A Pact with the Highlands / Un pacto con las Highlands

Before the first step is taken on stage,
Antes de dar el primer paso en el escenario,

I invite you into a pact.
te invito a un pacto.

A pact at a moment that is, in itself, already a ritual.
Un pacto en un momento que es, en sí mismo, ya un ritual.

My name is Nelson, and on December 28th, I will perform The Last Dancer here, in Tain.
Mi nombre es Nelson, y el 28 de diciembre, presentaré El último bailarín aquí, en Tain.

This date is not just any day in Scotland.
Esta fecha no es un día cualquiera en Escocia.

It marks the beginning of Hogmanay.
Marca el inicio del Hogmanay.

The great New Year celebration—a time of community rituals where the old is burned away to make way for the new.
La gran celebración de Año Nuevo: un tiempo de rituales comunitarios donde lo viejo se quema para dar paso a lo nuevo.

I come with my own fire.
Yo vengo con mi propio fuego.

And my own ashes.
Y con mis propias cenizas.

This piece was born in Spanish.

Esta obra nació en español.

From an Argentine body with a metal heart.

De un cuerpo argentino con un corazón de metal.

But stories, like rivers—or like celebrations—change as they travel.
Pero las historias, como los ríos —o como las celebraciones— cambian al viajar.

They adapt to new landscapes.
Se adaptan a nuevos paisajes.

My father dreamed of these lands and their legends.
Mi padre soñaba con estas tierras y sus leyendas.

I carry his ashes in my memory and his spirit 
Llevo sus cenizas en mi memoria y su espíritu 

I do not come as a stranger.
No vengo como un extraño.

I come as a son arriving at the precise moment when this country prepares to be reborn.
Vengo como un hijo que llega en el preciso momento en que este país se prepara para renacer.

Therefore, in the spirit of Hogmanay, I propose a pact.
Por eso, en el espíritu del Hogmanay, propongo un pacto.

A ritual within the ritual.
Un ritual dentro del ritual.

During the performance, I will speak in Spanish.
Durante la función, hablaré en español.

I will leave deliberate pauses.
Dejaré pausas deliberadas.

If you understand it, 

I ask you:
Si lo entiendes, 

te pido:

Whisper the translation to your neighbor.
Susurra la traducción a tu vecino.

Do not worry about perfection.
No te preocupes por la perfección.

Worry about connection.
Preocúpate por la conexión.

Let's transform the theater into our own procession.
Transformemos el teatro en nuestra propia procesión.

Where stories are passed 

“from ear to ear”—like the finest oral tradition.
Donde las historias se pasen 

“de oreja a oreja”—como la más fina tradición oral.

We will not just watch.
No solo miraremos.

We will repair together.
Repararemos juntos.

And symbolically burn away what no longer serves.
Y quemaremos simbólicamente lo que ya no sirve.

We will ask:
Nos preguntaremos:

Can language itself be broken?
¿Puede el lenguaje mismo romperse?

And if so,
Y si es así,

can we piece it back together with something more precious than gold?
¿podemos unir sus pedazos con algo más precioso que el oro?

The fire of shared attention on the eve of a new cycle.
El fuego de la atención compartida en la víspera de un nuevo ciclo.

This blog is the first step of this personal Hogmanay.
Este blog es el primer paso de este Hogmanay personal.

Here, I will share the cracks, 

the questions, and the fire we will try to kindle together.
Aquí compartiré las grietas, 

las preguntas y el fuego que intentaremos encender juntos.

Welcome to this beginning.
Bienvenido a este comienzo.

THE LAST DANCER.

FIRST PART.

TO BE A DANCER.

To be.

To be a dancer…..

To be a dancer you need long legs

A prominent instep 

And a lot of flexibility

To be a dancer requires

Agility

Good reflexes

To be a dancer you need to have strength, resistence, expressiveness.

To be skinny, fibrous, elongated, tonic, sensitive.

To be a dancer you need to have a beautiful proportioned body, long and toned´s arms, muscles that attract the views/sighs but no so much that they distract/disturb from the dance.

A dancer has to be versatile to learn many dances and docile to obey 

directors, 

teachers, 

choreographers, 

managers 

or anyone 

who stands off stage and say 

“HERE” ,

“TO THERE”,  

“MORE LIKETHIS”, 

MORE HERE”, 

REPEAT THAT”

“STOP”.

