Director's notes.

1. “Pena Ajena”.

In Mexico we have the interesting expression "pena ajena", which translates into something
like "feeling embarrassed by other people's behavior”.
Not without malice, I've always thought that this ridiculous emotion is, in fact, one of the
deepest expressions of empathy. While usually considered a sign of immaturity (as in the case of
Ana with her mother) the “pena ajena” is actually an example of a deep and classical dilemma:
Where do I end and where does the “other” begin?
After all, the “pena ajena” bluntly asks the question: How do we deal with the impossibility
of controlling the behavior of others and, at the same time, follow the moral imperative to
recognize ourselves in them?
Historically, the solution has been sought in different kinds of colonization. Some of them
(the candid ones) have tried to find an image that can represent us all. An image that can also
"represent" the other (the other person, the other gender, the other culture, the other “other”).
Everything that does not fit in that image, in that “public self”, becomes therefore marginal
(“embarrassing”, one might say), something that we must ignore if we want to be part of a
functional society at all.
To this profoundly Western worldview, post-colonial cultures such as the Mexican are a
violent response, in which the "image" never coincides with the rebellious and explosive energy of
the society below it. In a society that is as layered, divided, contradictory and segregated as the
Mexican, the “pena ajena” is the last reminder (and a vane, classist, politically-incorrect one at
that) that, in spite of everything, we all perceive each other as parts of the same thing.

2. Ana and the others.

Heir to this idea, Ana in her embarrassment tries to preserve the image of the group. She is
History's “first” teenager and History's “first” colonizer: the childish need of a daughter to control
her mother's image as if it were her own is suddenly not so different from the relationship
between colonizers and colonized in the birth of the colonial world.
The dancing mother and the rest of the dancers of our story, on the other hand, appear to
us as a violent declaration of "otherness". They are the incomprehensible others in their purest and
most blatant rebellion: no one can understand their reasons to do what they do, but its clear that
what they do is coming from a deliberate decision (one that maybe not even them could
understand).
 For the other to continue to be "other" he must be allowed to remain in mystery. To respect
the existence of others means giving up knowing who “the other” is in a definitive way.

This is why this is not a “dance film” in any way. This is why the dance is barely inside the
picture, but remains outside of it (as the monster in a horror film, it remains much more powerful
and undefined if we have to imagine it). It is not a movie about dance (or about the “rave” of the
end of times), but about keeping the logic behind another person's reasons to act as obscure as
possible. Its about giving up our need to “understand” the others as a the basis to create a bond
with them.
Therefore, its not a movie about dancing, but about behavior. And is a fantasy movie in that
sense: I often feel that the only real fantasy or science fiction movie would have to be one about
our personalities, since there is nothing more elusive than why people act the way they act.
After all we are an “other” even for ourselves, most of the time.

3. Two sides of embarrassment.

Love should be based in difference, then, not in identification.

But how can a community based on such idea work out? After all, if the ambition to find a
“common image” seems at the bottom impossible to sustain, at the same time it seems impossible
for a world in which everything and everyone is "other" to work properly.

Without realizing it, the young Ana seems to have a contradictory answer. If "otherness" is
something that should never be completely known, then embarrassment allows freedom and
imprisonment at once.
The pissed foot of which Ana is –oh! so terribly– embarrassed and which she hides like a
secret treasure, is her last bastion of identity, something that defines her profoundly in contrast to
the others... but only to the extent that she is ashamed of it. Only to the extent that there is a social
order that makes her ashamed and pushes her to keep the foot unknown to anyone other than
herself.
“Embarrassment" therefore hides two different and contradictory things: on the one hand it
represses. On the other hand, and thanks to the foregoing, it protects a last garment of identity:
what we would like to hide away from others is at the same time a testimony of ourselves beyond
any confirmation from the group. The fact that there's a “public self” is what allows for a “private
self” to exist as well.
Embarrassment, then, paradoxically defends otherness and discriminates it at the same
time. Ana is the main detractor and the main advocate of the dance.
A dancing mother and a pissed foot, they are both spectacular and they should not be seen
on screen, as this is a movie about hiding the spectacle. But what seems a conservative premise is
at the same time a rebellious one: Because the intimate spectacle of ourselves should remain
untamable, uncolonized, incomprehensible and mysterious, even for ourselves.

At the heart of it all, the problem returns to the innocent question of our teenager: Where
do I end and the other begins?
– On the pissed foot hidden under my skirt!...– our embarrassed Ana would answer.
But then she'd think twice and add desperately
–Don't dare to look at it or it will go away!