Mercedes de Córdoba in defense of women

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In order to claim women's rights, to raise our voices for and in favor of equality and to not back down in the consolidation and need to continue moving forward, not all of our artists face the imperative of prospering towards a society without gender gaps.

As we enter the first third of the 21st century, it is unacceptable to endure the most unpleasant aspects of a sexist society, with patriarchal convictions, or even worse, gender violence and sexual violence. It is therefore necessary to demand the reduction of gender inequalities and promote real equality, the only way to end up with a more egalitarian society and, consequently, with greater democratic quality.

It is the reivindicative reflection that, shortly after celebrating the International Women's Day, the show forces me Forgotten (To the Hatless), assembly that Mercedes of Cordoba staged on September 28th, within the framework of the Seville Biennial, and which landed on February 27th at the Jerez Festival with the accurate analysis from our partner Kiko Valle.

The dancer from Cordoba focuses on the No hat, the forgotten intellectual women of the Generation of '27, in which authors, artists and thinkers stood out with the common denominator that they fought for women's rights, for progress, and actively participated in the intellectual life of the 20s and 30s.

In order to pay tribute to Luis de Gongora On the third centenary of her death, writers and poets met at the Ateneo de Sevilla in 1927, but the contributions of women intellectuals, unlike those of their contemporaries, remained silenced for decades.

Most of them were part of the Lyceum Club Femenino, and they were really the driving forces behind the generation of 27. However, History relegated them, until the filmmaker and writer from Barcelona Tania Balló In 2009, she started a cultural project to vindicate the figure of these women, whom she baptized as the No hat.

This nickname is due to the gesture that intellectuals made in the 20s in the Puerta del Sol, Madrid, as we learned from the painter Maruja Mallo, who recounted how she herself, along with Margarita Manso, Salvador Dalí o Federico Garcia Lorca, among others, took off their hats as a symbol of “liberating ideas and concerns,” a gesture that was not well received by passers-by and, according to the painter, the public pelted them with stones and insults.

«Mercedes de Córdoba focuses on the Sinsombrero, the forgotten intellectual women of the Generation of '27, in which authors, artists or thinkers stood out with the common denominator that they fought for women's rights, for progress, and actively participated in the intellectual life of the 20s and 30s»

This gesture was the seed of one of the most prolific stages of the intellectual life of Spain, as confirmed by Mercedes de Córdoba, who defines her proposal as “a cult, a veneration, an obligation, a cry of admiration, a condolence to the executioners and an embrace of the victims, their legacy, their soul, their body, their mind, their spirit, what they were, are and will be with or without proof of it, because trying to forget was the way of wanting to remember forever.”

The dancer and choreographer from the capital of the Caliphate has assembled a group of demanding level, both the dance corps and the musical group. She conveys the story of these women who developed their artistic activity mainly from Madrid, assuming the role of culture in the construction of sexual identity, and shaping approaches as if it were an ideology, a movement for socio-political change.

To this end, the production opens the spectator to those new concepts of modernity that came from Europe. The choreographies, articulated in three movements, adapt to the avant-garde currents of intellectual heroines who were committed to their time, despite coming from a well-off social class, or being characterized by university studies, knowing languages ​​and traveling.

The challenge for gender equality underlies all three blocks. It is not a work in the form of an essay, but it shows a process of dance creation where the representation of women, driven by the effort to break down the walls that surround them and eliminate all the barriers that prevent their empowerment, is greater than ever.

There are elements in the staging that do not hinder the active participation of women. And that is where the merit of the proposal lies, in overcoming possible impediments, always in the interest of real and effective equality between men and women, of freedom, but also of the prevention and elimination of all types of discrimination.

Milonga, waltz number 2 of Dmitri Shostakovich, guajira, tangos, bulería, lullaby and seguiriya protect women in the dance of the Forgotten, wise women from Madrid who mostly play themselves, and who, at this time, thanks to the idea of ​​Mercedes de Córdoba, have taken up the baton from the filmmaker Tània Balló, who has published several documentaries about this group of intellectuals who have a small square in the Madrid neighborhood of Las Letras under the nickname of the No hat.

Mercedes de Córdoba should therefore be congratulated because, in view of the fact that March 8 is International Women's Day, it is comforting to commemorate such a significant date with flamenco dancers who put their participation in society and their integral development as artists and as women on an equal footing.