Escuela Argentina de Mimo
Pantomime School
The E.A.M was founded in March of 1964 by its current director: Ángel Elizondo with the name of School of Mime, Pantomime and Corporal Expression of Angel Elizondo.
From the teachings that Elizondo takes from his trip to Europe in which he formed with teachers Etienne Decroux, Maximilien Decroux and Jacques Lecoq, the School is created giving a new approach to these learning, re-elaborating them, giving them a more specific nuance, More our being Latin American.
In 1965, the Argentine Mimo Company of Ángel Elizondo was created, which in the 70’s changed its name to Compañía Argentina de Mimo, with which over the course of 45 years more than 25 shows were shown in theaters and Alternative spaces inside and outside the country. The School proposes through its work in classes and in the Company a serious and deep search of the body in the Mimo, framed in what Decroux defined as a succession of present actions. Of vital importance in this quest is the structure of Liberation and play, the liberating Object and the other, elements that emerged as part of the experimentation and investigation of Elizondo in the E.A.M with respect to the game and the acting truth.
An important feature of the E.A.M is that it was and still is the driving force behind activities and proposals that go beyond the framework of the School. Thus the first student who had the School, Norberto Campos, formed the Wolf Group, whose shows at the Di Tella were revelation for the theater scene of the time. Between 1964 and 1971, a former student Alberto Sava organized his own School and then the First Congress and Latin American Festival of Mimo. In 2003, the Latin American Festival of Mime No. 13 was organized by the Argentine Mime Association, chaired by Sava at the time. In the decade of the ’80 Omar Viola, Eduardo Bertoglio along with other members of the Argentine Company of Mimo of those years created the Parakultural … and the examples follow.
The School evolved adapting itself to the different social and political contexts, surpassing stages of repression even, always retaining its restless and passionate spirit in the investigation of the corporal language of the action. But also always open and eager to renew. Currently the School works in the Beaten House of Beatriz Urtubey and we are passing our first experience of four-month courses. The Argentine Mimo Company continues to work. His latest show directed by Elizondo is Vestirse Desvestirse, which was presented successfully in 2008 and 2009 in Buenos Aires.