Svatbata

Svatbata is part of a series of pieces made by Marcos Morau (Sonoma, Hermana, Folkå or the recent Totentanz) linked to ritual and dealing with the different visual and choreographic aspects of gathering as a mystery.

To delve into this mysterious form, these ornaments that the bodies know and execute with a strange automatism inherited from previous generations, Marcos Morau evokes a distant and unnamed past and challenges the questions that have motivated humanity since the beginning of time.

All rituals are marriages of sorts. And marriage is the original meaning of the Svatbata (na svatbata means “the wedding” in Bulgarian): a dizzying confluence of vocal gestures and gestural song, capable of saying in every note, every step, every modulation and every variation, that mystery doesn’t go inward but outward – that it only bursts forth, to deploy the infinity of its strata and nuances in all directions; to become a habitable space; a human garden of signals. And to remember that it’s from one and the same depth that arises both the movement of life, and the immobility of death. Marriages are, in a way, funerals. Funerals are, in a way, weddings. Aren’t both rituals accompanied by flowers? Because without exception, everything – love, death and flowers – belongs to the Earth. Including dance.