Idoia often says that her dancing has always had a speech, a kind of blah-blah. The question of speech, the distortion of speech, the inclusion of theatrical elements in dance links her to Meredith Monk, for example, but more closely to Itziar Okariz, Amaia Urra, Ixiar Rozas, to a generation of artists linked to performance who have worked on speech, language and the word within a discipline organised around the body. All of them speak but, like Idoia, they reject the clarity of discourse. In the fissures, Idoia uses her own speaking as a way of opening a crack in the primacy of the frontal, central, distanced, flattened gaze. She seeks to touch the other with her words, to appeal to the other, often directly, to try to sum up the distance that separates them. In the Mantras, however, she begins to unfold the potencies of that moving by speaking. The attention has already slipped from the body to language and to the choreographic powers of the spoken word. The Mantras seem an escape path from the way she used language in her previous performances, in a straight line, to go through, like a vector. In order to transcend it, Idoia begins to manipulate what she was using instrumentally to fissure the mutism of a dancing body. In Fissures she used speech to create displacements, movement, after all. But how to think language if not with language itself, how to exercise its movement, how to encourage it, to wave it, how to transcend its frontality? The earliest documented Mantras are audio recordings. Idoia tells us that these Mantras often appear while driving in a car. The landscape moves quickly, the foreground blurs and perspective twists, everything is mutable and fluid outside while moving at high speed, but in the cockpit, driving requires a discipline and technique that puts the body on alert. You have to change gear, respect traffic signs, remember the turn, turn on the indicator. In the collision between these two forms of perception, is where Idoia’s Mantras are often born, like a sonnet. Then she goes to the studio and works on them. There is no outside movement, the white walls, the wooden ceiling of Azala define the space like a constant. The body, on the other hand, is free of constraint. There is no need to mark, reduce or give way. This is where the audio recordings that are the basis of the Mantras are created. In them, a kind of phrases are worked out, repetition structures with tonal variations that are modulated in a serial way. Many of the Mantras start from structures based on binarity (while you X I Y, they X we Y). Once again, the initial elements confront each other. In all of them, Idoia begins to work on the materiality of the voice as a becoming and the saying as a movement. Through the Mantras she focuses her work on all those potentialities that escape from the scheme of modern rational scientific thought and language ceases to be straightforward. In this series, there is a stronger work with sensations, with how it feels to pronounce this or another word, what gesture produces a g, how an m moves me after a g, what images they shape. Idoia twists and plays with language, diction and tone to create images in transformation, to foster an in between that opens up possibilities of zigzagging, swirling, escaping. When I think about the process of creating the Mantras in order to be able to write, I fall into shadows, I think that I am thinking and I become obsessed. The performance aims for a continuous present, I tell myself; that’s what Idoia is looking for. And then I doubt, and a song by Pepe Suero (Andalucía la que divierte, 1978) that I used to listen to with Vicente comes to my mind like a mantra. The song goes like this: “I think I die when I think, I think that thinking I die (…) I think I live when I sing, I want to sing and I can’t (…) I die wanting to live, I think I live when I sing, I want to sing and I can’t, I think that thinking I die, I think I die when I think”.

Related bibliography

2003

→ El rato de José at STUK (House for Dance, Image and Sound), Leuven, Belgium.  

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2012

→ Annual Jaia in Azala. Idoia presents Lecciones y canciones, a series of audios which precede the Top Mantras.   

Invited artists: Jon Mantxi, Myriam p.i, Alex Mendizabal and Orquestina de pigmeos, who prepare actions to be presented as part of Paseo performancielo. The 1st of September.

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2012

→ Oficina / Oficio / Artificio / Herramientas, a workshop taught by Cláudia Dias at Muelle 3, Bilbao.  

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2012

→ Espe López to conduct the workshop Práctica y experimentación. Curiosidad y autoficción (convivencias) as part of the Gorputz egoerak programme in Azala.

From 26 to 30 December.

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2013

→ Oskar Gómez Mata to conduct the workshop Mostrar el pensamiento: observación y consciencia as part of the Gorputz egoerak programme in Azala.  

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2013

→ El presente del tiempo: sobre la temporalidad de la performance, a seminar conducted by Bojana Kunst in Azala.  

The seminar examined the proximity between the playwright’s work and the notion of time. Kunst wanted to examine the consequences that the present of time has on performance. The present of time is related to the broader socio-cultural conditions of the now, at a time when we are witnessing an extreme capitalisation of time and a political contraction of the present.

