VB: How did your career as an artist begin?

VD: I started circus very late, around 21 years old. Before that, I experimented with fine arts all my life. I have this background and have done different sports, too. At a certain point, I met circus, and spontaneously, I got driven into that dimension. However, “doing circus” has never been the only point. At the university in Salamanca, I studied plastic arts. For this reason, I consider myself firstly a plastician.

VB: How did you start creating hyper-realistic prosthetics and mixing it with puppetry, where did this passion come from?

VD: It all starts from a very personal surrealistic and dark imaginary world I have known for a long time. I have always been obsessed with portraying body parts in different positions. If you look at my old drawings, they are all about body anatomy and are very similar to what I am developing now. Therefore, my circus style deals with the imaginary ideas I have always found. The interesting point in circus for me is the possibility of blowing the limits of the physicality of circus bodies. I see in the circus an additional tool, linking the body’s physicality with abnormal possibilities, experimenting with what cannot happen with a real body. Circus people are nomads, often with caravans, more into a way of life mixing the arts frequently, and I love the mixing.

VB: How do you develop your ideas into living sculptures, and which materials did you experiment with?

VD: My approach is intuitive rather than structured. Usually, I think a lot and connect ideas before doing something. I am at ease making weird connections, and everything happens more in my head than outside, from an image I have in mind. Then I think of how to manipulate and mix it with body possibilities and build it. An impulse to imagine something can come at any hour of the day, but when I want to experiment with an idea, I do not overthink. If I feel as if I should build something, I go for it. I am impulsive in making things happen to understand if they might work. During the last five years, I did workshops and experimented with different materials. I also spent a lot of time trying even stupid ideas and failing, but now I found my way of doing quite well. I usually start sculpting my ideas with clay. Other materials I experiment with are silicon, latex, thermoplastics and foam.

VB: La Vispera is a company founded in 2020, what is the growth trajectory of your artistic project from then to now?

VD: As a company, La Víspera is my first authorial project, and right now, the work in progress of the show Fragments is taking quite a lot of my time. Diego Hernando got involved in the very beginning, but in the first two creations, it was more me alone, and thinking about it now, managing them as a single artist was challenging. In this sense, you can see Fragments as the third project of La Víspera, the first one we share equally and artistically speaking as a team.

Diego and I met in Granada years ago while working at my first show. He was in charge of the light design and then became the technician travelling with me, and therefore we felt at ease working together. When I started the company during the pandemic, the first creation, The Identity of Vesania, absorbed me completely. The artistic idea was already in the direction of playing with different identities since I wanted to shape a show dedicated to the memory of my mum, who passed away a few years before and had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

During the making, I realised the artistic project was too ambitious to handle for my capacity as an emerging artist. There was live music, and the technical conditions were very narrow, not really negotiable. From this delicate and frustrating process, I moved on to exploring the outdoor dimension, shaping another project with a female friend and dancer, Murmullo, again another darkly themed show, dedicated to the concept of “charging your shadow”. We toured a little in the South of Spain, and I regained confidence in my style choices. I felt something was taking space like Fragments was already inside my mind. In the beginning, I wanted to work with the idea of something that was holding the body as parts. I was attracted to exploring how an external touch can affect you, how you deal with things you allow people to do to you in society, and what your responsibility is or what is the attractive factor in the process. Then I had a heartbreak, and my idea twisted, becoming more similar to an inner explosion of parts rather than feeling restrained. So, Fragments became a symbolic evolution of a personal explosion which I was experiencing. From the images of body parts, legs on one side and arms on the opposite, the torso elsewhere, I started writing about this fragmentation, asking myself where I might see the parts of my body all around and play with them, seeing what could happen.

VB: From a more circus point of view, creating a new apparatus opens new technical imaginary possibilities. Where did this idea come from and how did it evolve while shaping Fragments?

VD: As a basic, I trained for a long time in Chinese pole, duo acro and handstands. But I always try to discover how I might use a technique another way. I enjoy working with the power of erotic language treated in a surrealistic way. For me, pole dance is now more and more related to the weird erotic universe we are creating in Fragments. My solo scene using a combined apparatus between a dance pole with a fixed prosthetic torso on top and a pair of looped straps with a prosthetic arm on the end of each one, is still in progress. I found it very intimate and challenging. It is also difficult to shape because of the delicate technical balance between the trapped real arms – which you usually use to balance on a dance pole – and the free legs. We are also considering using a black pole to create the suspended effect of the body moving around in the dark.

