as part of the Fabbrica Europa 2025 festival
in collaboration with Fondazione Teatro della Toscana

Vuelta a Uno by Spanish choreographer and dancer Rocío Molina, 2022 Silver Lion award for dance of La Biennale di Venezia, is the third part of the Trilogía sobre la Guitarra that also includes Inicio (Uno) and Al fondo riela (Lo Otro del Uno). Each piece is the result of a distinct exploration of the guitar as an essential element of flamenco.

Vuelta a Uno is a reencounter with that which is alive, with euphoria and pleasure, it is soil intoxicated by a thumping beat, a reminder that we are made from matter and breath, where the soul attempts to escape, rise, and become one with the universe once more.

The connection between Molina and guitarist Yerai Cortés, who accompanies her on stage, blurs any attempt to frame, pigeonhole or sketch. They play relentlessly to carefree rhythms, fracturing our perception and making us complicit in their irreverence.
In their ecstasy there is nowhere to hide, no concealed emotions: it bursts and destroys any attempt to contain.
For the dancer, each call of the guitar requires absolute commitment, breaking beyond her boundaries, losing her balance and abandoning her rationality.
The sounds multiply, mutate and hurtle us towards delirium.
We are dragged along by the expansive wave of the dancer’s outpouring, her unwillingness to stop, we witness them being devoured by a single, crude intention, a stark impulse of creation on the edge of being, a deeply rooted ascension that aspires to disintegrate.
In this third section of the trilogy, we gallop through all stages of pleasure, including compulsion, an urgency that the skin can barely sustain, and we plunge inexorably towards the destructive.

Vuelta a Uno contains a certain poetic realism, from which we contemplate this liberating trance through unceasing movement, through a constant donation, demonstrating the pain that also comes with the blurring of self, and the awakening of the blindest of our own impulses.
We draw closer to climax, and everything within us that is infinite palpitates until it finds a way out. We are consumed by exaltation, because order can only mean exploding.
The curtain that shields us from the profane falls irremediably, we abandon the earthly in order to return to the place we started, to a primordial state.
We return to Uno.

The iconoclastic choreographer Rocío Molina has coined her own artistic language based on a reinvented traditional flamenco style which respects its essence, but embraces the avant-garde. Radically free, she combines in her works technical virtuosity, contemporary research, and conceptual risk. Unafraid to forge alliances with other disciplines and artists, her choreographies are unique scenic events based on ideas and cultural forms ranging from cinema to literature, including philosophy and painting.
A versatile dancer, she is one of the Spanish artists with greater international repercussion. Her works have been performed not only in theaters and festivals such as: Festival d’Avignon, Barbican Center in London, City Center in New York, The Esplanade in Singapore, Tanz Im August in Berlin, Festival SPAF in Seoul, Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow, National Theater of Taiwan, Dansens Hus in Oslo and Stockholm, Chaillot National Theatre in Paris, Festival Transamériques in Montreal, and Bunkamura in Tokyo, but also in Spanish renowned temples of theatre, dance, and flamenco.
Her artistic research has been recognized with awards at a national and at an international level including 2022 Silver Lion award for dance of La Biennale di Venezia, 2022 Positano Dance Award, 2019 Max Award for the best dance show for Grito Pelao, 2019 UK National Dance Award “Outstanding female modern performance”, and with the unanimous praise of the audience and the critics: “A gifted and intelligent dancer” (El Mundo), “She’s like the nuclear power within an atom” (STANDARD), “She is passion personified, urgent, almost red hot, taking over the body and moving it, spasm by spasm, filling it of rage and beauty.” (La Vanguardia), “One of the best flamenco dancers I’ve ever seen” (The New York Times).

Artistic credits
original idea, artistic direction and choreography: Rocío Molina
original composition: Yerai Cortés
art direction: Julia Valencia
scenic space: Antonio Serrano, Julia Valencia, Rocío Molina
lighting design: Antonio Serrano
sound design: Javier ÁLvarez

Team
dance: Rocío Molina
guitar: Yerai Cortés
technical manager: Carmen Mori
lighting technician: Antonio Valiente
sound: Javier Álvarez
stage manager: María Agar Martínez

executive direction: El Mandaito Producciones S.L.
co-production: Danza Molina S.L. & Teatro Español
in collaboration with Junta de Andaluciá – Consejería de Cultura y Patrimonio Histórico
With the support of INAEM – Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música

photo: José Alberto Puertas