Every year at the Centre neighborhood festivals in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Gemma Patricio was captivated watching the students of a dance school perform on stage. They called it funky, a faster rhythm than the classical dance she had been doing since she was four, and it lit up her eyes and awakened her desire to try it. With that excited attention, her mother could do nothing but enroll her in classes at that dance school that brought students to the stage.
Gemma was all nerves. Her mother already saw that her daughter's feet were asking to break free from the traditional classical dance steps. Although, as Gemma now admits, in those thirteen or fourteen years she was a very shy girl, her desire to dance overcame any shyness. Urban dance with modern music led her to the Laura Mestres school in l'Hospitalet. It was the name advertised on stage alongside those dancers who infected her with the desire to dance that modern and lively style, street dance.
At that school, she met Pili González, a teacher who immediately perceived all the talent Gemma had in the art of following that rhythm. She was an excellent student. So much so that when she needed a substitute at a specific moment, it was Gemma whom she proposed to take her place in front of the students. Gemma had found her place in dance. She was at that school for six years, until, one day, her teacher, Pili, was offered the co-direction of the Stage dance school, in the Barcelona neighborhood of Camp de l'Arpa, next to the Hospital de Sant Pau, and Gemma followed her to continue her training by her side. For Gemma, dance was a hobby until a teacher at the school had to leave classes and they asked her if she wanted to teach a class. She accepted immediately. "I really like to dance, butteaching dance is where I have found my passion.I have realized everything I learn by putting myself in front of the students," she says.At the same time, she began studying an audiovisual course. "I wanted to feel useful, to do something practical and I didn't see myself studying for four years at university. I thought about dedicating myself to filmmaking, I was also attracted to photography and all the artistic visual themes." And she carried it all out in parallel, until the audiovisual career began to stagnate and dance advanced in her life. On weekends she studied a postgraduate degree in Performing Arts of Education and Movement at the Institut del Teatre Centre de Vic.
She also worked. When she became independent, a friend told her they needed monitors to accompany young people with functional diversity from Plaça de Catalunya to Vallvidrera. "We accompanied them during the journey on Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat, and at midday we would pick them up." At first, it seemed a bit hard, because they were teenage boys and girls with special needs, but, without realizing it, those young people began to make a place for themselves in her world and turned special education into another of her interests.
Gemma combined classes and special education, and in her dancing hours she continued to feel like the happiest woman in the world, even though her state of being multi-employed did not leave her much free time. She loves to work. She explains that, as a child, she always thought she wanted to work somewhere where, if she missed a day of work, something would happen. And that ---she thought--- in the world of civil servants ---her parents were civil servants--- she didn't think would happen. "If you don't go to work, nothing happens," she thought. "Anyway, my parents already told me that I would rot in such a stable job," she says.
"My dream was to have my own dance school and create my own groups," she confesses. And last summer, life served her this dream on a silver platter. The owners of the Stage school where she already taught, announced that as of September 1st, their dance center would no longer open. They thus announced the closure of a dance school with 38 years of history in the neighborhood.
They were not considering any transfer, but Gemma contacted the real estate agency that managed the rental of the premises and started crunching numbers. "I went into entrepreneur mode, an area that impressed me a lot, but we live on illusion," she states. She started making posters with the name of the new email address, because the entire database of former students had been destroyed and before September 1st, she had to let everyone know that the school was not closing.
"I don't want to be just a dance teacher, I have to know how to combine play and dance, relaxation, socialization, to be a home and refuge, a safe space to dance with friends and leave renewed"
Thus began a new stage for this neighborhood school, and also for this young woman passionate about dance. She painted all the signage elements and a good part of the school's decoration and furniture in lilac, her favorite color. And she reorganized the dance groups. Mondays and Wednesdays, more modern dance, and more classical dance, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
She was very clear that she did not want to prioritize, as other schools do, the training of young dance promises, boys and girls, classical and modern dancers with the ambition to compete. "I am an eternal defender of the neighborhood school, of that space where students come to have a good time. I have been able to experience that what dance unites, nothing separates, because you are sharing a passion, and that is very beautiful. And I believe that these spaces must exist where bonds are created through dancing. And I don't want to be just a dance teacher, I have to know how to combine play and dance, relaxation, socialization, for them to tell each other what happened to them every day, for it to be a home and refuge, a safe space to dance with friends and leave renewed. And I want to allow everyone to find what they need in the school. That's why I like this project, because it allows me to create these spaces." And she knows very well that dance is much more than movement. "I am an only child and, when my father died when I was twenty-two, dance saved me."
