Srur, Genoveva Stankaitis, José Stankaitis, Vera Steckiewicz, Gabriela Stefanelli, Silvia Stefanich, Lino Steimberg, Olga Ruth Stekelman, Ana María Stokoe, Patricia Stolerman, Alicia Stoller, Ariel Stoppel, Perla Stragá, Malvina Streiff, Sabrina Stübig, Olga Sture, Elizabeth

Suares, Rubén Suárez, Alejandra Suárez, María Cristina Suárez, Mario Suárez, Rubén Darío Suaya, Alejandro “Turco” Subiela, Marta Suez, Marcela Sujoy, Liliana Sullivan, Raymond Sultanik, Graciela Surdo, Andrea Surur, Genoveva Svagel, Paula Szeinblum, Diana Schwartzer, Claudia Szleszynski, Noemí Szperling, Silvina Szperling, Susana Szusterman, Mariana

T Tabernero, Franco Taboga, Isabel Taburelli, Cuca Tacchetti, Florencia Tadei, Silvia Tambutti, Susana Tapia, Miguel Ángel Tarantet, Betty Tarsi, Guillermina Tarsia, Clelia Tártara, Oscar Tasso, Liliana Tavagnutti, Gastón Tegliategui, Fernando Teitelbaum, Ana

Tejada, Ariel Tejerina, Matías

Tosti, Patricia Totto, Alejandro

Téllez, Lolita Tello, Alejandra Tello, Roberto Terceiro, José Terraf, Teresa Terragno, Margarita Terrazas, Eduardo Terrizano, Martha Teruel, Guillermo Tesone, Gino Tevenson, Eduardo Tezanos, Nélida Theler, Juan Manuel Theocharidis, Diana Thevenon, Eduardo Thiele, Analía Thomson, Heri Timoyko, Naanim Tirelli, Paula Tocaccelli, Liliana Toconás, Sonia Todaro, Antonio Toledo, Alejandro Tomillo, Romina Tomín, Jorge Tondini, Marina Topatic, Mariana Tordente, Silvina Toro Villalón, María Angélica Torres, Elio Torres, Mercedes Torres Funes, Diego Torresi, Fernanda Torti, Guillermo Tórtora, Marina Torus, Marcelo Toscano, Silvia

Trabalón, Edgardo Trajtemberg, Marcela Travaini de Cigersa, Anita “Nity Cigersa” Travers, Hugo Trenner, Daniel Treviño, Esther Trincavelli, Alejandra Trinchero, Roberto Trujillo, Genaro Trunsky, Carlos Truol, Milka Truyol, Antonio Tupin, Wassil Turdo, Cristina Turón, María Cristina Turtola, Verónica Turza, Deborah Tziouras, Cristina

U Ucedo, María Uez, Rodolfo Ulloa, Catalina Ulnik, Debora Urbán, Osvaldo Urlezaga, Iñaki Urraspuro, Omar

V Vacario, Silvia Vaccarelli, Silvina Vainberg, Silvia

Valdo losi, Ana Valeri, Florencia Valía, Hugo Valla, Hebe Vallejos, Manuel Valverde, Rina Valverdi, Hugo Vanasco, Beatriz Van Asperen, Mónica Van Assche, Bruno Van Loor, Roland Van Raap, Lucy Varela, Armando Varela, José María Varela, Lisardo Vargas, Patricio Varo, Gloria Inés “Los Dinzel” Varola, Rita Vasile, Adriana Vázquez, José “Lampazo” Vásquez de Calderón, Alicia Vega, Graciela Veiga, Carlos Veiga, Laura Velárdez, Hugo Velasco Ayala, María Victoria Velázquez, Jesús Vélez, Angelita Ventriglia, Osvaldo Ventura, Carlos Ventura, Marta Ventzke, Otto Enrique “Enrique Brown” Vera, César Vera, Nicolás Verdugo, Mirta Vergés, Adrián Vernengo, Inés Verón, Pablo

