Andrés Corchero & Liba Villavecchia

"What sweet words, by God alive! That the sun from that mouth of carnations melts the snow from my grey hair."

Lope de Vega

Despair has white hair and it is a sensation that is felt minute by minute. It is like a nine-headed hydra that bites your neck and won't let go. Liba Villavecchia and Andrés Corchero met when the present was still the 20th century and shared countless events and projects. They gave free rein to improvisation and to the codification of the fusion between dance and music, both within the Andrés Corchero Dance Company and within Liba Villavecchia's Trio Local. Together they founded the influential Improvised Music and Dance collective IBA, exceptionally active during the late 1990s in Barcelona, and through which they trained a whole generation of creative and experimental artists.

For their reunion after several years without collaborating, they have embraced the duo format and have decided to let themselves be carried away by the impulse provided by the baggage of several decades of experimentation. Driven by this tremendous energy, they have let their grey hairs guide them along the emotional paths that life has given them. Without guile or assumptions. Dry.

ANDRÉS CORCHERO
Dancer and choreographer. In 1985 he went to Japan to work with the renowned masters of butoh dance, Min Tanaka and Kazuo Ohno. From 1986 to 1995 he was a dancer with the Maijuku company, led by Min Tanaka.
If there is one thing that characterises Andrés Corchero's work, it is that it is full of collaborations with artists from different disciplines. His career includes the names of Feliu Formosa, a poet with whom he has collaborated since 1990; Agustí Fernández, Joan Saura and Liba Villavecchia, important figures in the world of improvisation and music; Rosa Muñoz, with whom he founded the company Raravis and with whom he has been working intensely on creation and training for twenty years; and Oguri, a Japanese dancer with whom he has been working closely since 2012.
For thirty years he has alternated his work as a creator with that of a teacher. He has taught classes and led workshops around the world and since 2005 he has been a professor at the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona.
He has received several awards, including the 2003 National Dance Prize of Catalonia.

LIBA VELLAVECHIA
A classically trained musician, he began his professional career as a jazz-rock musician in the 1970s. In the mid-80s he moved to the United States, with a Fullbright Scholarship, where he graduated cum laude from the New England Conservatory in Boston.
He has had collaborations with Ran Blake, George Russell, Jamyl Jones or Joe Maneri, and became a member of the Mandala Octet (John Medeski, John Leaman, Jim Black, John Fiuczinski, Josh Roseman, etc.). Performances with Christoph Irmer, Phil Durrant, Butch Morris, Paul Stouthamer, Peter Kowald, Ramón López, Günther Pitscheider, Agustí Fernández and the dancers Andrés Corchero, Rosa Muñoz and Constanza Brncic.
Notable recordings include Mandala Octet (The Notion of Obstacle, 1989), Gringos (1992), Agusti Fernandez Quartet (Lonely Woman, the music of Ornette Coleman, 2004), Trio Local (Trio Local, 2000, Trio Local+, 2001 and Vitralls, 2010), Libas Traum (Trio, 2011) and Saxophone Spirits (2012), Liba Villavecchia Trio (Zaidín 2022-Birchwood 2023).
He has taught improvisation at the ESMUC for 15 years.