Afanador ends its 2025 international tour across France

With only one month left before the end of 2025, the Ballet Nacional de España is preparing to bring its international tours to a spectacular close. For more than two weeks, the show Afanador will be presented in three French cities: Cannes, Grenoble and Aix-en-Provence.

The Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes will be the first to host Afanador on November 22^nd and 23^rd. It will then move on to the southeastern French city of Grenoble on November 27^th, 28^th and 29^th, before ending its tour in Aix-en-Provence, where Afanador will be performed from December 4^th to 6^th.

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.”

“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 present 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; and the Concertgebouw in Bruges.

Afanador is being recognised by audiences and critics alike, as shown by the many awards it has received throughout 2025: 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.

In its desire to continue promoting Spanish dance, the Ballet Nacional de España has published the booklet Afanador for Young People, written by Elna Matamoros. Its pages invite readers to travel through and enjoy this ballet alongside Ruven Afanador, Marcos Morau and the artists of the Spanish National Ballet. “We have attracted many young people with this show, and I am very happy about that,” explained the BNE director.

Program:

AFANADOR
Ballet Nacional de España

Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, Cannes
Saturday, November 22^nd, 2025, 9:00 p.m.
Sunday, November 23^rd, 2025, 4:30 p.m.

Maison de la Culture, Grenoble
Friday, November 27^th, 2025, 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, November 28^th, 2025, 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, November 29^th, 2025, 4:00 p.m.

Grand Théâtre d’Aix-en-Provence
Thursday, December 4^th, 2025, 8:00 p.m.
Friday, December 5^th, 2025, 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, December 6^th, 2025, 8:00 p.m.