Versé, Christine Viacava, Corina Vicente, Carolina Vidal, Víctor Vidarte, Fabiana Vides, Fabio Vigil, Agustina Vignolo, Alejandra Vilán, Carlos Villada Alday, Ivana Villagra, Claudio “Los Villagra” Villagra, Sara Villalba, Carlos Villamayor, Valeria Villar, Marisa Villarroel, Julio Vilta, Silvia Vilzak, Antaoli Vincelli, Carla Viola, Norma Viola, Nydia Virasoro, Juan Visicaro, Daniel Vítores, Norma Vitulli, Natalio Vizgarra, Yolanda Vladimivsky, Silvia Volij, Rhea Von Potovsky, Sonia Vulliez, Daniel

W Wainrot, Mauricio Walsh, Andrés Walsh, Sergio Werberg, Otto Wiedmann, Ilse

Wit, Irene Wittanovsky, Nora Wola, Mirta Wons, Gustavo Wosniuk, Esteban Wright, Estanislao “Nilo” Würst, Lucía

Y Yácono, Lorena Yalj, Oscar Yannelli, Sergio Gustavo Yanuzzi, Eliana Yasbek, Samia Yordanoff, Carol Yureff, César

Z Zabala, Enrique Zabala, Patricio Zacharías, Paula Zaffini, Luciana Zaga, Damián Zajac, Gustavo Zambelli, Adrián Zambrana, Antonio Zambudio, Estela Zanandrea, Bruno Zandman, Alejandra Zanetti, Fabián Zapata, Alejandra Zapata, Noemí Zaragoza de De Angelis Zaraspe, Héctor Zarlenga, Lucio

Zartmann, José Zarza, Roberto Zaza, Ángel Zelaschi, Rosana Zerbini, Silvia Zetti de Asenzo, Matilde Zibell, Carlos

Zimmermann, Susana Zismaya, Blanca Zlotnik, Anahí Zokalski, Carolina Zoric, Nicolás Zotto, Miguel Angel Zotto, Osvaldo

Zucchi, Beatriz Zucchi, Ernesto Zuker, Javier Zuloaga, Beatriz Zurita, Julio

Mural created for the exhibition Dance Today: Experimentation in Argentine Dance in the 1960s, based on the names recorded by Susana Tambutti in her work 20th Century - 1983 - Dance Doesn’t Forget, 2023.

Graphic design: Job Salorio

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ARAIZ, Oscar. Escrito en el aire, Buenos Aires: INTeatro, 2019.

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ZIMMERMANN, Susana. “Treinta años sin Di Tella”, en IX Congreso Internacional de Teatro Iberoamericano y Argentino, Teatro Nacional Cervantes: Buenos Aires, 2000.

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INSTITUTIONAL AND ARTIST ARCHIVES Ana Kamien-Leone Sonnino Archive Centre of Dance and Theatre Documentation at the Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires Edgardo Giménez Archive Galería Lirolay Archive (IIAC, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero) Graciela Martínez Archive Historical and Artistic Archive of the Teatro Argentino de La Plata Teatro Colón Library Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Archive

ELECTRONIC SOURCES Guía Institucional 2021 - 30.º aniversario, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Accessed on 15 January, 2023 in https://www.utdt. edu/ver_contenido.php?id_contenido=22225&id_item_ menu=36623 Nosotros desmaterializamos. Conversación con Roberto Jacoby.

Accessed on 26 February, 2023 in https://sinthomaycultura. com/nosotros-desmaterializamos-conversacion-con-robertojacoby/#_ftn1 Group Of Documents from the 2ième Festival De La Libre Expression.

Mai 17-25, 1965. Accessed on 5 February, 2023 in https:// unoriginalsins.co.uk/product/a-group-of-documents-from-the2ieme-festival-de-la-libre-expression-mai-17-25-1965-includesthe-first-expression-of-a-famous-fluxus-work-by-filliou-andwilliams-the-pink-spaghetti-handshake/ Edgardo Giménez, donde todos los sueños se hacen realidad.

Accessed on 17 February, 2023 in https://www.arte-online.net/ Agenda/Exposiciones_Muestras/Edgardo_Gimenez3

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Victoria Alcala (Santa Rosa, La Pampa, 1989). Victoria Alcala has a Doctorate in Literature (UCA-CONICET) and is an academic researcher and university professor (CILA, UCA, UBA). She is part of the Argentine and Latin American Dance Study Group (GEDAL).

