Memory of an Encounter is a stage production born from the creative dialogue between cellist Guillem Gràcia, a student of the Aline Foriel-Destezet Cello Chair at the Reina Sofía School of Music, and dancer Isabel Ponce. In this meeting of disciplines, music and dance question one another, exploring their limits and reshaping the identity of each language within a shared space.
The work is structured around the memory of an encounter that may never have taken place. This initial gesture places the audience in a territory of ambiguity, where memory fragments and is continuously reconstructed. On stage, the figure of the dancer appears as a singular presence, permeated by that memory. Evocation, desire, rupture, and acceptance follow one another as states of a consciousness in motion.
Musician and instrument act as witnesses and counterpoint to this inner process. Far from serving a merely accompanying role, the music of Saariaho, Bach, Huguet, Cassado, and D’allabaco creates a soundscape that sustains, tensions, and amplifies the stage experience, establishing a constant dialogue with the body and gesture.
Accompanied by poems by Alejandra Pizarnik, voiced by Pepa Bueno, it acquires a lyrical dimension that permeates the production and lends it greater expressive depth. Her words do not illustrate the action; rather, they expand it, opening new layers of meaning and reinforcing the piece’s internal cohesion.
In this interplay of presences and absences, it is never fully confirmed whether the encounter took place. It is precisely in that uncertainty that the work finds its centre: a reflection on identity when it is stripped of everything around it. What remains, then? What form does silence take? And, as Pizarnik suggests, does silence truly exist?
The Clásica&… series is supported by the Fundación Banco Santander.
