At Centro Danza Matadero in Madrid, María Pagés begins Bilbao Square among the audience, then descends toward the performance space. The opening gesture puts memory before spectacle and introduces the work's subject: one dancer's journey from childhood to adulthood.
The timing makes it harder for the performance to hide behind technique. Its premiere came only days after the death of doña Masu, Pagés's mother and a decisive figure in her career. Her absence drives a work built around family memory and María Jesús's difficult change into María Pagés.
Bilbao Square runs at Centro Danza Matadero from 25 September to 4 October 2026. The programme lists six performances, each lasting around 1 hour and 20 minutes, with tickets from €27.
The change began with a photograph taken at Madrid's glorieta de Bilbao. It shows the young bailaora beside her mother and grandmother, doña Maruja Mestres Pinto. The three had arrived in the capital so the adolescent could try her luck in dance.
That image launches a stage memoir about the move from Seville to Madrid, the city that also became Pagés's gateway to the wider world. Her mother's voice brings the memory to life.
Pagés gives the story more than choreography. Two monologues frame the performance, recounting her first hopes and fears, along with encounters with the teachers who shaped her: Matilde Coral, Ciro, Adelita Domingo, Pedro Azorín and José Granero. She also recalls her first professional tour with the Ballet de María Rosa.
The result reveals a performer with a strong gift for narration and a dancer whose career has long tested the limits of Spanish dance. Created and staged by María Pagés with El Arbi El Harti, the production brings choreography and dramaturgy together with text and music, information from the Ayuntamiento de Madrid. Its official descriptions set it apart from a conventional retrospective flamenco number.
Pagés's artistic record gives this recollection its weight. She became known for bold choreography and a tall, commanding flamenco style. In 1998, she even set flamenco steps to the song Cantando bajo la lluvia.
In Bilbao Square, her movement is slower and more measured, yet remains communicative. At 63, she draws on experience and control to absorb physical wear that technique can no longer conceal.
The body speaks with economy. Her arms seem to take on a life of their own, while her upright figure lends the dance an austere, graceful authority. Emotion emerges through pauses and weight, grounded in accumulated knowledge. Pagés faces the memory of her beginnings without forcing the moment.
The production pares the stage back to essentials. Six musicians accompany Pagés and at times seem to shelter her, not simply provide a musical backdrop. The violin played by Graci del Saz and the cello performed by Alicia Avilés are especially moving.
Nave 11 at Matadero retains its industrial scale and bare grandeur. An abanico, a bastón and a bata de cola share the stage with books and shoes, concrete objects of recollection.
RTVE's coverage traces the autobiographical line back to Pagés's arrival in Madrid as a teenager and the early professional path that followed. Bilbao Square revisits earlier repertoire through a stage memoir, with direct narration and flamenco sharing the same dramatic space.
Centro Danza Matadero presents the production as one of the season's central premieres. Audiences aged 16 to 30 can also attend free through the JOBO programme, opening access to a work about an artist's formation in the city.
At the premiere, Pagés sat beside Pedro Almodóvar in the audience before the performance began. The moment added to the event's atmosphere, while the real achievement lies elsewhere.
Bilbao Square makes a private family journey clear without reducing it to biography. María Pagés revisits the girl who arrived in Madrid, showing how memory becomes choreography and restraint can carry more force than display.
This is demanding, artistically mature work. Its simplicity gives the central story room to breathe.