As a writer and cultural organizer, she has published books such as Una bailarina de papel; Susana Thénon, loba esteparia and De boca en boca: ciclo de poesía y danza. She has been a resident at the Centro Rural de Arte at the Centro Cultural Borges and the Espacio Cultural Sabato. Her works have been published in Costa Rica, Panama, Brazil and Spain. She studied dance from an early age and is part of the Experimentation Group at the UNA (Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires) and the Specialization in Contemporary Dance Trends at the same university. She has worked as a performer and adjunct for the composition of plays and scripts related to dance.

(Punta Alta, Buenos Aires Province, 1940). Oscar Araiz trained in dance and choreography with Dore Hoyer, Renate Schottelius, Élide Locardi and Tamara Grigorieva. In 1968, he created and was the first director of the Ballet of the Teatro San Martín. He has directed the ballets of the Teatro Colón, the Grand Théâtre in Geneva, the Ballet Contemporáneo at the Teatro San Martín and the Teatro Oscar

Araiz

Argentino in La Plata. He has simultaneously worked independently on projects such as the Ballet de bolsillo and Compañía Araiz. He has worked with international dance companies such as the Joffrey Ballet in New York, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in Canada, the Opéra in Paris, the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki, the Ballet of the Royal Opera in Sweden, the Opera in Rome, the Het Nationale Ballet in the Netherlands, the Group Motion Multimedia Dance Theater in Philadelphia and companies in Chile and Brazil. He has worked as a choreographer on films by Simón Feldman, Luis Puenzo, Luis Saslavsky, Jorge Cossia and Paula de Luque. In the educational field, he taught on the course in Contemporary Dance at the Escuela Arte XXI, was director of the Dance Department and the Grupo UNSAM Danza del Instituto de Artes Mauricio Kagel at the UNSAM. He was awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa by UNSAM (2016), the Premio Konex (1999), the Platinum Konex (1989) and the Diamond Konex (2019). The Instituto Nacional del Teatro published his book Escrito en el aire (2019).

Mariana Bellotto (Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires Province, 1963).

Mariana Bellotto is a choreographer and director. She has developed an original and prolific writing career focusing on the concept of the body as a critical and political vehicle. During the eighties, she was part of the Dance Theatre Group at the UBA and subsequently founded and directed groups such as La piedra de la locura, Compañía Eléctrica and La Compañía. Since 2015 she has worked continuously in creative collective artistic production with the Grupo Performático Sur, with whom she has put on the plays Sensación térmica (2015), Antropología contemporánea del paisaje (2016), Moebius (2017), Trilogía pandémica (2021) and Standby (2022). Her previous work included productions such as Árido (1992), Girones and Danza binaria (1996), Quinteto Winco (1997), Sofá I/Sofá II (1999), Twins and Argentinita (2002), Arder (2005), Sudoeste and El último grito de la moda (2006), Slogans (2007) and Blanco suspendido (2009).

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Patricia Dorin (City of Buenos Aires, 1961). Patricia Dorin has

a Masters in Cultural Sociology and Analysis (IDAES-UNSAM) and a degree in Choreographic Composition (UNA). She is a teacher and researcher on the courses History of Dance in Argentina and General History of Dance at the Department of the Arts of the Movement at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes (UNA-DAM) and Issues in the History of Argentine Dance at the post-graduate level in the same institution. She runs the research project ‘Approaches to representations of the modern in the history of Argentine dance 1930-1960’ at the UNA-DAM and is a member of research teams linked to gender perspectives and manifestations of contemporary dance in Argentina. Her articles have been published in different academic media and she has taken part in a range of specialized publications as an editor and compiler. From 1997 to 2013 she coordinated the Dance Department at the CCRR-UBA Cultural Programme. She has coordinated and directed a range of different university extension projects, for which she has also held management roles at the UNA and DAM. She is currently the Academic Secretary of the Department of the Arts of the Movement.

Diego Fischerman (City of Buenos Aires, 1955). Diego Fischer-

man is a Professor of Primary Education, has a degree in Literature (UBA) and studied music with different maestros. He has published, among other works, the books: Efecto Beethoven. Complejidad y valor en la música de tradición popular (2004), Escrito sobre música (2005), Después de la música. El siglo XX y más allá (2011), El sonido de los sueños (2017) and, in collaboration with Abel Gilbert, Piazzolla.