To be a dancer you need to have 

two legs, 

two arms, 

two eyes, 

two ears, 

two knees, 

two wrists, 

twenty fingers, 

two hips, 

five senses 

or four 

or three 

or 

one. 

To be a dancer you need to be 

tall, 

short, 

fat, 

skinny, 

ugly, 

agile, 

clumsy, 

sensitive, 

cold, 

weeping, 

immutable 

and all that 

at the same time.

To be a dancer you need….

That

That

That

To be a dancer you need to have a double hip´s replacement with an uncemented Stryker prosthesis with a friction couple and a ceramic head and a polyethylene acetabulum with rough surfaces that allows optimal osseointegration.

That

It takes

To be a dancer you need to have 

desire, 

laziness, 

doubts, 

certainly, 

a dead´s father 

and some dreams.

To be a dancer 

you need to have 

a Heart.

WIZARD AND NELSON.

My name is Nelson Ivan Simonelli but everybody knows me as Wizard.

I am 40 years old, I am a teacher, I am a dancer, I am an artist and I have a double hip´s replacement as consequence of early osteoarthritis due to congenital hip´s dysplasia that took me away from the dance, break and from what until then was my life.

For many years demanded this body to the limit. Demanding him believing that he was always going to be able to dance like this.

Until time, biology or duel took to charge of showing me otherwise.

First I had to lose my job a place where I loved to be, when The CAD, Argentine Dance Combined, disappeared.

Later, during the isolation due to the Covid, my Father died while I was going through the operations to have a hip´s replacement.

I already told

While I was putting this show I thought it was all going to be about what I had lost and the traumas that those experiences had left me.

Now I don´t know 

I don´t know what it is about

This is my new body. A body intervened. Part meat and part technology. My new Cyborg body.

¿What could this body do?

¿What scars have left?

¿What wounds do you remember from the other body? 

¿ From the Wizar´s corps?

Before I thought that to be a good dancer you have to learn everything. 

Be a kind of super hero of the movement.

Then I started with break the dance that reached my Heart.

DANCE MASHUP

So as not to dance alone in the center of the track I went to dance Tango and be able to walk with my partner in two through the floor and also the edges.

There they told me that if I wanted to improve my technique I had to do classic yes or yes.

But the classic made me very hard the recommended me that I do contemporary to be more flexible.

(Goes to the floor and while rolling up and stretching, he talks)

Star, I close, star, I close

As contemporary sometimes becomes too abstract and for working I needed some popcorn so I went to study jazz!!!!

And as I got tired of popcorn I added acrobatics and capoeira.

(Sing one Ladainha, song to star the capoeira´s wheel)

When I realized that I needed more strength in my arms added ¡¡popping!!!

And wacking!!!

Finally I realized that I had forgotten about the hip and I got into the afrobeat and the ndombolo.

Paradoxically it was the last thing I learned and the first thing I lost.

These x-rays are from before during and after my operations.

When I was finally able to stand on my two new hips, the sensation was of being on stilts stuck in the bones.

(He imitates the action of walking on stilts).

I thought I was not going to dance again? For what? But with time and rehabilitation I started to get used to this new support made of ceramic meat and metal.

Can technology become one with the body?

The Striker came with a lot of brochures and advertisements. There ensured that it had a rough surface which allows optimal osteointegration.

But I dindn´t think about that when I felt the technology creating a new body with the rest of he had brought.

The Kintsugi is an ancient technique that consists of repairing broken ceramic pieces without hiding the lines of their rupture.

Kintsugi is a term that could be translated as “carpenter of gold” and at the same time an art an ornament and a philosophy of life.

The Kintsugi no cover but adorns the scars with gold paint somehow telling us that we are all survivors between the old and the new. This theme appears in may Japanese stories and art forms.

I really like the Last Samurai, Tom Cruise is sent to Japan to suppress a rebellions of some Samurais against the Politicians who control the emperor and want to modernize Japan. The leaders of Samurais is Lord Katsumoto. Obviously Katsumoto and Tom Cruise end up becoming friends, Tom changes sides and end up fighting together the Samurai to defend the values of tradition against the advancement of technology. They discover that they are same people/persons who do not finish accepting what is coming: progress, dehumanization.

