Afanador bids farewell to 2025 in Santander

This year is coming to an end, and we will always remember it as one filled with the affection of national and international audiences, as well as numerous recognitions from critics.

The Ballet Nacional de España will bid farewell to 2025 at home, in its own country. The city of Santander has been chosen as the final flourish to these twelve months in which Afanador has never ceased to surprise audiences.

Afanador is synonymous with innovation in Spanish dance. Its great success, in the words of Rubén Olmo, director of the Ballet Nacional de España, lies in its originality. “Until now, audiences had never seen this kind of show in Spanish dance or at the Ballet Nacional de España.”

Stages in Korea, Italy, Belgium, France and, of course, Spain have vibrated with the choreographies and overwhelming force of Afanador.

“The success of Afanador lies in its inspiration. We always draw inspiration from writers, poets and so on, but never from a photographer, from a photo shoot. It is something innovative in the world of dance,” Olmo explained.

With Afanador, the aim is to show photographer Ruven Afanador’s surrealist vision of flamenco through the language of dance, and to draw audiences into discovering a universe created from fascination and desire. The acclaimed works of the Colombian artist, Ángel Gitano and Mil Besos, served as the starting point for creating this show, in which Spanish dance fuses with contemporary dance to “see the world of flamenco through a distorting lens, a lens born of dreams, desire and memory,” as explained by Marcos Morau, who is responsible for the concept and artistic direction of Afanador.

Ruven Afanador freezes movement with all the beauty and strength of Spanish art, while Morau allows those same bodies to move again. In this way, he reveals the tension between vitality and stillness, between gaze and desire. The paradox of photography becomes tangible: a medium that freezes movement, yet is capable of revealing an entire current of life. In Afanador, in Morau’s words, “the bodies move again, not to imitate the photograph, but to understand what lies within that stillness.”

Afanador’s journey since its premiere in 2023 at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville has been long and highly successful. In addition to filling Spanish venues such as the Teatro Real and Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, Teatro Mira in Pozuelo de Alarcón, Teatros del Canal in Madrid, Les Arts in Valencia and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, it has also done the same on international stages including Yeulmaru Theatre in Yeosu, Korea; GS Arts Center in Seoul, Korea; the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma; the Concertgebouw in Bruges; the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France; the Maison de la Culture in Grenoble, France; and Les Théâtres in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Afanador has earned the recognition of audiences and critics throughout 2025, as shown by all the awards it has received: five Max Awards, two Talía Awards and the Catalonia Critics’ Awards, among others. All of them are clear proof of the admiration of both audiences and critics for this ballet.

Program:

AFANADOR
Ballet Nacional de España

Palacio de Festivales de Santander

Saturday, December 13^th, 2025, 7:30 p.m.

Last tickets on sale

After the final performance of Afanador in Santander and a well-deserved Christmas break, the Ballet Nacional de España will prepare to tour theatres in France, Germany and China in 2026, among other locations.