El mal entendido (Piazzolla. The Misunderstood, 2009). He is director of the collection ‘Books about Music’ brought out by Eterna Cadencia. He was the editor of Música argentina. La mirada de los críticos (2005), published by the Universidad de Buenos Aires. He is a music critic and journalist, contributing to a range of general and specialist 247

media. Among other honours, he has received the Merit Diploma by Konex (2007) and the Platinum Konex award (2017) for his writing on Classical Music.

(New York, United States, 1985). Victoria Fortuna is a teacher in the Dance Department at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, USA. Her teaching and research interests include Argentine theatrical dance, dance as a medium of political commitment and community organization, collaborative modes of creativity and cultural histories of dance from a transnational perspective. Her book Moving Otherwise: Dance, Violence, and Memory in Buenos Aires (2019) examines the relationship between contemporary dance practices in Buenos Aires and histories of political and economic violence from the 1960s to the 2010s. She has received grants and awards from the following institutions: National Endowment for the Humanities (USA), New York Public Library, Fulbright, Society of Dance History Scholars, American Society for Theatre Research and Latin American Studies Association. She is currently working in dance studies as the co-editor of book reviews for the Dance Research Journal.

Victoria

Fortuna

Fernando García (City of Buenos Aires, 1967). Fernando García is a

journalist and has a Masters in the History of Argentine and Latin American Art from IDAES-UNSAM. He has worked as a curator in the Public Programmes of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires since 2022 and as a guest programmer at the Malba, the Colección Fortabat and the Centro Cultural Kirchner. He is a guest professor at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella where he teaches the course ‘Journalistic Writing and Publishing’ and the postgraduate seminar ‘Popular Avant Gardes’. He writes for the ‘Culture’ and ‘Ideas’ sections of the La Nación newspaper and is a correspondent for the ‘Cultural’ supplement of El País in Montevideo.

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He has curated the anthological retrospective on Antonio Berni Sucesos argentinos [Argentine Events] at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Neuquén (2006) and written several books, including: El Di Tella, historia íntima de un fenómeno cultural (2021), Los ojos, vida y pasión de Antonio Berni (2005, 2009, 2021), Marta Minujín: los años psicodélicos (2015), Crimen y vanguardia: el caso Schoklender y el surgimiento del underground (2017).

He has written essays for numerous exhibition catalogues such as Marta Minujín Ao Vivo (Pinacoteca de São Paulo, 2023).

Violeta González Santos (Bogotá, Colombia, 1992) . Violeta González Santos is a curator, administrator and poet. She has a degree in Visual Art from the Universidad del Museo Social Argentino and is taking the Masters in Contemporary Artistic Practices at the Universidad de San Martín, directed by Marie Bardet. At the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, she works as a curatorial assistant and has taken part in the research program for Un día en la Tierra [One Day on Earth] (2022) and the exhibition Danza actual [Dance Today] (2023). She has curated exhibitions at a range of galleries and independent art spaces in Buenos Aires. Since 2019, she has run the collective educational project known as ‘Híbrida Laboratorio’ together with the artist and researcher Mercedes Lozano, which has featured artists from different provinces across Argentina and other cities in the world. She has published the poetry collections Golpe de agua (2016) and La tierra que nos falta (2021).

Marcelo Isse Moyano (Lomas de Zamora, Buenos Aires Provin-

ce, 1954). Marcelo Isse Moyano has a degree in Art from the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the UBA. He is Head Professor of the courses in the History of Media and Entertainment and Research Methods at the Department of the Arts of the Movement at the UNA (Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires). He was secretary of Extension 249

and Student Wellbeing and is currently the secretary of Research and Post-Graduate Affairs in the same department. He is the author of several books and articles about the history of dance in Argentina and the relationship between contemporary art and dance in Buenos Aires.

Since 2009, he has been director of Teacher Incentive Projects related to contemporary dance and musical theatre. He has worked as a director in the Dance Department at the Institute of Theatrical Arts at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the UBA (1992-2009) and was the first director of the Institute for the Support of Unofficial Dance in the City of Buenos Aires (Prodanza) between 2001 and 2006. He was co-director of the second and third editions of the Festival Buenos Aires Danza Contemporánea organized by the Government of the City of Buenos Aires.

