Pablo Rotemberg

In conjunction with Argentina’s special participation as the Guest Country at ARCOMadrid 2017, the Museo Reina Sofía presents La Wagner, a work by the Argentinian dancer and choreographer Pablo Rotemberg. First performed in 2013, the piece was awarded the Main Prize in Choreographic Direction and Choreography at the World Theatre Awards.

In La Wagner four women, akin to four Valkyries, “straddle” the music of Richard Wagner and undertake the difficult task of deactivating stereotypes and renouncing prejudices related to femininity, violence, sexuality, eroticism and pornography. These preconceived ideas also inhabit the bodies of these women and intoxicate them, yet inside them also lives the intelligence and potentiality of turning around and recreating in a transgender setting.

The link between the undertaking of these women and the figure of Wagner is the composer’s controversial, spellbinding and demonic nature within Western tradition. From this crossing emerges a gloomy ceremony, lit by glimmers of irony and operatic excesses, and the clash between the banal and the sublime, the irreverent and the consecrated.

Pablo Rotemberg. Director, choreographer, musician, dancer and teacher. He has a degree in Cinematography from the Buenos Aires Universidad del Cine (FUC) and is a music lecturer at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música. Moreover, he is a professor with full tenure in the Department of Performing Arts at UNA (Universidad Nacional de las Artes). His most recent works include: La noche obstinada (The Obstinate Night, 2014), Todos o Ninguno (All or None, 2014), Savage (2013), Las Vírgenes (The Virgins, 2012), La idea fija (The Fixed Idea, 2010), La casa del diablo (The Devil’s House, 2012) and La noche más negra (The Darkest Night, 2010).