Participants: Jeleton (Jesús Arpal Moya and Jelen Alcántara), María Ibarretxe, Miren Jaio, Isabel de Naverán, Marion Cruza, June Crespo, Ixiar Rozas, Idoia Zabaleta, Ayara Hernandez and Paula Caspao. From 21 to 26 March.

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2014

→ Mantra Om momentua with Loida Gómez as part of Etzanda esan eta entzun, an event within the programme La Cosa en casa, curated by Maia Villot and Isaak Erdoiza.  

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2016

→ Mantra vida at Koldo Mitxelena in Donostia - San Sebastián, as part of Envoltura, Danza y acción.  

Isabel de Naverán invited Idoia Zabaleta to create a piece based on the figure of the Republic. Mantra Vida is created as a two-sided letter addressed to both sides of this figure, that is, to living life and to what is to come. The piece was presented together with pieces by Camila Téllez and Patricia Caballero. 15 July.

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2016

→ Mantra vida, as part of Envoltura, at Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao.  

Envoltura was presented in Azkuna Zentroa as part of the cycle Elipsiak, with the participation of Idoia Zabaleta, Patricia Caballero, Iñaki Azpillaga, Pedro G. Romero, Bobote and Camila Téllez. 1 December.
Extract from the video recording of Envoltura, made by Filmotive.

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2017

→ Mantra vida, as part of Envoltura, at the Festival Escenas do Cambio, Santiago de Compostela.  

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2017

→ Mantra vida at Nave, within the programme Prácticas para estar juntos (PPEJ), Santiago de Chile

From 30 June to 1 July.

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2017

→ Mantra Tengo Tiempo at Zarata Fest XI, Bilbao.  

22 December at La Morada, Bilbao.

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2018

→ Mantra vida as part of Envoltura in a duo version with Isabel de Naverán at Festival Beautiful Movers, Córdoba.  

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2018

→ Top mantra at the Jornadas Mostrenkas, Sala Mostrenka, Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Including Mantra Tengo Tiempo, Mantra Om momentua, Mantra Vida, Mantra Porvenir, Mantra Mancha, Mantra La Ley, Mantra Hambre de hombre, Mantra Tipo Tipa Tipi, Mantra Cansadas. From 20 to 30 December.

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2019

→ Top mantra at Festival Internacional Punto de Vista, Pamplona.  

Including Mantra Tengo Tiempo, Mantra Om momentua, Mantra Vida, Mantra Porvenir, Mantra Sal, Mantra La ley, Mantra Tipo TipaTipi, Mantra Cansadas. 14 March.

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2019

→ Envoltura, historia y síncope, a seminar together with Isabel de Naverán at IIDAM, Argentina, within the framework of the XII Jornadas de investigación en danza. El cuerpo: territorio político y materia prima.  

Activity carried out at the Centro Cultural San Martín as part of the activities programmed by the DAM, in collaboration with the UNA, Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina. From 2 to 6 September.

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2019

→ Top mantra as part as the programme Radicantes at IVAM, Valencia, curated by Rocío Pérez, Tatiana Clavel and Mireia Ferrer Álvarez.  

Including Mantra Tengo Tiempo, Mantra Om momentua, Mantra Vida, Mantra Porvenir and Mantra Vengeanza. 9 November.

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2019

→ Mantra Vida, as part of Envoltura, at the Centro Cultural General San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina.  

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2019

→ Mantra Berdea at Garaion, Álava.  

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2019

→ Quinta Feira: abracadabra by Cláudia Dias, presented at La Fundición, Bilbao.  

The piece was presented as part of the Dantzaldia programme, and toured extensively both in Spain and Portugal. From 30 November to 1 December.

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2021

→ Top mantra as part of the Festival Idiorritmias at MACBA, Barcelona.   

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2022

→ Top mantra as part of the Carta Blanca programme curated by Sandra Gómez at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Castellón.

Including Mantra Cansadas, Mantra Tengo tiempo, Mantra Om momentua, Mantra Calorca, Mantra Pared, Mantra Vída, Mantra Porvenir, Mantra Mancha and Déjala Ser. 30 September.

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2023

ZABALETA, Idoia, “Los mantras que bailé”, in Radicantes, danza y otras especies, [Exh. Cat. ], Valencia, IVAM, 2023.  

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