Sofía Kauer (Río Cuarto, Córdoba, 1990). Sofía Kauer has a degree in Choreographic Composition at the UNA (Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires) and a Masters in Contemporary Latin American Aesthetics from the Universidad Nacional de Avellaneda.

In 2019, she was part of the Action Laboratory of the Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires and in 2020, took the Artists Programme at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Since 2017, she has formed an artistic duo with Nicolás Licera Vidal, with whom she explores the relationship between the body, movement, matter and history. Their most recent works have addressed the relationship between the organic and the artificial in the crossover between dance and the visual arts.

Her works in collaboration with Nicolás Licera Vidal include Caza de casa [House Hunt, 2022], Objetos coreoplásticos [Choreoplastic Objects, 2021], Graciela Martínez: cosas, cisnes [Graciela Martínez: things, swans, 2018, 2019) and Cuentos y caricias [Stories and Caresses, together with J. Sorter, 2019]). She has received support from the Fundación Cazadores, Mecenazgo Cultural, Prodanza, FNA and the CCC. She teaches Theoretical Foundations of Artistic Production and Contemporary Thought at the UNA. 250

Kado Kostzer (Tucumán, 1946). Kado Kostzer is a writer and thea-

tre director. While he studied Architecture at the Universidad Nacional de la Plata he took part in productions at the Instituto Di Tella. He was on the writing staff at Primera Plana, Panorama and La Opinón.

In 1982, he presented in Paris the play Trío, which was followed by Famille d’artistes, God Save the Queen/Isabel sin corona and Sortilèges.

With Sergio García Ramírez, he wrote the musicals Talismán, Loca por Lara and L’ora italiana. He directed in Argentina and Europe stage adaptions of Jean-Paul Sartre, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bruno Villien, Shakespeare, Molière, and régies by Mozart and Lehár. Together with Fernando Vallejo he made the film Barrio de campeones (1981). He has published the books Personajes (Por orden de aparición) (2014), ¿Hablaste de mí? (2015), La generación Di Tella y otras intoxicaciones (2016), Antes del Di Tella (2021) and Solamente una vez… Quizás dos (2023).

Francisco Lemus (Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires Province, 1988).

Francisco Lemus is the Head of the Curatorial Department at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. He has a degree in Art History from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, a Doctorate in Comparative Art Theory from the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero and a Masters in Curatorship of the Visual Arts from the same university.

His doctoral thesis was titled Guarangos y soñadores. La Galería del Rojas en los años noventa [Chancers and Dreamers. The Rojas Gallery in the Nineties]. Having received a post-doctoral grant from CONICET, he researched the artistic and political responses to HIV/AIDS in Argentina. He is a professor in the Department of Historical and Social Studies at the Faculty of Fine Art at the UNLP and on the Masters course in Gender Studies and Politics at UNTREF. He has curated exhibitions at many different art institutions and museums in Argentina.

He compiled the volume Imágenes seropositivas (2021) and wrote the book Supervivencia. Arte, micropolítica y posdictadura en Buenos Aires (2022). As part of the exhibition programme Un día en la Tierra [One 251

Day on Earth, 2022] at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires he was part of the curatorial team that prepared the exhibitions Vida abstracta [Abstract Life] and Cuerpos contacto [Contact Bodies]. He also curated the exhibition Danza actual. Experimentación en la danza argentina de los años sesenta [Dance Today. Experimentation in Argentine Dance in the 1960s, 2023], at the same museum.

Nicolás Licera Vidal (Mendoza, 1986). Nicolás Licera Vidal is

a Performer and Choreographer. He has a degree in Choreographic Composition from the UNA (Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires).

In 2019, he was part of the Action Laboratory at the Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires and in 2022 the programme Artistas x Artistas at the Fundación El Mirador. Since 2017, he has formed an artistic duo with Sofía Kauer with whom he explores the relationship between the body, movement, matter, and history. Their latest works have addressed the relationship between the organic and the artificial in cross-overs between dance and the visual arts. Recent works in collaboration with Sofía Kauer include Caza de casa [House Hunt, 2022], Objetos coreoplásticos [Choreoplastic Objects, 2021], Graciela Martínez: cosas, cisnes [Graciela Martinez: things, swans, 2018] and Cuentos y caricias [Stories and Caresses, together with J. Sorter, 2019]. He has received support from the Fundación Cazadores, Mecenazgo Cultural, Prodanza, FNA, and the CCC and has taken part in productions in Brazil, Germany and France. He is currently taking a Masters in the History of Argentine and Latin American Art at UNSAM and teaches on the course General History of Dance at the UNA.

