The goat has multiple roles to play in rural Spain. There is also a venerable tradition of the animal being brought to town by itinerant gypsy performers. Crowds would gather as news spread that the “goat number” was to be staged. With musical accompaniment, a human performer instructed the compliant animal to climb steps and perform atop a precarious raised platform. To this day, “to do the goat number” is a euphemism to express that someone is about to embark on a challenging task. In this new flamenco-infused production, Luz Arcas’s Pharmakos Company (Spain) pays homage to and reimagines this popular entertainment rite.
Mariana is the name given to the goat who accompanies the wandering gypsy, the one who provides the show, who dances and puts food on the table. Mariana is the mule used for trilling by the peasant farmer, the female ass worked to death as well as the little donkey that carries our Lord. Irrespective of the age in which we live, the female animal is invariably the workhorse. In this production, song animates and encourages the forces of production; whilst the body freely recreates the potency of the animal that allows itself to be led by the rhythm of its organs, just like in an unadorned acapella flamenco song. It is moved not by some archaic essence but instead by a pure desire to hit upon the perfect form, to embody order and eloquence. As we speak of the deep song in flamenco, there is also a deep body in dance. The deep body radiates energy, life and death. Herein lies its radical and archaic modernity. The deep body breaks into dance much in the same way as we are brought to tears, sweat or burst out laughing. The languages are impure, a hybrid as is all that is genuinely alive. A dance sculpted in stone and clay, schematic, coarse and precise much like alters, amulets or tools. A dance as abstract and symbolic as it is utilitarian and material.