José Pazó Espinosa
José Pazó Espinosa is a Ph. D. professor of Spanish Language and Linguistics. He teaches courses on Spanish Grammar, Morphology, Oral and Written Expression, and Spanish as a Second Language at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) and Graduate Seminars at the New York University. He is also the coordinator of the Translation and Interpretation Studies, and Academical Director of the “Diploma Internacional de Lengua Española” (DILE) at the UAM. His research deals mainly with Spanish Morphology, Spanish as Second Language, Translation and Oriental Studies.
He has been a professor in different Universities in the USA: Ohio State University (Lecturer), Illinois Wesleyan University (Visiting Associate Professor) and New York University, where still teaches graduate courses and seminars in Madrid campus. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the Université de Montréal, and taught during five years in the Kobe City University of Foreign Languages, in Kobe, Japan.
José Pazó Espinosa has published several books and articles, among them:
- Research:
Language and Linguistics: Teoría morfológica y Morfología del español (Madrid, UAM, 2011), Los límites de la morfología, (Madrid, UAM, 2012), ¿Qué necesitamos en el aula de ELE?: reflexiones en torno a la teoría y la práctica (Madrid: Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Redele, 2014), - Works on Japan:
Cuentos del Japón Viejo (Madrid, Editorial Langre, 2009). Leyendas y Narraciones Japonesas (Madrid, Langre, 2014) Cosas de Japón (Gijón, Satori, 2015) - Translations:
El viaje a la costa (From Japanese. Madrid, Nocturna, 2016) Los amigos (From Japanese. Madrid, Nocturna, 2013), Un occidental en Japón (From English. Madrid, Nocturna, 2013), Kiki de Montparnasse. Recuerdos recobrados (From French). Nocturna, 2009), Botchan (From Japanese. Madrid, Impedimenta, 2008), Morfología Léxica (From English. Madrid, Alianza Universidad, 1987), among them. - Creative works:
Poetry: El Libro de la rana (Madrid: Langre, 2011)
Fiction: 1. Banteki. El salvaje (Madrid, Libros de la Ballena, 2015).
2. El enigma de los espejos (Madrid: Langre, 2016)
He has lately written, codirected and coproduced a documentary film (93 min.): “Viaje a los adentros. Ramiro Calle”, Madrid 2016. (Vimeo on demand)
María Tausiet
Maria Tausiet received her PhD from the University of Zaragoza, and her research has focused on believes and religious ideas.
She has published more than nine books and fifty papers on magic, witchcraft, superstition, popular religion and the history of emotions in Spain during between the 15th and 19th centuries. The following need to be higlighted: Ponzoña en los ojos. Brujería y superstición en Aragón en el siglo XVI (2000 and 2004), Abracadabra Omnipotens. Magia urbana en Zaragoza en la Edad Moderna (2007 and 2014), Accidentes del alma. Las emociones en la Edad Moderna (2009), El dedo robado. Reliquias imaginarias en la España Moderna (2009), and Alegorías: Imagen y discurso en la España Moderna (2014).
She is currently working on a few projects on the idea of immoratlity, as well as the scientific and fabulous representations of the afterlife.
In 2012 she joined the IV Jornadas Universitarias de la India (Oviedo) and presented a paper entitled: Chandrayâna: El camino a la luna en la mitología hindú.
She is also a yoga instructor, formed by the Escuela Internacional de Yoga since 2014, and she has been working at the “Espacio Redonda” in Madrid.
For more information, please visit: http://seronoser.free.fr/maria/
Conference
CHAKRAS: The Symbolic Body in Yoga and Hindu Mysticism
Since ancient times, Hinduism has postulated the existence of an intermediary element between the physical body and the soul. The so-called subtle or energetic body, invisible and immensurable, but a faithful reflection of the individual’s mind and emotions, was described by the Vedantic and Tantric philosophies in terms of obscure symbolism. The concept of an energetic body, considered as a privileged vehicle of consciousness, led to the development of a sophisticated allegorical anatomy. According to this, the vital force (prana) flows in each body through a wide web of channels (nadis) and converges in specific centres or circles (chakras). Although the number of chakras could be infinite in theory, the Upanishads mention six and some yoga treatises extend them from six to fourteen. Lined up from the base of the spine to the crown of the head, the chakras were seen as a focus for meditation and were represented as different pictorial diagrams (mandalas). From the end of the 19th century onwards, some scholars have established a connection between these symbolic centres and the endocrine glands. Today, the widely accepted standard number of chakras is seven.
