What will we see, football or dance? The answer isn’t so simple… Both, and perhaps even something more. Checho Tamayo transforms football into dance, and dance into football, inviting us to look beyond stereotypes and dualities.

For years, Checho was a professional footballer in his native Colombia, a career that took him to the United States, Mexico and Spain. What nobody watching him play in Medellín could have imagined was that, years later, he would channel his concerns and his distinctive way of playing into the language of the performing arts. Although perhaps it should not come as such a surprise. After all, both dance and football are not only forms of physical expression but also ways of communicating, creating community and building a shared sense of belonging. No one dances or plays football alone.

As activities, football and dance are often seen not only as opposites but as embodying contrasting ways of understanding the world. What is masculine and what is feminine? What is beautiful and what is vulgar? What is brave and what is delicate? But what if things are not really like that at all?

In Checho’s own words, the need to create this piece comes from deep within. Like so many children, football was the only form of self-expression his native context offered him. And, like many other migrants, he ultimately discovered in football a way of crossing borders, transcending geographical differences and exploring his own identity. Oxímoron is, in every sense, a work that crosses boundaries: between art and sport, female and male, familiar and unfamiliar, the highbrow and the popular.

Conceived for audiences of all ages, Oxímoron is a solo performance that moves naturally through duality, presenting dance as a space for dialogue, an artistic line of enquiry also explored in Zero by Manuel Rodríguez, in Clap and Slap by Agniete Lisičkinaite and Igor Shugaleev. In this case, the dialogue also extends to pupils from Football Club Poblenou, who will take part in the workshop El calentamiento (The Warm-up).