Cecilia Bengolea (1979, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is known for her performances that combine different genres of dance, but her practice also includes drawing, sculpture and video. She often collaborates with other artists, dancers and DJs, creating moments in which music, dance and performance collide. Using dance as a tool and a medium, she wields the body as a material to consider social and spiritual subjects, fusing modern dance moves, ritualistic gestures related to ancestral traditions from Afro- Caribbean cultures, and mechanical movements that refer to industrial contexts.

For Deary Steel (2022), Bengolea worked with nine ballet dancers from the Jeune Ballet du Conservatoire National Supérieur Musique et Danse de Lyon to perform a routine choreographed by Bengolea. Commissioned by Mudam and Esch2022, European Capital of Culture, it was partly filmed on the historic site of the Belval steel industry, namely the inactive blast furnaces that distinguish the Minett Region in the south of Luxembourg. Scenes showing the dancers are superimposed with depictions of rituals involving fire, here intended as a symbol of energy, empowerment and healing. Images of the still-active ArcelorMittal Belval steel plant are edited together with fragments of Manga cartoons, images of Chinese medicine, and 20th century archival videos of female workers. The piece explores the industrial and post-industrial eras and links them to the danse libre (free dance) practiced by naturist dancers in the early years of the 20^th century in Monte Verità (Switzerland). The latter was intended to reactivate a harmony lost between humans and nature. Equally fascinated with the mineral origins of our planet, Bengolea invokes Maria’s Transformation (2022) the character of the Machine Man (from Fritz Lang’s (1890–1976) film Metropolis (1927)), thus creating a work in which ‘the roughness and strength of metal, the hardship of [industrial] strikes, the mechanical choreography of industrial work and the beauty of dance come together.’