All the time there is a question about the philosophy of Kintsugi. How to live in a time where the old does not finish to died and the new does not finish being born?

WETLAND /CAD´S HISTORY.

This is the Argentinian dance team. A group of girls and boys who danced. All the different origins but for the time it lasted  were a family. Here in this place the Argentine Dance Team was born, danced and died.

We started when Tecnópolis was inaugurated. This Shed already existed but it had another name.

Everything was a little the same and a little different from what see/look now.

We made this video where the wetland is now. At that moment it was just a well left by the excavators.

Tecnópolis opened the doors, people came, saw and left. Then the park closed for several years.

The well filled with water and the animals came: toads, teros, calandrias and herons which ate the toads and thus the fish were born. Another toads came to eat the fish´s eggs, life made its cycle and the wetland was formed where is now. It´s  lovely. Go to see it. It was the only good thing that the Park was closed. 

Now it´s open. But who knows? Nothing is eternal. Before the wetland there was a well. And before the well there was not Tecnópolis. All this was from the Army.  

And before that it was field. Teros, toads, and white herons flew when the malon passed by raising dust.

Millions of years ago the ancestors of the ñandu and herds of glyptodonts roamed here.

The Glyptodonts that are like giant cart tattoos. The glyptodonts disappeared and the birds, the toads and the malon arrived.

Then the Army wired everything. And much later came Tecnópolis.

Maybe the next year they closed it again.

But this time they throw everything.

The sheds disappear, the street, the scenes, fill the wetland and the birds go in searching of another well of waters.

The wire fence disappears, the CAD, this cycle, the Army and we all die.

The city disappears and everything become to be a countryside and silence again.

Everything disappears. All disappears, all disappears

All disappears less my Strike. She remains eternal, as new, even after my body disappears.

THE LAST DANCER.

I imagine that my prosthesis carries written what the Katana says 

That Katsumoto Moritsugu gives like a gift to Tom Cruise in the movie, it says: I belonged to the warrior in which the old and the new have arrived to unite.

And now I leave.

Heading to the prairie gallop off 

With the certainty of this ephemeral present 

Smelling the grass

The gunpowder

The blood

EPILOGUE | THE UNION

This philosophy… this question of the old and the new…
Esta filosofía… esta pregunta de lo viejo y lo nuevo…

I didn't find it only in Japan.
No la encontré solo en Japón.

My father planted it in me.
Mi padre la plantó en mí.

He was a man… a beautiful madman.
Él era un hombre… un loco hermoso.

He dreamed of these lands.
Soñaba con estas tierras.

He died while I was in the operating room.
Él murió mientras yo estaba en el quirófano.

The old that wouldn't finish dying… was him.
Lo viejo que no terminaba de morir… era él.

The new that wouldn't finish being born… was me.
Lo nuevo que no terminaba de nacer… era yo.

With this new body. Without him.
Con este cuerpo nuevo. Sin él.

There is a video.
Hay un video.

My sister Juliana, scattering his ashes.
Mi hermana Juliana, esparciendo sus cenizas.

In the sea of our childhood.
En el mar de nuestra infancia.

The sea he loved.
El mar que él amaba.

It is the most kintsugi act I know.
Es el acto más kintsugi que conozco.

Turning the body into salt. Into wind. Into part of everything.
Convertir el cuerpo en sal. En viento. En parte de todo.

Uniting it with the eternal.
Unirlo con lo eterno.

Can technology become one with the body?
¿Puede la tecnología hacerse una con el cuerpo?

This kilt is not technology.
Esta pollera no es tecnología.

It is memory.
Es memoria.

And it is memory that, in the end, integrates everything.
Y es la memoria la que, al final, lo integra todo.

The old… is my father.
Lo viejo… es mi padre.

The new… is me. Here. Now. With you.
Lo nuevo… soy yo. Aquí. Ahora. Con ustedes.

And this is the moment when, for an instant, they merge.
Y este es el momento en que, por un instante, se funden.

Watch when ready.
Míralo cuando estés listo.

---

This memory is the gold.
Thank you for being part of the repair.
— Nelson

Esta memoria es el oro.
Gracias por ser parte de la reparación.
— Nelson