To speak. To listen. To recognise. To obey. Since ancient times, language has been a source of power and authority. Describing the world has always been inseparable from possessing it. And this way of defining and controlling reality has always been characteristically masculine. This is the realm of discourse: a construction of meaning that proclaims its own logic and its own truth. Some discourse is carved in marble, written in gold, or embroidered on velvet. But might there be other kinds of discourse?

After presenting Soy un baile two years ago, Rosa Romero from Cadiz returns to TNT as an artist in residence, seeking to explore other ways of weaving meaning and building community through a feminist perspective that is at once vulnerable and empowering. While hegemonic discourse privileges words and logic, Rosa turns instead to inarticulate sound: moaning, yelling, babbling… in short, to all those forms of expression that hegemonic discourse dismisses and relegates to the category of mere noise.

It is within these excluded, impure forms that Rosa searches for her own discourse: one grounded not in meaning but in sound and corporality. Because being deprived of words does not necessarily mean being mutilation of the voice. Although Lady Macbeth and Antigone are denied the grand tragic finales granted to their male counterparts, the final cry they utter from offstage is itself a form of discourse.

Trained in the flamenco tradition, Rosa is convinced that the enforced silence of classical dance is antinatural; that the body always dances accompanied by quejíos, breaths and interjections. Although El discurso (Discourse) is not a flamenco performance, it draws on its rhythms and energy to construct a vibrant stage presence that asks how and from where its story can be told. Elsewhere in this year’s TNT, Aurora Bauzà, Pere Jou and Jou Serra also reject the tyranny of words in La luz del lobo no pesa, while Inka Romero (Volvamos al baile) explores bodies as vessels of memory.