ULTIMATUM arose from a reflection on how we live with the feeling that the world is hurtling toward inevitable conflicts, and yet we carry on as if we have no responsibility. It explores the boundaries we set, what we defend as our own, and what we are willing to lose or take away.

The piece is underpinned by a sense of limits; not physical limits, but rather ethical and emotional ones, and its spurs us to ask ourselves how far our responsibility extends when we know something is wrong, yet we still fail to act. Everything exists between control and loss, between action and paralysis, at a time characterized by social, political, and ecological collapse, which we are facing with a disturbing sense of normalcy. That contradiction is what drives the piece.

The stage, thus, becomes a landscape of poetic struggle, where the body endures, grows exhausted, and rises again. The body is seen as both a territory and a border: a place that strives to defend itself even when it no longer has the strength to do so. The conflict is not narrative, but structural, and it lies in the way we relate to others and to what we consider to be ours. The piece does not seek to offer answers, but rather to raise difficult questions, such as what we protect, why we protect it, and at what cost. We dance about the possession, inheritance, desire for control, and ambition that shape our decisions. Thus, it is presented as a forum for confrontation, an invitation to observe what happens when we do nothing and to feel the discomfort of being part of a system that, even when it appears to not make decisions, is already taking positions.

It is the body as our last territory, like the language we have left when nothing else remains.

Jon López + Martxel Rodríguez.