“The main focus of ‘The symphony of differences’ is a sound composition created with recordings of the individual conversations I had with the year 11 students of the Salvador Espriu School in Barcelona. What was just intended to be a starting point to get to know one another and to come up with topics to work on, became the central element of this creation.

The symphony of differences is an attempt to discuss my creative world with 18 adolescents, a journey into their existential and hormonal chaos, their desires and fears, everything that separates and joins them, an attempt to make their hidden individual qualities visible. And I say ‘an attempt’, because sometimes the best intentions are not a guarantee of anything and the social dynamics end up setting their implacable pace.

Coming up against the walls they build around themselves and resistances has been a hard, but valuable lesson. Walls triggered by a variety of mechanisms such as: shyness, poor academic attainment, lack of motivation, family settings, school harassment, the search for acceptance or the rejection of everything that is outside what is considered normal… mechanisms that are predictable in this context, but still impressive and complex to manage, both for them and for me.

The symphony of differences is a stage composition where the majority of the actors would prefer not to participate and I would like to express my gratitude for the titanic effort involved in facing an “audience” with a language that may seem strange and distant to them”.

[Acknowledgements: Pablo Ramírez (Mo), María de la Cámara, Clàudia Solwat and Pilar López]

David Climent, choreographer