Ana Luján Sánchez Interview

Pere Fornes

Squareonenews entertainment

The Scottish company The Curve Foundation celebrated its 10th anniversary yesterday with a production by four choreographers. Ana Luján Sánchez was one of them, together with Merce Cunningham, William Forsythe and Ross Copper, artistic director of The Curve Foundation.

Ana, originally from Valencia, Spain, was awarded the Best Female Contemporary Artist award by the British Critic’s Circle in 2003 as well as the Artes Escénicas award by the Generalitat Valenciana (Spain) in 2006.

We met with Ana before the performance to learn what brought her to the UK and what her relationship with The Curve Foundation is. “I started dancing when I was six and I also did gymnastics and judo. I soon had to decide between the three of them and I chose ballet. When I was ten I started to realise that I really enjoyed going to ballet classes. By the age of 14 I had decided that I wanted to be a professional dancer and I had also realised that dancing wasn’t a professional career in Spain.”

There was only one professional company in Spain, the Compañía Nacional de Danza. She went to an audition there at the age of 15 but couldn’t get in because she was too young. “I then started talking to my parents and teachers about the possibility to go to England to get into a professional dance company because in Spain I couldn’t get a job. I applied for the Rambert School in London and they accepted the application so I came to England in September 1994.”

She stayed in the school for a year and a half, until the director of the Rambert Dance Company offered her a contract in 1995, when she was 19, and she stayed there until August 2006 working with international choreographers.

In 2005 she choreographed a solo called “Cervantes” for a workshop. Ross Copper, director of The Curve Foundation liked it and bought it for the company. Ana came to Edinburgh to re choreograph the solo with The Curve Foundation. “We held an audition and I had to choose two guys for the solo. After that, they have been performing the piece for the last three years.

“It was a solo danced while the audience was coming in the auditorium, before the show started. Normally the audience is down and watches the dancer. This solo is about the physical struggle that a dancer has to go through, and the mental concentration, to overcome the fact that she is looking at the audience as they walk through to get into the theatre. The dancer is a spectator, as well as a dancer.”

After dancing professionally for 14 years, Ana also likes directing. “I like dance because it is a way of expressing what I feel, because is very internal, and I share it with the audience and colleagues. Now I am in the stage where I want to share my knowledge and experience with younger dancers. But I also like to direct my ideas or projects with other artists.”

At present she works with the Leeds-based company Phoenix Dance Theatre.

http://www.analujansanchez.co.uk/.

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LIFE AFTER GENOCIDE

SquareOne News Feature

by Kate Smail

Mary Blewitt lost over 50 members of her family in the Rwandan genocide. Her brother John had his leg hacked off and bled to death in front of his wife and children. Only her young niece survived. She clambered her way out of the mass grave she and her family had been dumped in, and ran to her Hutu friends for help. They returned to the grave, slaughtered any remaining survivors and raped her. One year on, Mary sifted through the 200 decaying bodies in that mass grave to look for her relatives, and reburied them one by one.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Mary's story, is that in the context of Rwanda, it isn't that remarkable.1 million people were murdered over 100 days during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Men, women and children, mostly Tutsi's, were slaughtered by their Hutu friends and neighbours. Over 25,000 women were raped and deliberately infected with HIV and AIDS.

Horror on such an unimaginable scale is almost impossible to comprehend. It is hard to see how anyone could rebuild their life after such inconceivable tragedy. Mary has managed to not only rebuild hers, but that of countless others through her work as the founder and director of SURF Survivors Fund. SURF has helped those left behind, the orphans and widows, with everything from healthcare and education, right through to giving people an outlet for their grief and allowing their stories to be heard.

However, Mary explained to us why she is stepping back from her role at SURF this October, and why her new project, a Ugandan Spa, is to be her biggest challenge yet.

Speaking exclusively to Square One News, Mary said: "I've lived and breathed genocide for the last 14 years. Whatever I do with SURF is a reminder of losing my family. SURF has been great in dealing with practical day to day things, housing, education and healthcare. However, what the survivors need now is a space where they can escape the genocide, even if only for an afternoon."

"I've bought some land in Uganda and am going to open a spa. It will provide for paying customers, but also as a retreat for survivors of the genocide, who will be able to come and use the facility for free on designated days. I want to offer people a different way of dealing with their pain."

"Nobody is telling these survivors that life can move on, that it's ok to be happy. I want to create somewhere that gives people the space to deal with the trauma they have experienced. The spa will offer survivors the chance to do something that is just for them, a massage or a facial, something that lets them know it's ok to love yourself."

Mary hopes that by training locals in techniques such as massage and alternative therapies, they in turn will be able to teach other survivors, who will then be able to set up businesses and therefore help more people.

When asked what she wants the spa to achieve, Mary replies simply: "I want people to know there is life after genocide."

For more information on SURF visit www.survivors-fund.org.uk

A NIGHTMARE IN THE SUN

by Pere Fornes


SquareOne News


“Every morning an idiot gets up. He doesn’t know that his land is going to be grabbed.”


These are the words of the main accused in Spain’s most notorious corruption trial. Linked to the Urban Development Activity Act or so-called "land-grab" law, the problem is affecting hundreds of Scottish owners, and many others.


The act, enforced in the autonomous region of Valencia, allows authorities to take land from homeowners if a rural area is designated as being necessary for a building project. They can also charge owners to pay for the supposed benefit to the area that development brings. If the owners refuse, more land can be taken without recourse as there is no appeals process.


The law was originally designed to thwart speculators cashing in on cheap land prices by purchasing unwanted scrub-land and selling it for vast profits when the land was needed for public buildings. But now, the measures are being abused by developers who, in league with corrupt politicians routinely declare land surrounding holiday villas as being required for development.


Glenn and Jean Marshall, originally from Glasgow, live in a housing development called El Pinar in Alcossebre, on the east coast of Spain: “We bought this house at the end of August in 2003. We are retired and we decided to stay here all year” explains Glenn.


Soon after they arrived CIVISA, a Valencian construction company that owns some plots in the same area organised a meeting: “We became aware of what CIVISA calls a “re-urbanisation”. They were planning to build 800 apartments and we were supposed to pay for the cost of the redevelopment” said Glenn.


Glenn explained that CIVISA divided El Pinar into distinct development areas and although their plot was not in the undeveloped section, they were expected to contribute to the building project. He said: “Eight hundred apartments were going to be built. We were supposed to pay for that. They warned us that those who could not afford to pay would be expropriated.” For the moment, CIVISA´s project is on-hold, but Glenn Marshall believes their problems are not over: “I know that I’ll have to fight because CIVISA has invested a lot of money here.”


The Marshall’s case is only one of the thousands happening in Spain. The neighbours’ association to which they belong joined AUN, a group of small associations fighting against this problem. In 2003 AUN made a formal complaint to the European Parliament which resulted in three fact-finding missions and a series of recommendations to the Spanish government that they must change the law. This resulted in new measures being introduced that have not helped. In fact, the problem seems to be spreading with land-grab problems reported in other parts of Spain.


Labour MEP Michael Cashman, who has been deeply involved in trying to solve the problem, said: “The increase in petitions we are receiving from other parts of Spain - Madrid, Murcia, Andalucía, suggests that other regions are falling into the same traps encountered in Valencia."


Last year, the European Commission referred Spain to the European Court of Justice. That body is yet to act but it seems that if appropriate legal modifications are not made, a legal penalty will be enforced.


Find out more about the problem here: thisismoney.co.uk