25 Anys Àngels Margarit/Cia. Mudances

Àngels Margarit is a dancer’s dancer.

With an extraordinary eye for choreography, Margarit paints pictures on the stage like an old master flicking a brush over a canvas. She makes such effective visual use of space and composition that it’s hard for her contemporaries not to admire—and perhaps envy just a little—the body of work she’s produced. This month, Mercat de les Flors are marking the 25th birthday of Mudances (Margarit’s Barcelona-based company) with a special residency which includes the staging of five of her most important pieces, along with talks, a workshop, a concert and several films. Kolbebasar (5th-7th) was first performed in 1988 and if Samuel Beckett had been a choreographer, he’d probably have produced something like this. A piece for seven dancers, it’s poetic, quirky, repetitive and quite brilliant: a perfect introduction to her work. Her award-winning solo Corol.la (11th–13th) comes next, a riot of colour and movement that has toured the globe since its premiere in 1992. The collaborative Cartografies is being performed in two parts on the 12th (free entrance) and the 14th, followed by perhaps her most introspective work Solo por placer (17th & 18th). In this individual piece, she looks at the pleasure of dance and the pain of creation and although she’s a beautiful dancer, it’s not her finest work, perhaps because she’s at her best when she’s working with multiple energies and bodies to create striking visual pictures. Finally Larandland (20th and 21st) is an abstract piece in three parts that takes the city as its theme. Best of all, tickets are a mere €10 each with big discounts for groups and last-minute buys, meaning there’s plenty for dance fans to smile about this month.