The school now has about a hundred students, from three years old to seventy. On Tuesday afternoons, it has set aside a classroom to launch a dance session especially aimed at women aged 55 and over. She has christened it the Premium Dance group. They dance Latin rhythms, she organizes a choreography, "to move well, but not a difficult technique, because some may have pain. That's why we also work very slowly and I explain things very well," she details.
Ultimately, the goal she set for herself is that through this dance time, "women find themselves. Assimilating steps, they discover a new version of themselves. Many say I have no rhythm, how embarrassing... but then they see that each one has enough work to do her own thing without looking at others." Seeing each one's progress mixes with this well-being and self-confidence that grows every Tuesday afternoon in this neighborhood school. "I think it's very important that they find their moment during the week to release energy and make this individual rediscovery, that they free themselves from all the layers of fears they may have." Gemma also experiences all this with full awareness. "Dancing for me is delving into one's own purity. If you strive, you reach the deepest part," she comments.
"Music helps a lot. It has extraordinary power and strength. When I play music, they calm down and the sound connects them with their inner self"
Between movement and movement, and with music always as a companion, the school is already giving her gratifying moments. For example, when with tears in her eyes a student explained to her that she had to go study in Girona and had to leave the dance school. "Thank you for giving so much value to everything I do," she says.
Own company
From the bond she has personally created with dance partners, Gemma has managed to create her own dance company. They are the Males Herbs. Creating only choreographies was not enough for them. And now they go to dance wherever they are invited. At Christmas, for example, the Males Herbes will go on stage at the Port of Barcelona, on December 21 at 11:30 a.m.
And this Saturday, November 8, the dels Lluïsos de Gràcia theater will be the setting for a staging of much more than dance. Les Males Herbes interpret, through different choreographies, the history of female sexuality, in a show titled Clímax. "I felt the need to stage it and transport it to movement, making my body speak. And the idea came to me of a historical journey, from the Franco dictatorship, the transition, the 80s revolution, the appearance of the contraceptive pill and the present day, 100 years in the evolution of the conception of the female reproductive system."
On November 29, the show can be seen in Sant Esteve de Palautordera, "because the City Council of this town wanted to buy it, and link it to November 25, which is the day against gender violence," highlights Gemma Patricio, main scriptwriter of this original staging that demonstrates that dance can become a great tool of expression. "First I looked for the idea and then I put the movement," she says.
In addition to directing the dance school, Gemma continues to perform other jobs that fulfill her. She obtained her monitor title to support students with special needs in the classroom. She has also attended courses on autism and behavioral disorders. Every week in Tiana "I work as a monitor for several children and this fascinates me. It's very nice to feel useful like this, I like being a caregiver. And the culmination has been being able to combine this world of functional diversity and dance." Through the association of parents of young people with functional diversity from Mongat and Tiana, ASPAMOTI, Gemma has launched a weekly dance class so that these people can put movement at the service of their well-being and improvement.
With everything she learned during her final project at the Institut de Teatre Centre de Vic, which she wanted to dedicate to dance applied to a child with autism, and more things she creates for these special needs, she has made it possible to open a space for this group of people. She recognizes that "music helps a lot. It has extraordinary power and strength. When I play music, they calm down and the sound connects them with their inner self. This as a teacher is fantastic, because you help break prejudices."
A photo of Billy Elliot, the boy who lived and dreamed of dancing, along with other images of people, also dancing, and of Gemma in her performances with the Males Herbes, welcome visitors to this dance school that this young woman has brought back to life with all the energy that dance brings her.
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