Silvina

Szperling (Buenos Aires, 1960). Silvina Szperling is an

educator, dancer, writer and director of Argentine cinema and one of the pioneers of the dance video genre, beginning with the short Temblor [Tremor, 1993], which won an award from the National Secretariat of Culture.

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She was a founding director of the VideoDanzaBA International Festival (Buenos Aires, 1995). In 2010, she and Susana Temperley collaborated on the book Terpsícore en ceros y unos. Ensayos de videodanza, which gathered a range of articles by different authors regarding the genre. Her first documentary feature, Reflejo Narcisa [Narcissus Reflection], debuted at the Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente (BAFICI, 2015) and won a special juror’s award at the Women´s Film Festival (2016). She teaches dance video for the Master´s degree in Alternative Cinema at the EICTV (Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV, San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba) and is a professor on the Dance Criticism course at the UNA (Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires). She has been a visiting professor and speaker at several universities in the USA.

Susana Tambutti (Buenos Aires City, 1947). Susana Tambutti is Head

Professor in the General Theory of Dance on the Arts Course at the Universidad Buenos Aires (UBA), Head Professor on the course in the Social History of Art and the Theatre at the UNA (Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires) and artistic director of the Dance Festival of the City of Buenos Aires (2002). She is a co-founder of the group Nucleodanza with whom she took part in numerous international festivals such as the Trento Festival (Italy), the Art Summit (Indonesia) the Belfast Festival (Northern Ireland), Steps ’92. Dance Festival (Switzerland), the American Dance Festival (Seoul, Korea), the International Dance Festival of Budapest (Hungary), the 7th and 9th International Theatre and Dance Festivals of Caracas (Venezuela), the Latin American Festival of Contemporary Dance (Mexico), the American Dance Festival (India), the Bahia Dance Festival (Brazil) and the Bali Theatre Festival Stage Door (Amsterdam, Netherlands). She was part of the teaching body at the American Dance Festival and has given seminars at the Instituto Superior de Arte de La Habana (Cuba), the Dance Festival in Managua (Nicaragua), the University of North Carolina (USA) and the Philadelphia University of Art (USA), among other institutions.

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BUENOS AIRES CITY GOVERNMENT

AUTHORITIES

Head of Government of the City of Buenos Aires

Horacio Rodríguez Larreta

Head of the Cabinet of Ministers

Felipe Miguel

Minister for Culture

Enrique Avogadro

Director of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires

Victoria Noorthoorn

Printed in Elías Porter y Cía SRL, Plaza 1202, City of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

COLECCIÓN DESPIERTA DEL MODERNO BENEATH THE SURFACE PINO MONKES DANCE TODAY FRANCISCO LEMUS (COMP.)

IN 2023, THE MUSEO DE ARTE MODERNO DE BUENOS AIRES HELD THE EXHIBITION DANZA ACTUAL. EXPERIMENTACIÓN EN LA DANZA ARGENTINA DE LOS AÑOS 60 [DANCE TODAY: EXPERIMENTATION IN ARGENTINE DANCE IN THE 1960s], CURATED

BY FRANCISCO LEMUS, COMPILER OF THIS VOLUME. THE EXHIBITION, WHICH EXPLORED THE EXPERIMENTAL REVIVAL OF MODERN DANCE IN BUENOS AIRES DURING THAT PERIOD, ALSO PAID HOMAGE TO THE PIONEERING TEACHERS AND WOMEN WHO BROUGHT MODERN DANCE TO MAINSTREAM AUDIENCES AND INSPIRED NEW GENERATIONS OF YOUNG DANCERS. SEVERAL OF THE AUTHORS FEATURED IN THIS BOOK WERE FUNDAMENTAL TO THE RESEARCH CARRIED OUT IN THE TWO YEARS PRIOR TO THE EXHIBITION.

ISBN 978-987-673-624-4