Belén Bouzas, Diego M. Buceta, Fran Martínez: ‘No hay que ser una casa para tener fantasmas’

Chakra-channellings and a triploid tantra in a trance-like trio at the 2018 Certamen Coreográfico de Madrid


Ditch drama and display, and prepare instead for meditation, slowing down and zoning-out. No hay que ser una casa para tener fantasmas by choreographer-performers Belén Bouzas, Fran Martínez and Diego M. Buceta is intentionally antitheatrical. Floorbound actions scarcely rise higher than a crouch or a crawl, it proceeds at snail’s-pace on a single right-left axis across the stage, accompanied by ambient swishes of sound right out of a relaxation room.

The look is monkish: loose robes, hair in topknots. Staying in close contact, the performers haul each other from one side to another, sliding over the sackcloth weight of each other’s bodies. The distant noise of children’s voices wafts by as if from another world, and at the end the sound of rain drenches the atmosphere like a benediction.

By that time, there has been a headstand, a separation and a coming together, careful cradlings, and two strangely matter-of-fact mouth-to-mouth contacts, more chakra-channellings than kisses. It’s all very new age, like triploid tantra. I still don’t get the title (“you don’t need a house to have ghosts”), but the yogic trance tells me I don’t need to. I’m chilled.