The MUN presents the world premiere of Incubatio, the new work of the Stocos Institute.

The Museo Universidad de Navarra and Stocos Institute invite the public to connect with the unconscious and immerse themselves in ancestral dreams and visions, through the innovative use of tools such as Artificial Intelligence, virtual reality and motion capture techniques, intertwined with music and dance.

The company led by Muriel Romero, new director of the Compañía Nacional de Danza, and the composer Pablo Palacio offers at the MUN the world premiere of Incubatiotomorrow, Thursday October 31, at 7.30 pm. Tickets are still available at the box office and on the web.

Incubatio takes its name from the practice aimed at healing and knowledge typical of Western Asia, and widespread in Greece and Rome, in Antiquity. Experienced by great names in history, such as Parmenides or Pythagoras, the ritual consisted of lying down in a sacred place (a temple, a cavern), in order to enter a state beyond daytime consciousness, until one ended up having a vision or dream to which healing capacities were attributed.

Muriel Romero explains the company's interest in delving into this technique and bringing it to the present day, when "the outside world constantly bombards us with external images and we are losing the ability to listen to our internal images, to that collective unconscious, to archetypal images that open a path to the knowledge of human beings and their evolution".

Incubatio allows the viewer to enter into these visions. It does so through innovative technology, created especially for this project. The work is developed in a scenic format of expanded reality, so that the audience can experience the music in surround sound and enjoy projections through virtual reality. Thus, an ancestral ritual meets avant-garde technology. The work, says Romero, seeks to create a state of calm and observation.

Pablo Palacio signs the musical composition of Incubatio. The music is "totally synthetic, that is, it does not come from any recorded sound or from the outside world, but has been generated directly through a programming language". It is based on recreating the flow of air through a tube, the simulation of stringed instruments and the generation of sound directly through mathematical functions. "These models and their sound results are closely related to the practice of incubatio, in which sound played a fundamental role," he says. In addition, he continues, they contribute to the creation of "a trance-like state." The spectator will be able to enjoy "something different from what can usually be found on stage," he concludes.

Incubatio is part of the VII edition of Museo en Danza, a cycle that encompasses the proposals of new creation in the field of contemporary dance that the MUN offers every autumn, including all disciplines and formats, as well as hybridizations with other arts.

In fact, Teresa Lasheras, artistic director of performing arts and music at MUN, points out that "the Stocos Institute is a dance company, but also, and inseparably, a technology company: they are dedicated to stage creation, but also to research and development of original digital technologies that are integrated into their creative processes".

His long series of stage works, generated since the appearance of the Institute in 2008, Lasheras continues, is "an artistic dissemination of his research practice. They integrate on stage abstractions from other disciplines such as Artificial Intelligence, biology, mathematics or experimental psychology, in a process that creates a transfer of concepts between art and science, making them accessible to both the general public and professionals". Thus, they have repeatedly participated in European Creative Europe or Horizon projects, with artistic and technological partners from other European countries. For this reason, says the artistic director, "they are a unique company in the Spanish choreographic panorama."

Incubatio is not the first work in which Instituto Stocos and the MUN have met, but they have a "long-standing relationship," says Lasheras. -We've been following their work since the Museum opened in 2015, and they've already presented other works of theirs here." This is the fourth time the company has performed at the MUN: they did so in 2016 with Polytopya, in 2018 with El matrimonio del cielo y el infierno (The marriage of heaven and hell), and in 2021 with The hidden resonances of the moving bodies II. "On this occasion, hosting this absolute premiere is a perfect opportunity for the public to enjoy, for the first time as it is a premiere, a scenic experience that fuses ancestral practices such as incubatio with AI-based technologies put at the service of scenic creation -says the artistic director of the MUN-. A hybrid of dance, music and technology that seeks to make us experience the ancient healing technique of incubatio".

Incubatio is sponsored by Zurich Seguros.