CANDELA CAPITAN
Name: Candela Capitán
Age: 25
Birthplace: Sevilla, Spain
Home: Barcelona, Spain
Discipline(s): Performance
What is your story?
I’ve been dancing since I was a child. I started with classical dance - I’m from a small town in Spain where contemporary dance did not “exist” at the time, and I personally didn’t know it existed either. My parents had a friend who was a contemporary dancer, and since the first time I saw him dance, I knew I also wanted to do that. At the age of 15, I moved from my parents’ house to Sevilla, so I could start taking lessons there. Now, I’m based in Barcelona where I’m finishing my studies at Institut del Teatre.
Which figures is your work about?
I use my body in my work, and sometimes the bodies of other performers, to question social representations of what is feminine and queer through the new social networks.
Which topics does your work focus on?
It’s about how we connect with each other through the internet and social networks and how that aects our daily life. A big part of my work is shown on digital screens: I create pieces for which social networks become exhibition spaces, especially Instagram and TikTok, where I post videos about actions through which I explore the deformity and the reconfiguration of femininity, using my own body as a choreographic element.
How do you define your artistic search and practice in three words?
Alone and connected.
What is the poetry of your work?
The poetry of my work is inherently written in movement and dance. From dehumanized, animalized and limitless bodies I imagine a reality that can’t be embodied in any other discipline.
How does your work reflect our current times?
The notions I work on are very close to us today, like the constant exposure and control generated by privileged man which create a false feeling of happiness and freedom. There is an occult violence that we all feel but are incapable of defining and exteriorizing.
What do you want to achieve?
I want to use art as a commonplace where we all together will be able to generate more questions than answers. A place where new realities and options can exist.
Wherein lies the beauty for you today?
I like to explore beauty as a large, questionable, contradictory and deformable term that lacks a specific definition, so that it’s limitless. Where is the beauty in what generates rejection to us?
All images: The death at the club (1.2 en cuatro horas), 2018-2021, live (45 min per dancer), photos by Monika Lek and Leafhopper