A father and daughter dancing together: "We had faith, but they were afraid."

BarcelonaA father and daughter appear on stage to perform A beautiful day, a dance-theatre approach to the classic question of inheritance, the family imprint, the care of children until they grow up and of parents until they die. The unique feature here is that the performers are actually father and daughter: Piero and Alma Steiner intertwine reality and fiction in a show that contains nostalgia, sadness, and is a hymn to the joy of living.

The Catalan company Kernel Dance Theatre premieres the show at the Teatro Sagarra in Santa Coloma de Gramanet this weekend, on March 28th and 30th. On Sunday, the Danza Metropolitana festival will also close in the Ciutadella Park, starting at twelve o'clock, with the Brodas Bros and Nación Funk All Stars party.

"We started from our real relationship, because it's hard not to filter it through your experience, but we want it to resonate with everyone: after all, everyone is a child," explains Alma Steiner, a dancer raised behind the scenes who admits that "the theater is a bit like being at home." However, father and daughter had never worked together. The girl forced herself to call him "Piero" and not "Papa" while they were on stage "to work more calmly," because she is not only the performer, but also the co-creator ofA beautiful day, along with the company's other creators, Junyi Sun and Marina Miguel. "The magic of their father-daughter relationship isn't common; it has many layers, and it was already clear that it was very stageable," says Sun.

"It's dizzying, expressing our feelings, talking about our legacy. Will we leave anything behind?" Piero wonders. "The essence is real, because it contains our entire history, with its contradictions, fears, joys, and all the mirrors that bounce around everywhere. All families have a past, a burden, be it a burden or a jewel." The show explains with humor and emotion the evolution of the father-daughter relationship, from childhood games to adolescent rebellion, and ends beyond the inevitable end of death.

A generational change

Piero Steiner has a career spanning over thirty years in the world of street theater, clowning, and physical theater, almost as many years as Alma. She has been co-founding the company Kernel for over ten years, with which they have created ten shows that address social themes with a fusion of dance, theater, and martial arts.Long, And with Bruce Lee). "Perhaps it was written that I would be a performer, but sometimes I think I've chosen this path a lot. It's true that I haven't had to fight to explain that this is a job, and I've felt accompanied and supported," says the young woman.

The generational leap has been very evident for the father: "One of the challenges has been adapting to a different way of working, both in how artists create and how theaters operate," says Steiner. "Now we have multiple jobs; we artists have to do everything. Junyi is like an octopus; he does production, set design, sound, creation, direction, warm-up... This job is so precarious that either you do it all or you don't manage to put the show together. His generation has been lucky enough to arrive at some point and have their costumes ironed. "Our moment was politically sweet, because Franco had died. We took a risk when we performed on the street, in the Plaza del Pi, but we had faith and now they're afraid. "It's very different," the father admits. A beautiful day It took a couple of years of work, between the conception and the small co-productions that have allowed them to rehearse and tour venues like the SAT! The lack of rehearsal, exhibition, and touring spaces for hybrid language shows keeps them a perennially emerging company.

As soon as they enter the stage, the audience receives a rose, an object full of symbolism: it is the color of the daughter's hair, of blood, of ritual celebration, of partying. "When I ask myself 'when you're gone, what am I going to do?' there is real crying, the emotion is high, and it's hard for me to go out and say hello," says the daughter. "Anyone who has experienced what it's like to detach themselves from life comes away touched, but it's also a song to seize life," says the father. "The play celebrates the circle of life, death, and love," says Junyi Sun.