Mónica de la Fuente
Dancer, choreographer and specialist in Indian performing arts, Mónica de la Fuente has devoted herself for the last 20 years to the creation and dissemination of the classical and contemporary dances of India. She received her training in classical dance and theatre, Bharata Natyam and Kathakali, from the country’s most prestigious schools in the field of the performing arts: the Kalakshetra (Madras) and Kalamandalam and Margi (Kerala), with the support of the governments of India (ICCR) and Spain (AECID). In 2000 she founded her own dance theatre company in Spain and since then has performed at numerous festivals and theatres in India, Europe, and USA, where she taken her Indian classical dance shows as well as contemporary creations in experimental dance-theatre. In the field of contemporary dance, her choreographies include Laya Chitra (2008) which was created for the Métis Festival in Saint Denis, France, with musician Ravi Prasad, and La voz del cuerpo (2013), which premiered at Madrid’s Círculo de Bellas Artes and was then staged at international festivals like FACYL in Salamanca and Festival Format Raisins in France. She has moreover choreographed for operatic productions –Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers and Puccini’s Edgar– and indo-flamenco creations such as Roots, Living Traditions: Flamenco-India, an Indo-Spanish production for the Ahmedabad Heritage Festival (2009), Indalusia with renowned flamenco-jazz musician Jorge Pardo in Qatar (2011), as well her own Indo-Spanish productions Flamencarnatic (2014) and Rasa-Duende (2015) with flamenco singer José Salinas. Rasa –Duende based on poems by the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca was presented at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2015 as a special event at the Hawa Mahal in Jaipur.
Her contribution in the field of performing arts is also pioneering in adapting Spanish medieval mystic poetry St. John of the Cross Bhakti, del pez al pájaro into the classical Bharata Natyam expression, as well as creative theatre experiments such as The flower of desire on the Mahabharata´s story Kalyana Saughandika in Bharata Natyam and Kathakali, Lila, Rama´s play based on Ramayana for the International Theatre Festival of Kerala ITFOK and The Narrow path of Akka based on the life of a woman bhakti mystic Akkamahadevi as a dance-theatre piece with live musicians from Spain and India.
Monica has been the artistic coordinator and one of the lead choreographers in the live show Flamenco, India directed by legendary filmmaker Carlos Saura and premiered at the Calderón Theatre of Valladolid (Spain) in October 2015.
PUBLICATIONS
- “Teatro Sánscrito Kutiyattam: obra maestra del patrimonio artístico de la humanidad”, Papeles de la India vol. 30, no. 2. Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations, 2001, pp12-18.
- “Akka Mahadevi, mística del sur de la India (siglo XII),” Mística Medieval Hindú. Edición de Swami Satyananda Saraswati. Centro Internacional de Estudios Místicos de Ávila, Madrid, Editorial Trotta 2003.
- “El regalo de la danza”. Papeles de la India, volumen 33, Numero 1, 2004
- “El regalo de la danza”. Doce Notas, Revista de música y arte. 13 Al calor de Oriente, 2004
- “Danza Clásica Bharata Natyam”, “Colección Sangita y Natya: Música y Artes Escénicas de la India” Universidad de Valladolid, 2006 Libro y DVDs
- “Teatro Kathakali” “Colección Sangita y Natya: Música y Artes Escénicas de la India” Universidad de Valladolid, 2006 Libro y DVDs
- “La danza india moderna y contemporánea” Revista cultural Contrastes nº 53 India, 2009
- “La danza Bharata Natyam”. Papeles de la India, volumen 38, numero 1, 2009
- “El teatro kathakali”. La ratonera, Revista asturiana de teatro nº 39, Junio 2014
Guillermo Rodríguez Martín
Director of the Casa de la India in Valladolid, Spain, since its foundation in 2003 by the University of Valladolid, the City Council of Valladolid, and the Government of India. He is a Ph.D. holder from University of Valladolid and the University of Kerala (2006) where he researched contemporary Indian poetry in English in medieval and classical Indian literatures. After a seven-year research period at Loyola College (Madras) and the University of Kerala (Trivandrum) in the 1990s, Guillermo returned to the University of Valladolid where he held the post of Indian Studies Coordinator at the Centre for Asian Studies (Centro de Estudios de Asia) of the University of Valladolid from 2000 to 2003. He has lectured extensively on Indian medieval bhakti literature and contemporary Indian literature, Indian aesthetics, performing arts traditions and literary criticism. Guillermo is a multi-disciplinary scholar, translator, cultural manager, script-writer, and producer with publications in India, Spain, France and Poland. In 2012 he was awarded the Friendship Award by the Minister of External Affairs, Government of India, S.M. Krishna, for his contribution to Indo-Spanish cultural relations. He is the author of When Mirrors are Windows: A View of A.K. Ramanujan`s Poetics (Oxford University Press India, 2016), the first comprehensive study of one of India`s most important poets, translators and scholars of the twentieth century, A.K. Ramanujan.