VB: Fragments contains a specific taste of dark vibes but breaks them with a humoristic rhythm. How did you arrive at this fascinating alternation of frequencies?

VD: Compared to my previous creations, there are more nuances of irony and absurdity. Diego’s involvement as a technician and performer in the show collided with my universe and helped it become less dramatic. His energy on the team is driving me to more absurd humour. I was already in that direction but not yet pushed forward. Now, we are more and more and it is creating a good balance between the heavy darkness of certain moments and the contrast with the absurdity of the situation.

VB: The show presents a fascinating thin line between human and non-human elements. It makes me think of body parts that somehow become other people, as if each fragment might start to follow its personality. How do your Vinka characters develop their own will and start interacting with each other?

VD: We are still in the process of discovering their personalities by exploring the macro and micro relations between the parts, evolving the interactions between the three Vinka characters as a trio and their solo behaviours. We are declaring the resemblance since it is evident that the three characters are wearing masks. However, the audience is also complicit in the fakeness. You can spot that one Vinka is taller than the other, for example, and it is hilarious, as you are still confused because they are similar. The show plays with two dimensions: the absurdity of the similarity combined with the fictional reality of a film.

The awareness of the involvement of touch between the three Vinkas brings me to ask myself who is aware of being manipulated or responsible for making something happen, where the threshold of permission lies to make something happen with my consent or otherwise. As an author, I am touching a playful territory between myself and my brain. However, the show is not about me. I like to think that what I am suggesting is to pay attention to an internal monologue owned by everybody. All the characters are indeed Vinka. However, each of them can be Vinka in their own way.

VB: At a certain point in the show a camera and video projections appear on stage. Is filming the space and video making also evolving as pivotal elements?

VD: Yes, the video is becoming more and more central, expanding the surreal dimension we are staging. When you overthink, it is also a common saying “You are making a movie in your head”. The scenography is evolving with more tripods and various structures all around; as if the

show is oscillating between a movie set and a surgical room where you can get rid of, build and assemble body parts.

VB: At what point in the creation process did you decide to participate in circusnext and how has the international path offered by the label contributed to your growth?

VD: After the advice of a friend and after the invitation of Roberto Magro to show an extract of the show at his festival, Diego and I decided to apply for the first month of creation together as a team. At the same time as circusnext, I participated in FOCON, the Ésacto’lido format dedicated to shaping personal projects, with my very personal idea of combining object manipulation, pole dance and the world of prosthetics. The supportive process of circusnext gave us a lot of visibility and encouraged us to believe in our ideas. It helped us trust ourselves more and to defend our artistic choices. However, the best impulse we received during the trajectory was through the laboratory experiences. We invited the other participants into our world, and the improvisations and theatrical moments were a breakthrough. Before circusnext, Diego was more in the position of being a technician. He blossomed while reconnecting with his performer’s identity since he is also an actor and a clown. Now, he is one of the Vinka characters and the clever inventor of light and sound remote-control devices, used directly from the stage.

VB: Where are you now in your research, who are you collaborating with, and what are the future trajectories to bringing the show to debut?

VD: Speaking of external collaborators, for me, it’s hard to find confidence in someone. After Roberto Magro as an external eye, we will work with Florent Bergal since he knows me very well from my previous solo project. Lucrezia Maimone is in charge of helping us with the research of movement quality, and Alessandro Angius is shaping the original music. After collaborating with Christine MacKenzie and Anthony Matieu, the third Vinka character on stage is now played by Guille Leoni. In the first part of 2025, we expect a full immersion in shaping Fragments. In February we do a residency at Dynamo Workspace in Odense, Denmark. Other confirmed future residencies are at La Grainerie in Toulouse, France and we will do a Balkan tour with ROOM 100, Cirkorama and Cirkusfera. We would love to do our première in September 2025. The calendar is still in progress!