Ceprodac premieres choreography that seeks to poetize loss and emptiness

▲ Performers from Ceprodac, affiliated with the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature, during a rehearsal. Photo by Francisco Segura / Ministry of Culture

Fabiola Palapa Quijas

La Jornada Newspaper, Tuesday, July 15, 2025, p. 3

Choreographer Francisco Córdova dedicates his latest creation, Se nos quedan ellos, to those who are no longer physically with us, but who remain in our memories. Through body language, the creator addresses unexpected losses, unspoken goodbyes, and forgotten loves.

Performed by the Contemporary Dance Production Center (Ceprodac), directed by Cecilia Lugo, the work premieres today at the Palacio de Bellas Artes as part of the Diverse Dances, Diverse Bodies season.

In an interview, Córdova commented that the piece emerged after suffering a tragedy: two years ago, Maximiliano, one of my best friends and a dancer in my company, Physical Momentum, was murdered. It was a tragedy that led me to create a piece, not to expose violence on stage, but to talk about death .

For the creation on memory and grief, Ceprodac, the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature, and the company Physical Momentum collaborated in a creative and research laboratory.

Given the difficult situation we're experiencing as a society, Francisco Córdova found it very important to define loss from a different perspective and bring it into his body. It's about speaking of absence, emptiness, and that presence that hurts us and changes our lives and then becomes forgotten, not because we want it to, but because it's taken from us , he indicated.

The piece seeks to confront the audience with painful and universal themes, such as loss and absence.

In this project, the interpreters investigated the emotions produced not only by the death of a friend or family member, but also by the environment in which we live as a society.

The choreographer, who has developed works on diverse themes, acknowledges that with Se nos quedan ellos he had to poeticize something tragic to make it memorable and at the same time make reference to resistance.

I've always tried to seek out beautiful things or find that poetic element in the environment; I haven't strayed from the line I've followed for almost 20 years, but this piece has a more carnal impulse that represents not only me, but the entire community.

According to the stage designer, this proposal focused heavily on the symbolism and archetypes of absence and death, where music played a key role in avoiding the cliché of melancholy, but rather in understanding how loss is experienced or named.

The music has several atmospheres that lead to nine scenes. We listened, observed, and analyzed the scene extensively, including what the moving bodies were saying, so that the sound creation would be a companion and not overpower the body , Córdova explained.

Referring to the collaboration with Ceprodac, the director of Physical Momentum noted that each dancer has a particular language and a very unique movement profile; I was interested, beyond the body, in not structuring a conventional way of doing dance, but rather first being a team, because an external choreographer came on board .

They Were Left Behind, the opening performance of the Diverse Dances, Diverse Bodies season, premieres today at 8 p.m. in the main hall of the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Juárez Avenue and Lázaro Cárdenas Central Axis).

The show will then be presented from August 8th to 10th in the Miguel Covarrubias Hall of the University Cultural Center.