Little is done about the world of night from a cultural perspective. It is difficult to find stories and messages that delve into many of its fun and depths.. Especially when the possibilities seem endless, from the preparations to the final and almost eternal remains of any party..

The artist Alejandría (just with his first name) has been investigating these imaginaries for some time, while as a DJ and promoter—he is one of those in charge of the famous club El puñal dorao (without d)—he has been able to establish a more open and decidedly expressive relationship with club culture and nightlife.

This Saturday he presents the stage work After at La Casa Encendida, which is part of a trilogy that also includes pieces such as Cruising and K-hole. The work, which has 16 dancers and a careful staging, is his most ambitious project to date. Also his most openly sound work, where you can hear some of the music that the artist has composed expressly for this project.. The piece is part of Acento, the performing research program of the Madrid institution located in the Lavapiés neighborhood..

The night as origin

“I like to say that in art there should always be a party and in the club there should always be culture,” he explains by phone.. The night trilogy is a project that began around 2017, when the El puñal dorao club also began.. Alejandría defines this piece as the driving force that has given meaning to her subsequent career as a plastic artist.. “The whole project starts with it, which arises through my master's thesis proposal studying the master's degree in performing arts and visual culture at the Reina Sofía Museum,” details the DJ and producer as well..

At that time, when he taught and presented his first versions, which he defined as beta, “the nuances that I have been developing during these years of career as a stage director were already included”. Despite being an embryonic profile, where everything had to be developed, Alejandría himself is clear that he must structure the proposal in three chapters, “to also contextualize it in different universes”.

The club, and everything that arises and happens around it, serves the artist to reflect on all kinds of issues.. The first chapter is After, and is inspired by the imaginary of current club culture. However, the other two parts address much more fantasy languages.. Cruising, for example, “is inspired by the recreation of what a pre-Christian club culture could be, in much more pagan cultures, in a temporal context of the past”. And the last chapter, K-hole, takes place in a science fiction and fantasy future.

“Each episode has its own universe, both aesthetically and musically, costumes, visuals and everything, but they all have the common thread of talking about the night as an excuse to reflect on how we relate to our bodies and the bodies of others,” details a triptych that is crossed by queer theory, the diversity of the night and the less exuberant underground

The decline of the party

More than celebrating chance encounters and the beauty of the improvised, where mystery enhances the elegance of that which is unknown.. Alexandria delves into the less bright and iridescent sides of the night. “Of course I find the night very sexy, all the fantasy there is. But I feel that this has been very worked on by the audiovisual medium,” he says.. “I am more interested in all that dark and decadent part that can also be found. And how in the party an energy of positivity, of euphoria, of enjoyment is generated, but that in reality hides a few layers beneath a sad and worn-out humanity”.

And he continues in that line, becoming interested in what he calls the collapse and decay of the party.. “Right now I'm at that point, contrasting the aesthetic, the sexy and the euphoric, with everything that comes after and the layers that underlie all that,” he points out.. “Since I understand myself as an artist, I have been artistically nourished by the context of the night: the people who inhabit it, the movements, the music, the lighting.”. That whole universe has fascinated me and I have considered it to be very sexy to work from the language of contemporary art.”

The 'dorao' dagger

All this would not have been possible if seven years ago a series of parties had not appeared in Madrid that questioned the most conventional line of club culture.. “In Madrid there was a darkness in the night scene, to which those of us who had been living at night for a long time were not accustomed, it was like the scene dominated by trap, by toxic masculinities on the dance floor, and that to the “We were not interested in underground clubs that were emerging,” he recalls of those years, 2017 and 2018, where other spaces of dissidence appear..

“We felt that there was a lack of diverse proposals and other ways of understanding the club, ways that we had already experienced in other stages of Madrid or in other cities and that we knew were possible,” he continues describing. Perhaps for this reason, several groups feel the need and the desire to promote their own club projects, “which at first we saw as very unattainable, because the clubs in the end are part of the promoters of a much larger industry.” , but in the end from the underground, as small collectives, we started to do our own things”. And that same year 'Culpa x Culpa' and 'Chica Gang' appear.

For Alejandría this seems symbolic and beautiful: “Because in the end we are groups that have worked closely together, we feel like accomplices.”. And we have put a lot of dedication, a lot of work and love into proposing another possible scene.. I have the feeling, after celebrating almost seven years of Puñal Dorado, that we have marked a scene at night that has also spread to other parts of Spain.”.

Today, from the Basque Country, in spaces like Dabadaba or El balcony de Lola, he feels that there is a cultural scene where queer groups have a lot to say. And how is Madrid at the moment? “Madrid right now is in a very bad moment, things are very difficult, the venues are very abusive and in the end the groups suffer a lot.”. But obviously Madrid is our home, we have an audience that is our family and we owe it to 'El puñal' to return at some point.”.