What was your starting point?

I got a phone call in the middle of the pandemic. It was Marco Flores. We had never met each other but we had many friends in common. Like most other dance/theater companies in the World, all his shows were being cancelled/postponed because of the curfew. But he couldn't just sit and wait. He had been investigating about the life and work of Antonio José Martínez Palacios and he wanted to collaborate with me somehow. Antonio José Martínez Palacios was going to be the biggest Spanish musician of the 20th Century. Unfortunately, he was incarcerated and executed without a trial at the age of 33, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, with an unfinished vast body of work. So we started working around the idea of a dance film using the music of the composer rethinking his music.

The use of castanets within the choreography was really captivating. Can you explain more of your process behind it and your decision to use flamenco dance?

Antonio José Martínez Palacios was always in search of diverse cultural and social voices. His approach to music and his studies took him all over the country recapturing forgotten folkloric music and transforming it into modern and very sophisticated music. "¡Ay, amante mío!" (the music we used for the film) is a tune for 6 mixed voices from his studies Five Castilian Chorus. His vision of art was plural and diverse and continuously evolving by mixing and adapting to time and places. Tagore Gonzalez (our musician for the film) worked very hard to create something new from an old recording of ¡Ay, amante mío". His mission was to adapt it to express the moment and place in which we are today, and make it our voice.

The dancers in the film come from different backgrounds going from classical, spanish, folkoric or flamenco to contemporary. We drink from all these different sources, but we didn't want to gird ourselves to any determined current, so we let the dancers explore their voices in rehearsals to create a very personal and unique expression in which we listened to each one of them. I can't remember at what exact point we came up with the idea of a "tree of castanets" but I fell in love with that image instantly.

What was your interest to work with Marco Flores' dance company?

It's been a great honor to meet him and to work with him. It became very easy to create a dialogue between dance and film. I had never worked with a choreographer before and it was a great chance to do something beautiful.

How did you chose your locations?

The film is shot on a budget and we were very lucky when we found them. It took a while! The place was an old perfume and soap factory in Alcala de Henares and in some places it still smells amazing. The desert is just a quarry close by the main location. We approached the project in a similar way one would approach a music video, so we wanted to switch between different locations to help refresh the eye of the viewer every once in while.

Tell us about your collaborators.

Enrique Millán the DOP is my right hand both in artistic and commercial projects. He adds his great eye and sensibility to every film we make. Tagore González is an amazing musician who transformed the original music into something new and full of opportunities for the film. Costume Designer Sabrina Lázaro came with beautiful ideas for the dancers making it timeless and fashionable at the same time. Rami Arda & Ali Sánchez helped so much with locations. They work tirelessly. Every time I can, I work with Miriam Collar on hair & make up. She does so much with so little. Dani Aránega at GradePunk is the colorist. We've been friends for years and they make my films look a lot more expensive than they are!

How did you go about realizing the film during pre/production/post?

I was working on things I loved so it was a lot of work, but things fell into place quite naturally: music, light, wardrobe. We had thousands of problems, but I think we knew where we were going. I got a little scared in post-production but Enrique (the DoP) also edits and we found a solution to every problem that came along.

What are you working on next?

Music videos and advertisements... I have a little production company called La Costa. I just released another dance-film. It's a music video, a dance film and a commercial with amazing dancer María Pagés.