A reflection on the body from the body. This raises the choreography Las buenas maneras, by Miguel Mancillas, which the Antares Danza Contemporánea company will perform on August 12 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and from August 18 to 20 in the Miguel Covarrubias Hall of the University Cultural Center.
With a cast of 15 dancers and a large-format set design, the play questions violence against bodily dissidences and generates a reflection on the contradictions that arise from social norms and political correctness.
The director of the company founded in Hermosillo, Sonora, in 1987, is convinced that “there is no body of a man and a woman. There is a body and that is defined by whoever has it”.
The creator of the work premiered in 2019 highlights that we are living in a time of challenges to understand the complexity of the bodies we inhabit. “Even in the spaces of society where there is a fight for the freedoms of individuals, contradictorily, new conditions and rules of behavior arise that condition freedom and work against it.
Mancillas adds that “women dress in a more masculine way to the extent that they occupy ranks of greater power.”
Thus, to talk about the sexualization of the body, the winner of the 2018 José Limón National Dance Award delivers a choreography in which the male dancers wear tight executive-cut skirts and stilettos, “not for aesthetic or theatrical purposes, but to question the conditions that these typically feminine garments contain”.