Festival

Como quien no quiere la cosa (Pretending not to care).

And so, the ruins would give us the point of identity between personal living – personal history – and history. A person is someone who has survived the destruction of everything in their life and yet still hints that, from their own life, a sense superior to the facts makes them earn significance and conform to an image, the assertion of an imperishable freedom through the imposition of circumstances, in the prison of situations.

María Zambrano

These words by María Zambrano would fit perfectly to introduce experiences of pain, exile and emigration, such as the works presented by Mithkal Alzghair and Mohamed El Khatib, but also to summarize the voices, full but wounded, of Mursego and Maria Arnal. They would serve to define the miraculous dance of Israel Galván, protected this time by the thought of Pedro G. Romero and Filiep Tacq, and to speak of the wounded lives of southern Europe brought to us by Daria Deflorian and Antonio Tagliarini. More than ever, this program is a total landscape, a landscape that must be understood with the full body. These creations question and revert the laws and rules of the world in which we live, they open up situations, they make bodies search for one another and think of themselves in common. In these creations, we find the essence of dissidence. Against the manipulation of words, images, and that which is spectacular, these works return us to the essential gestures: laughter and tears, conversation and silence, mourning and celebration, love and friendship.

 

There is dissent in the way in which Mohamed El Khatib understands death, there is dissent in the bodies of Mithkal Alzghair that explain the history of the brutal war in Syria. There is dissent in the solo by Xavier Le Roy, because it teaches us to think from the body, with a different logic, with other rules. There is dissent in Israel Galván, who rebelled against tradition and now dances in a library; and there is dissent in Edurne Rubio, who, like so many Spanish creators, works from Brussels in the history of Spain through a unique, hallucinatory family experience. And there are the screams, the tears, the songs of an entire people, in Maria Arnal and in Mursego. There is also dissent, resistance and subversion in the works of Deflorian, Tagliarini and Miguel Pereira; other artists who have already collaborated with each other in the past, and who now bring forward their arguments about creative freedom, the ability to imagine and dream, and the problems artists experience in southern Europe.

 

Escenas do Cambio starts to have its own story after three years. Hence some artists who were already present in other editions of the festival, such as Voadora, Tiago Rodrigues or Israel Galván, are back again this year. Giving artists continuity is one of the premises of the festival. Besides, we remain interested in discovering consolidated international artists who have not had many opportunities to show their work in Galicia and the rest of Spain. We continue to work with Galician artists such as Estela Lloves and Félix Fernández, trans-disciplinary creators who in recent years have shown their work abroad more than in Galicia.  At the same time, we carry on with the educational workshops of IlMaquinario, Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz; and we continue to collaborate with several institutions such as the City Council of Santiago, the CDG, the CGAC, and also with the bookshop Chan da Pólvora. As stated, a festival with its history, its features, its breakthroughs, with the kind of risk one takes when one wishes to reach somewhere else.

 

Any hand program of the festivals of the world will say the same. From Havana to Brussels, from Kinshasa to Kyoto, they all repeat practically the same words. They are emotional, smart, witty. Sometimes they lack a signature, sometimes they bear too many. If we read them carefully, in all of them we may see the underlying work, the limitations and the virtues, the agreements and the disagreements. There are spectacular programs and boring programs. Sometimes they are very optimistic, sometimes very self-absorbed, sometimes explanatory or cryptic in excess. Sometimes they seek an identity that only comes with the passage of time. There are programs, though few, which are literature. However, it is enough to be together for a while before it is too late. Looking with love and analysing mercilessly. Getting closer to the unexpected and believing the game a little more. The program has been written and there is no turning back. You are reading it right at this very moment. And behind the words of this program are gestures, movements, dissent. The bodies begin to awaken and the voices begin to take shape as if pretending not to care.

 

–
Pablo Fidalgo Lareo
Art Director. Escenas do Cambio