Pista de Baile

Curadora

Lucia Sanromán

Data sheet

Video installation. Video: UltraWide Screen 5760 x 1080, Mixed media: Perforated video image on black background and body tracking animation with Kinect. Audio: 10. Sound sculptures: 9 engraved wooden platforms 240 x 240 x 25 c/u /each; 9 brassplated metal trumpets of different heights and speakers

Credits

Curatorial Concept: Lucia Sanrromán; Original music: Pepe Mogt; Arrangements: Luis Elorza; Acoustic instrumentation: Luis Elorza, Germán Morales, Iván Trujillo and Martha Rolón; Photography and editing direction: Marcela Moreno; Production, B camera and editing: Ollin Miranda; Executive producer: Gerardo Zapata; Kinect operator and animation: David Sánchez; VFX and color correction: Alfonso Viquez; Gaffer: Enrique Díaz; Production assistant: Julio Cesar Aguirre; Staff: Antonio Pomar, Luis Carmona, Hugo Meléndez and Karolt Guevara; Still Photo: Álvaro Brandom; Catering: Mario Díaz; Woodcut engraving and printing: Panik; Trumpet production: Fernando Garcia; Trumpet Assembly: Two Seas; Advice for choreographic diagrams: Miguel Ángel Gutiérrez; Assembly and programming: Marcis Ysair Pérez; Multimedia programming: Emilio Chapela. Cast: Guaracha: Lilia Sánchez and Raúl de la Rosa; Cumbia: Paula González Tiburcio and Ricardo Zamorano; Rumba: Yalin Valdez and Fernando Calderón; Danzón: Alicia López and Miguel Ángel Vásquez; Foxtrot: Samantha Broxio and Miguel Ángel Cisneros; Swing: Atenea Ramirez and Juan Carlos Ramirez; Mambo: Gilda Arce and Ricardo González Garrido; Chachachá: Georgina Pérez Garcia and Tomás Galeana; Salsa: Victorina Silvia Arias “Queen of rumba and son” and Martín Sosa Bourguet “Elegantomas Pachucote show”; Thanks: Juan Carlos Palma, Freddy Salazar, Margarita Martinez and the entire Kaluz Museum team.

DETALLES DEL PROYECTO

Tania Candiani explores graphic systems that synthesize natural and social phenomena using notations that frequently function as instructions. For her, these translations are one of the methodologies that link her video work, created with individuals and groups, with more abstracted paintings and sculptures. Pista de Baile (Dance Floor) (2024) is a new artwork commissioned by Museo Kaluz that addresses these interests. In this project, Candiani takes as a starting point the culture of the traditional dance halls in Colonia Guerrero, such as the Salón México and the Salón Los Ángeles, to create a video-installation that traces an experiential chronology of the musical genres that inhabit these spaces through the bodies of the dancers that populate them, from the “guaracha” whose origins lie in the XVII century, to “salsa”, originated during the 1970s. Conceived for the museum atrium, the piece integrates the soundtrack by Pepe Mogt, a renowned electronic musician and founding member of Nortec. Mogt creates a series of contemporary variations based on the iconic harmonies of the ballrooms. Distributed across ten channels, each one generates a sonic environment that invites observers to become participants, using a series of graphic works as surfaces to dance, following the diagrams of each dance represented in the video. The video transforms into an experience that synthesizes the movements of the dancers, previously captured through a Kinect camera that translates them into a series of linear strokes highlighting their drive towards becoming pure movement.

Lucia Sanromán

Pista de baile, 2024. Kaluz Museum. Photo courtesy Kaluz Museum.

Pista de baile, 2024. Kaluz Museum. Photo courtesy Kaluz Museum.

Inauguración de Pista de baile, 2024. Kaluz Museum. Photo courtesy Kaluz Museum.

Inauguración de Pista de baile, 2024. Kaluz Museum. Photo courtesy Kaluz Museum.

Inauguración de Pista de baile, 2024. Kaluz Museum. Photo courtesy Kaluz Museum.

Inauguración de Pista de baile, 2024. Kaluz Museum. Photo courtesy Kaluz Museum.

Pista de Baile, 2024. Video Still

Pista de Baile, 2024. Video Still

Xilografías

Ficha Técnica

Woodcut on halfripe xuan paper, chine collé on cotton canvas; oil based ink. 240 x 240 cm.

DETALLES DEL PROYECTO

Xilografías is a conceptual extension of Tania Candiani’s artwork Pista de Baile, transforming the wooden platforms from the latter into tools for graphic production. In Pista de Baile, Candiani explored the rhythms and bodily movements associated with traditional dance halls in Mexico City, such as Salón México and Salón Los Ángeles. This project synthesized historical and cultural narratives through a combination of video, sound, and interactive dance diagrams. The platforms used in this installation, engraved with dance step diagrams, served as both notational tools and interactive surfaces, allowing viewers to engage physically with the dance forms.

In Xilografías, these platforms take on a new life as printing matrices. The carved diagrams, originally designed to guide bodily movement, become the basis for a series of nine unique large-format woodcuts printed on Japanese xuan paper and mounted on canvas. This process not only captures the physical traces of the grooves but also metaphorically extends the act of dancing into the medium of printmaking. The platforms, marked by the repetitive steps of dancers, embody a tactile history of movement, which is then translated into graphic form. Each print becomes a record of a collective memory tied to the rhythms and gestures of the dance floor.

Conceptually, Xilografías bridges the ephemeral nature of performance with the permanence of visual art. The printed works carry the weight of their origins in *Pista de Baile*, preserving the imprints of cultural rituals while reframing them as objects of contemplation. This dialogue between movement, sound, and materiality reflects Candiani’s broader practice of translation, where she transforms intangible phenomena—such as music and dance—into tangible artifacts. By linking the two works, Candiani emphasizes the interconnectivity of disciplines, using the language of art to celebrate and archive the embodied histories of dance and its cultural significance.