FORMATION and history

This site was created in 2016 with the purpose of unifying all stage and education work created by e Albert Quesada and his collaborators Federica Porello, Zoltán Vakulya, Mireia de Querol and Marcus Baldemar, and has developed over the years by performing and creating around Europe.

Albert has directed the performances: Solo on Bach & Glenn (2005), Solos Bach & Gould (2010), Trilogy (2011, created with Vera Tussing), Ensemble (2012), Slow Sports (2012), Wagner & Ligeti (2014), Slow Sports Outdoors (2014), Slow Sports Kids (2015), OneTwoThreeOneTwo (2015), Viva (2016), It’s time (2017)(with Federica Porello & Zoltán Vakulya), Flamingos (2019), Desert (2022).

Together with Katie Vickers, Albert has adapted Flamingos for two Dance Universities under the names: We Will Meet Again (2021, Artesis, Antwerp, Belgium), Are You Talking To Me? (2022, at UArts, Philadelphia, USA)

Albert will also collaborate with other artists with similar interests and affinities.

 

MISSION STATEMENT

Albert creates work and is interested in art that focuses on:

  • the love for detail

  • the endless complex relations between movement, music and meaning

  • the analysis of the temporal structures and repetitions

  • how music can express and communicate ideas

  • how organised noise of music evokes images and turns them into thoughts

  • speed and its different qualities in stage performances

  • the coexistence of different temporalities

  • learning skills from musical compositions

  • the proprioception and awareness of moving bodies

Albert teaches adults, professionals, amateurs and children.

The WORK & THE MUSIC

Music and Experiences in Albert's Developing Practice ...read more
In particular, much of his work has grown into a study of music – music as a carrier of meaning - what music is, what it means to play music, but above all, what it means to listen. How does the act of listening become meaningful? How does listening change us? What are the different modes of the listening experience? How can these, sometimes automatic, listening experiences be made conscious and profound.

Albert's history with music ...read more

Albert first encountered classical music through the Goldberg Variations. His awakening with Bach and Glenn Gould led him slowly to other composers, who became the subjects of later creations: Beethoven, Brahms, Bizet, Bernstein, Shostakovich, Haydn, Wagner, Ligeti and Vivaldi. He has grown to love this music and its world. His engagement with these composers has shaped not just his artistic practice, but his intellectual development. The only other musical form that has ever moved Albert on this profound level is flamenco. One guitar player, two singers and a dancer: an extraordinarily simple set-up with incredible power. The rhythmical complexity, choreographic detail and emotive release of a flamenco tablao achieves an immediacy of connection and communication with an audience that we find magnetically, irresistibly fascinating.

Piece by Piece ...read more

2008-2010 
Solo on Bach & Gould was a detailed, playful study of Glenn Gould’s performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and Albert's own response to listening to them.
2011 
Working with Vera Tussing on Trilogy allowed Albert to expand this same precision and playfulness to explore Beethoven’s piano sonatas, as well as rock music from JS Rafaeli and the operas of Bizet.
2012 
Slow Sports was an attempt to apply this examination of cultural meaning to another realm of disciplined participation and spectatorship: competitive sports. What does it mean to compete in an athletic event? What does it mean to experience others doing so as a spectator?
2012 
Ensemble was a short trio exploring the role of the conductor, inspired by Leonard Bernstein's word and with the help of Beethoven, Brahms, Bernstein, Shostakovich and Haydn.
2014 
With our last group piece, Wagner & Ligeti we returned to my ‘original inspiration’, interrogating modes of experiencing orchestral music in the ‘Western Tradition’.
2015 
The creation of OneTwoThreeOneTwo allowed us to expand this field of enquiry to the semi-improvised musical language, rich cultural history, and free-flowing connection between performer and audience of the flamenco tradition. Surrounded by a 360º audience, the intensity of the music from Sabicas, Miguel Poveda, Manolo Caracol and Camarón de la Isla was parallel to the intensity of the proximity from the dancers.
2016 
With VIVA Albert directed a group of 15 dancers exploring big group constellations, movements and games under the unashamedly beautiful Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
2017 
For It's time, we are finally working with live music and live electronics. Octavi Rumbau, the composer, will help us provide the right experience.
2019 
In Flamingos, with 7 dancers onstage, we explored flamenco's intensity through Maria Callas, Elton John, and Whitney Houston, learning that being flamenco might have very different looks and feels.

FUTURE

Albert’s full history and different artistic processes will be available online in the future.

  • Methodologies

  • Scores used for the choreographies

  • Images from the creation

INSPIRATIONAL FIGURES

Thomas Hauert - choreographer, teacher and dancer

Chrysa Parkinson - teacher and dancer

David Zambrano - choreographer, teacher and dancer

Janet Panetta - teacher and dancer