Otempodiz

The FAM Festival (Arts and Movement Festival) presents, at the exterior of the Teatro Guimerá, the show Otempodiz, by the company Ertza, with the slogan: Vosotros tenéis el reloj, nosotros tenemos el tiempo (You have the clock; we have the time).

Otempodiz (Time Says) is a dance piece that studies the different ways we experience time. To this end, it combines urban, traditional, and contemporary choreographic languages.

They say that, in the West, time is counted, measured, bought, sold, planned, and organised. Considered an objective thing, it is unrelated to people, and we use it to do things, but it is nearly always in short supply. However, time is something that people experience in Africa: they have it or make it. It is considered a subjective thing inherent in people: they inhabit time, and there is rarely too little of it. The fact that we are born in a specific place in the world inevitably defines our notion of time. Although nothing is fixed, we struggle to overcome this initial notion of time. It is something that can be experienced in many ways. One can even be a slave to time, but nobody can deny its existence, and this is a worldwide truth. It is the power that dance gives us, whatever its origin, gender, or condition, to experience time itself in an absolute present.

Otempodiz results from an exchange project and bilateral artistic creation, with one foot in Mozambique and the other in Spain. The project was possible thanks to the support of the AECID, the Sortutakoak artistic residency programme (Gipuzkoako Dantzagunea), and the Atlantikaldia Festival of Errenteria (Gipuzkoa). This creative initiative of the dance company Ertza seeks to showcase the talent of Mozambican dancers Deissane Machava and Fenias Nhumaio, who, due to their backgrounds, face scant career opportunities in the field they love: dance.