From September 18th to 24th, students and graduates of the EPDM from Mexico and other countries will meet
Mazatlán, Sinaloa, September 05, 2023.- The Professional School of Dance of Mazatlán turns 25, a long, fruitful and purposeful life for many human beings and to celebrate it and see what they are doing and where students and graduates are going, will carried be out for the III Mazatlan Dance Meeting from September 18th to 24th in this city.
Claudia Lavista, co-founder and co-director of the EPDM spoke about the intense program of activities that will transcend the borders of Mexico, since to date 54 artists, choreographers and dancers from Guanajuato, Quintana Roo, Sinaloa, Aguascalientes have confirmed their participation, Morelos, Jalisco, Baja California Norte, Puebla, Durango, Mexico City, Colombia and Spain.
The idea is to bring together the 21 generations of graduates and all the students who have done residence at the EPDM, around 280 dancers, choreographers and managers who currently work in various cities of the Mexican Republic and even in other countries, commented the Co-Director of the Compañía Delfos Danza Contemporánea.
The activities program of the III Mazatlan Dance Meeting includes 40 master classes (there are 8 classes each day, for 5 days); 7 performances with completely different programs every day at the Ángela Peralta Theater; 7 talks on very specific topics related to the dance career; 7 interaction tables with the people who are going to present their work, that is, to listen to why they did it? How did they do it? What were the challenges? Why are they at that moment thinking from those artistic perspectives?
“For that, Patricia Cardona, who is a researcher member of the National Center for Research, Documentation and Information on Dance “José Limón”, will come, Rosario Manzanos, critic and researcher of dance, both well-known, and Ofelia Chávez, Director of the Center for INBAL Dance Research”, he adds.
The functions at the Ángela Peralta Theater are free since the meeting receives support for its realization by the Instituto de Cultura, Turismo y Arte de Mazatlán and PROFEST (General Directorate of Promotion and Cultural Festivals) belonging to the Government’s Ministry of Culture from Mexico).
The 25 years of the EPDM
One of the questions that the participants in the III Mazatlán Dance Meeting will try to answer is: What has happened to the graduates?
This is a very important question, it is always very curious to know, what are the mechanisms that have worked for them so that their careers are successful and have productivity at an artistic, human and also pedagogical level, says maestro Víctor Ruíz, co-founder and co-director of the EPDM.
“This meeting serves to come together and see where we all are, we built the school when we were very young, and now we are at a mature age where we realize all this legacy, which has been important with these students who are now of a mature age,” he muses.
And he adds: “We started doing school when we were 28 and 32 years old, right now there are graduates who are already 42 or 45 years old, it is a very good opportunity to see what their life project has been like, and to know what has happened to them. motivated by the school, and what is its reference, that is above all, very important”.
humanist vision
When delving into the values that gave rise to the EPDM, dancer, choreographer and manager Claudia Lavista highlights that it was founded 25 years ago with a very humanist vision and an interdisciplinary pedagogy.
“Let’s say that there were two main factors of the school and with a way of understanding that education changes over time, with generations, with information. We wanted to make a school that would always be contemporary to its time, and that has allowed us to take this ship (if we think that the school is a ship) to many ports and now we are 25 years old, a quarter of a century, and the idea of the III Mazatlán Dance Meeting, is precisely to meet again”.
“The idea is that students who study at the school, and graduates, connect, since many of them do not know each other, and the school has always been thought of as a family, and we have realized over the course of 25 years that it has effectively become created a great family that has made it possible to build a work network, a support network, a thought network, a solidarity network between school graduates, and students who have been in residence ”, he concludes.
