The dance

Oiil on canvas 1.55x1.50 m.

In this work, Xavier Sala Aponte summons the distant echo of Matisse's *The Dance* and lets it fall from the heavens. The figures, once united in a celebratory circle, now appear suspended in a deep blue, floating and descending like bodies astonished by a wind that has scattered the original harmony. There are no more clasped hands or shared gestures: each figure traces its own fall, its own silence.

But it is on the ground where the revelation occurs. On the bluish-gray surface, the shadows—humble, faithful, almost secret—restore the lost connection. Where the bodies disperse, the shadows seek and find each other; where the circle breaks, the twilight closes it once more. The light, by projecting their contours, reveals a truth deeper than appearances: the union persists in what we do not always see.

Sala Aponte thus transforms the scene into a territory of double meaning: above, the dispersion; below, the memory of the connection. Between these two planes unfolds a silent reflection on the human condition. Because the work itself reminds us of nothing, we are nothing. The era we live in drives us toward individualism, but the evolution of our species—the entire long chain of survivals, discoveries, and continuities—would not have been possible without mutual support, without the invisible fabric of community.

This painting is, ultimately, a visual meditation on what unites us even when we believe we have lost it: a reminder that, even in our fall, something within us still remembers the dance.