Bruges, Afanador’s next destination

After the great premiere of Medea at the Teatro Real, with every performance sold out, the Ballet Nacional de España will pack its bags once again to continue its European tour with Afanador. The Europalia Festival in the Belgian city of Bruges will be the BNE’s next stop.

The 30^th edition of Europalia will be devoted exclusively to Spain. With Francisco de Goya as its central figure, the festival highlights Spain’s cultural richness through art. For that reason, one of the greatest references of Spanish art could not be missing: dance.

The great success of Afanador, 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,” said the Seville-born artist.

“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.

Afanador presents photographer Ruven Afanador’s surrealist vision of flamenco through the language of dance, seducing audiences into discovering a universe built from fascination and desire. The successful works of the Colombian artist, Ángel Gitano and Mil Besos, served as the starting point for building 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.

Where the photographer freezes movement, Morau allows those same bodies to move again. Not to reconstruct the image, but to expose the tension between vitality and stillness, between gaze and desire. Thus, the paradox of photography becomes tangible: a medium that freezes movement and, in that stillness, reveals a different life.

In Afanador, Morau reverses that movement: he explores the moment when the photographic image emerges from its stillness and becomes dance. In his words: “Photography stops movement; I try to give it back. 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 rewarding. It has filled not only national 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, but also international venues such as Yeulmaru Theatre in Yeosu, Korea, GS Arts Center in Seoul, Korea, and the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma.

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 a clear example of the admiration of both audiences and critics for this ballet.

With only two months left until the end of 2025, Afanador will still be performed in three more French cities.

In its desire to continue promoting Spanish dance, the Ballet Nacional de España has just 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

Europalia, Bruges
Wednesday, November 5^th, 2025, 8:00 p.m.

Sold out