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I composed “Hombres en Círculo Durante el Hechizo del Tiempo” (Men in a Circle During the Spell of Time) in 1998 for the choreography and video-dance homonyms of «La Vitrina» dance company (Chile). This scenic creation sought to pay tribute to the ancient cultures of the extreme south of America (Aonikenk, Yamana, Selk’nam, Alakaluf), claiming and valuing their heritage through a reinterpretation from contemporary dance. In other words, it was not a representational rescue of the possible original Fuegian dances, but rather a western and contemporary «artifact». Thus, it also tried to testify through its artistic materiality on the extermination policy to which Chile subjected these cultures.

Today, 23 years after its composition, I present this music for the first time on a disc, thus adding a new volume to the “Greatest Dance Hits Collection”, a series of publications that compiles the music that I have composed for contemporary dance during the latter 25 years.

The music was made for 1 and 2 string quartets, with eventual sound interventions and electronic processes, and also with a delicate treatment of its internal space. I worked for its creation with different shamanic songs used by Lola Kiepja (last Selk’nam shaman) and recorded by the Canadian anthropologist Anne Chapman in Tierra del Fuego. In this way, both, I made variations of these songs and re-constructions “in style”, imitating their rhythmic and melodic characteristics. All this in a minimalist context and with free development.

Although the choreographic work claimed to have four parts (“La ausencia, la fragmentación”, “La muerte muerde silenciosa la carne”, “La vida: la recolección – la caza”, and “El rito”), for this album I decided to propose more divisions, to be faithful to the musical structure (a structure that was related to choreography in an interdependent way). In any case, I indicate in the name of the track to which part of the choreographic work each of the 9 tracks on this album belongs.

José Miguel Candela
(Santiago, Chile. Abril / April 2021)