Dancing as a family to the 'hit' of your career

BarcelonaAround the time of the premiere of Bach, in 2004 at the Espai Lliure, the dancer and choreographer of Mal Pelo María Muñoz (Valencia, 1963) became pregnant with her son Sam. "I can practically say that I grew up with this piece," the boy explains. Two decades later, the Ramis-Muñoz family –formed by Pep Ramis and Maria Muñoz and their children Martí, Paula, and Sam– has united to transform that Bach into a joint creation that emphasizes the idea of transmission in dance. The new version of the show, titled Bach en família, premiered in Paris in February and now arrives at the Canal de Salt for two performances, which will take place this Thursday and are part of the Temporada Alta festival. It is no coincidence that this creation by Mal Pelo reaches Catalonia through the Girona festival. Throughout the 35-year history of Temporada Alta, the company has performed there 24 times. "They are the group that has stepped onto the festival's stages the most times," highlights the event's director, Narcís Puig.

Bach emerged during one of María Muñoz's most fulfilling moments. "I was in one of my peak periods in terms of technique and physicality, but over the years the piece has evolved as my body changed," explains the artist, who throughout her career has performed this show more than 150 times. Now she adds a new link to its history with a proposal that has, visually, the same base: the performance space is a blank sheet and the dancers move through it all dressed in black, as if they were the notes of a musical score. They are accompanied by images by Núria Font and Pep Ramis: some come from the original piece and others have been incorporated "to allow for moments of calm and silence," explains Muñoz.

Traversing the bodies of the family

"Dancing Bach is very complex, it requires very precise work. In the first version, I danced many preludes and a few fugues. The preludes are improvised introductions to give way to the tonality or the harmonies that are then developed by the fugues, which are much more difficult to dance," says Muñoz. For this new version, she has undone the order of the repertoire and together they have sought "a coherence and seriousness in the order of the tonalities," adds the choreographer. The creative process has been "a very curious, intimate and homemade experience," points out Pep Ramis, who stresses that Bach "has crossed the ages of Maria's body and now crosses the bodies of the family".

This is not the first time the family of dancers has worked together. They had already collaborated on We. Us and the times (2025), in which they called 12 performers of different origins and generations to the stage (including their three children) to delve into the idea of dance transmission. "Dance is a language that goes from community to community. It is true that there are schools today, but the transmission of this art, deeply, continues to be done from the community," defends Muñoz, and Ramis adds: "It is a gesture that goes in both directions, because we also have the desire to listen to the pulse of the young people and we see ourselves reflected in them".