Action/performance: Nilo Gallego Rodríguez and Felipe Quintana Pastrana, with a flock of 200 yearling sheep (6 zumbos (buzzers), 36 long bells, 36 short bells, 48 picks, 48 shears).
It rains. The millstone continues to turn in the mill, tireless. Winter is coming to an end. In the abandoned village, spring plays its way through the fog. Life and death in a land anchored to the sea and the fog, where the past is as present as the future.
On his return to his Galician homeland, the poet and storyteller Antón Avilés de Taramancos (1935-1992) sees the parallel stories of his life in Colombia and the history of the American continent intermingled. The uneasiness of a new world and the terror of colonisation and subsequent slavery give way to peace in the city where all the ingredients blend together (European, African, Amerindian) and, finally, integration in the ecstasy of dance. After his death, around a sidereal oak tree, the sounds of the two continents come together.
'Puerta Beta' was based on the site specific performance ‘Fuera de la fábrica Beta’, a collective creation directed by Nilo Gallego, in which the public, located inside an abandoned factory, a symbol of the industrial decline of the area, could observe the busy transport routes that connect the outside with the centre of the city of Bilbao, through a game between the everyday, chance and a series of interventions in which the residents of the Zorrozaurre neighbourhood participated.
Words, bleats, smells, looks, patience, flies, barks, cowbells and dust. A story of painted wolves, drivers of livestock after a severe sifting. The skinned sheep that eats and eats, and looks out of the corner of its eye. The cara guarding the border with his sword eyes. And the shepherd who teaches them, with the support of his cayata.
In the Serra da Estrela (Portugal) silence is sometimes broken by the calls (chamamentos) of shepherds to control their flocks of sheep. These sounds are the basis for the sound poet Américo Rodríguez's compositions.
Villa 31. Buenos Aires is about life in its most physical sense, the life that, despite everything, beats unstoppably in every corner of the planet. It speaks of happiness, suffering, and the learning of both, and takes place, perhaps by chance, in one of the various shantytowns of Buenos Aires: Villa 31. The recording was made as part of Rodrigo García's stage project ‘Cruda, vuelta y vuelta, al punto, chamuscada’.
