Name:

Dr. Alejandro Tomás Rodriguez

Title:

Professor

Department:

Theatre and Dance Department

Describe your research in about 200 words.

My artistic work moves back and forth between theatre and music. The result of this oscillation is that the concerts and music I compose are very theatrical, and the theatre pieces I direct are very musical. I like to respect the conventions of each art form so that I can then move away from them in search of an unpredictable factor. In the past poets sang, storytellers danced, and musicans told stories. I feel close to them. With most of my works I look to connect with the past to discover what is meaningful today. In some way I’m tracing the hidden signs our ancestors passed on to the future. My performances are fragmented kaleidoscopes where chaos seeks order. Songs, dances, poems, collective movements, and visual compositions narrate stories in the form of dreams. My theatre is a theatre of actors who are creators. What happens in them and among them is what carries the dramatic development of the piece. Over the last decade I’ve been exploring old traditional songs from different cultures of Latin America and West Africa, and ancient texts from Persia, West Bengal, Greece, Tibet and Pre-Columbian Mexico, as well as ancient dance steps. This research has open my eyes in a fundamental way: I realized that there has always been a need for humans to seek inclusivity but also the expansion of one’s own limits. In the sense of enlarging the experience of what we usually perceive as “myself”.

What’s the most interesting thing you have learned from a student?

That I should always start from cero.