Jone San Martin. Dance on

Donostia 2016 gave a Carte Blanche to dancer and choreographer Jone San Martin, so she could enrich the Conversations programme of the European Capital of Culture. As a response to the invitation, the local dancer designed a diverse artistic proposal, in order to bring her international career path closer to her birthplace. Nowadays, San Martin is working at the DANCE ON ENSEMBLE company in Berlin, formed by dancers over 40, and in this, her third contribution of the Carte Blanche, she brought the double programme of the group to San Sebastian. The ‘Those Specks of Dust’ show, created by Kat Válastur, turned around the action of interpreting, and gave ‘the eye of the viewer’ to the dancers. They turned their gaze towards their own bodies, and focused on themselves while they created movement. That subjective perspective provided the dancers with the chance to go back to the original roots of their life choice, dance. Thanks to the choreography, they were able to experience, discover and express again their fascination, admiration and surprise towards their dancing bodies. On the other hand, ‘7 Dialogues’ brought to the stage the result of the relationship that each of the six dancers had with six other famous artists: Christopher Roman worked with Bulgarian artist Ivo Dimchev; Amancio González worked with an avant-garde visual artist living in London, Hetain Patel; Jone San Martín worked with British director, writer and artist Tim Etchells; Ty Boomershine worked with New York choreographer Beth Gill; Brit Rodemund worked with Lucy Suggate, a choreographer and dancer living in London; and Ami Shulman worked with French choreographer Étienne Guilloteau. The result of this experiment was six special and very personal individual works, which combined dance, performance and theatre. All directed by Matteo Fargion, who was also the creator of the music and the main piece.