“We are one gigantic scar”

“There was a time when I used to say that my life was not dance. And the only reason I said it was out of fear: fear that I wouldn’t be able to devote myself to it. But now I know that my life is dance because even if I don’t dance, I have managed to find my truth. I move, I gesticulate, I feel, I think, I connect… And I do this because I am a dancer. Yes, my life is dance”, admits Mar Aguiló. “In dance, you can be increasingly honest with yourself. That means getting rid of fears, complexes, uncleanliness, layers, stories that are no longer any use. It means constantly polishing yourself to reach the essence of the dancer”.

Mar attended dance classes as early as at the age of three, and when she was seven she started doing gymnastics. Until she focused on dance, at the age of fifteen, in the studio of Maria Antonia Mas, in Palma. “That was where I really began to feel the profession, the vibrations, the adrenaline, to feel protected by dance itself”. During her last year of school, her teacher Jon López Garnica encouraged her audition for the dance school of Maurice Béjart (the legendary choreographer who set the trend in the 20^th century) in Lausanne, Switzerland. She passed the test and was selected. “It was a great shock in my life. There were 500 girls from a host of countries and they only chose ten. They made us sing and the first song that came to my mind was Corazón Partío, by Alejandro Sanz. Just imagine, there I was, dressed in my ballet leotard, pink tights and pointes, my hair up in a bun, singing and clapping along with Béjart yelling ‘Louder, louder’ at me... I think he saw my shyness, which he wanted to exploit. I now know that Béjart wasn’t looking for the best dancer, but someone who could transmit”, she recalls.

During the time she was in Lausanne “I always carried Mallorca inside of me, thanks to the support and trust of my parents. They knew that I was a different person when I danced”. When her time in Switzerland came to an end, Mar felt ready to audition for the Spanish National Dance Company. At first she was chosen for the junior company, “and three years later, Nacho Duato selected me for the main company”.

Thirteen years have passed since then, and Mar is still on the cast of Spain’s biggest company. “It’s true that there was a moment when dance stopped being something fresh for me, when I became aware that it was a real profession”.

This feeling led her to enrol in the Conservatory of Madrid. “I did it with the idea of getting the teaching qualification, and discovered that I loved choreography”. For her final degree project she had to do a solo. She called it Océano Mujer (‘Woman Ocean’), and more than a piece of work it turned into an inspiration, a doorway to showcasing who she was. “I drew inspiration from my roots, in Mallorca, from the sea and from Butoh dance, which came into being in Japan after the bombing of Hiroshima. My movement was aqueous, I was looking for very organic lines that reminded me of the feelings I have when I am in the sea. I wanted to show that baggage, that naturalness, that organicity, I wanted to bare myself, to show what I have inside of me, and this Japanese dance form helped me bring out that monstruosity. I came to the ocean as a monster, as something immense which at the same time is woman, as the source, the water, the empowerment of ceasing to be a perfect dancer, seeking out those more destructured, ugly forms within an aesthetic”, she says.

As a result of that experience, she found a new language of her own, a personality as a dancer that was different to the one of the past. Some choreographers reinforced “that rarity I have, which escapes the canons of beauty of the dancer”.

After Océano Mujer, Mar decided to [...]

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