La Veronal

You won’t find “sonoma” in a dictionary. However, it contains particles from Greek soma (‘body’) and Latin sonum (‘sound’). Body of sound and sound of the body. Today we experience history in a hurry, so fast that we can hardly follow it. You could say we fall head first and, during this accelerated fall, like a roller coaster, we shout. Sonoma would be this sound of the body falling, the rage of human beings for continuing to believe we are still alive, that we are still awake. Sonoma is the cry of mankind subjected to this pace, the limit of its existence, from which comes the primitive howl of the body, humanity’s pulse to survive and feel alive. Sonoma is the certainty that what is virtual and what is digital can only be overcome by going back to the beginning
Marcos Morau picks up the essential ideas of a piece he created in 2016 for the Ballet de Lorraine Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution, based on the figure of Buñuel, around rural Calanda and cosmopolitan Paris, between Jesuit discipline and surrealist freedom. Now all this microcosmos is developed and expanded in Sonoma, by his project with La Veronal. Sonoma arises from the need to go back to the beginning, to the body, the flesh, to lose oneself on a journey between dream and fiction where what is human meets what is extraordinary. Because, in indigenous language, Sonoma means “Moon valley”. According to legend, the Moon curls up every night in its plains. And there the cries, the howls and the drum blasts form a hypnotic pulse, like that of a nursery rhyme which, far from rousing us, accompanies and calms us.
Buñuel has never been so topical. He could see perfectly what the future would offer us, when he discovered in the noise of the drums of Calanda and the whole of Bajo Aragón, that cry directly aimed at the guts. Because Buñuel was there, here, listening to the sound of the abyss that opens up when human imagination is free but man is not free.
A 2020 Barcelona Grec Festival – Institut de Cultura Ajuntament de Barcelona coproduction with Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Tanz im August/ HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Oriente Occidente Dance Festival, Theater Freiburg, Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Hessisches Staatsballett / Staatstheater Darmstadt & Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Sadler’s Wells, Mercat de les Flors, Temporada Alta.
With the support of the National Institute of Stage Arts and Music – Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport, and the Catalan Institute of Cultural Enterprises – Catalan Ministry of Culture.

Conception and direction: Marcos Morau Choreography: Marcos Morau, with the collaboration of the performers Performing: Lorena Nogal, Marina Rodríguez, Sau-Ching Wong, Ariadna Montfort, Núria Navarra, Àngela Boix, Laia Duran, Anna Hierro, Alba Barral Text: El Conde de Torrefiel, La Tristura, Carmina S. Belda Repetitions: Estela Merlos, Alba Barral Dramaturgy advisor: Roberto Fratini Vocal assistance: Mònica Almirall Lighting & technical direction: Bernat Jansà Stage manager, technic assistant and FX: David Pascual Sound design: Juan Cristóbal Saavedra Voice: María Pardo Set: Bernat Jansà, David Pascual Costumes design: Silvia Delagneau Confection: Mª Carmen Soriano Hats: Nina Pawlowsky Masks: Juan Serrano, Gadget Efectos Especiales Giant: Martí Doy Atrezzo: Mirko Zeni Prouction assistant: Cristina Goñi Adot  Executive production: Juan Manuel Gil Galindo  Photography: Marina Rodríguez