OF SATURDAY 11 ON SUNDAY 19/4
dv.ivc.gva.es/es/festival
The five daughters of Bernarda Alba are one of the great attractions of the 39 Dansa Valencia edition. It is the second year that the festival has created a co-production with Les Arts and this time it is signed by Cut Dance, a company that has already immersed itself in Bernarda Alba in a small research project that linked the Lorca plot with The virgin suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, filmed by Sofía Coppola in 1999. Both present five sisters confined under a rigid maternal authority obsessed with purity.. Inma García and Meritxell Barberá, the founders of the Valencian company, they invoke these five sisters in Bernarda's daughters [18] to touch on topics such as oppression, the fight for freedom and identity. And they do it with text by director Paula Ortiz (The bride) —confessed fan of the piece Judith, released by the company in 2023—, original music by David Barberà and the voice of soprano Elia Casanova. This is one of the premieres of the programming, who can boast of going on the Valencian stages to the cream of the cream of local dance. One of our most international companies, strawberry, will premiere the other festival co-production, this time next to the Escalante Theater. Dominate [18-19] is a duo that explores the physical limits of movement to talk about the abuse of power and the dynamics of control, and invite the public to reflect on relations of domination.
For the international premiere we will have to be patient because, in Gush is great [19], slowness becomes an act of resistance. The five performers of the French group Production Xx advance in a slow and hypnotic procession, mixing raw poetry and contemporary tensions. They complete the lineup of premieres Imperfect impossible [18], of Richard Mascherin; y Ultimatum [15], of Led Silhouette, awarded with the El Ojo Crítico Award from Radio Nacional de España in 2024.
With powerful flamenco women we continue the review. The dancer Rocio Molina —National Dance Award 2010—presents a show based on recognizing fatigue as a state of pleasure. Heating [17] It is a slow combustion that pays homage to sweat and breathing, of the most iconoclastic of the flamenco women, capable of mixing tradition with the avant-garde like no other. This time, dances hand in hand with Pablo Messiez, with the Grecas and Rafael playing in the background. In Magnificat [16], Maria Moreno uses the biblical passage of the Visitation to investigate bodies crossed by joy. and in No [15], two young creators born at the end of the nineties, Irene Tena and Albert Hernández (The coming one), they expand the margins of what Spanish and flamenco dance is, away from the National Ballet of Spain, of which they have been main dancers in recent years.
Another National Dance Award coming in pack es Badly. In We. Us and the times [19], The Catalan company is inspired by the ambivalence of the individual (twelve bodies from different generations) and the community to, from a poem by John Berger, get into the journey, migration and loss of landmarks. They do this by focusing interest on a basic principle of movement: to walk, that symbolizes the construction of a future, a song of hope. Ester Guntin, for his part, in I wanted black [18], reformulates the tarantela (the popular dance of southern Italy) to explore, between strong light contrasts, the idea of death and mourning. Paula Quintana, in Anatomy Atlas [19], makes his canary body dance, marked by Afro-Latin influences, Andalusian heritage and European present.
Dansa València returns to the DANA zone for the second year with a Choreographic Walk through the Albufera [18]. These are representations site specific in the Port of Catarroja and the Algrà creation space in which local artists participate Laura Morales, Cristina Reolid y Rosa Sanz, which will also be in the Carmen Theater a few days before. The festival thus expands through l'Horta Sud, and for museums, gardens and heritage areas of the capital. In Old City, For example, you can find the company Fil d’Arena performing his piece public [12], a dance in dialogue with the city that ends up demanding justice for Palestine: Free, free…! S.M.
