Afanador comes to Madrid’s Teatro Real

Between February 9^th and 11^th, there will be four performances of Afanador: February 9^th at 19:30; Saturday, February 10^th, in a double session at 17:00 and 21:00; and Sunday, February 11^th, at 18:00.

After its première last December at Seville’s Teatro Maestranza, Afanador breaks new ground in the Spanish National Ballet's repertoire.

Known primarily for his work in the fashion world and as a portraitist of prominent figures, Ruven Afanador has always been passionate about Andalusia and flamenco. He observes, immerses himself – and is fascinated to portray it through his highly personal perspective, as reflected in his books Mil Besos and Ángel Gitano, which explore the aesthetics and expression of female and male bodies respectively. Because in flamenco, he finds all human emotions – and through flamenco, he reflects his innermost passions.

It is the characters in these photographs that fascinated and moved Marcos Morau, responsible for the idea and artistic direction, to create this new work. “Ruven Afanador doesn't 'take photographs', he constructs them, he stages them”.

Afanador guides us through a gallery of images that weave together the threads of the past and present, where Spanish dance meets contemporary dance, where the black and white of photography prevail in a dramatic contrast that transforms the costumes and sets – designed by Silvia Delagneau and Max Glaenzel – into waterfalls, avalanches and storms. We are confronted by a surrealist work that subverts the familiar, transforming the reassuring elements of tradition into strange and unrecognisable ones.

The choreography was created by Marcos Morau himself, Lorena Nogal, Shay Partush, Jon López, and Miguel Ángel Corbacho, assistant director of the Ballet Nacional de España. Large lassos, gallows and long trains accompany the musical composition created by Juan Cristobal Saavedra, with the special collaboration of singer and composer Maria Arnal. This journey through worlds that dance on the borders of dreams, death and life is guided by playwright Roberto Fratini Serafide, with audiovisual design by Marc Salicrú and lighting design by Bernat Jansà.

Each scene in Afanador is based on an iconic image by the photographer. The setting transports us to the moment captured by the lens, and the evocation comes to life. Electronic music, minera, seguiriya, cantar de trilla and echoes of Holy Week move the dance, accompany it, awakening the memory of the black and white snapshots.

As Roberto Fratini explains in the program notes, Ruven Afandor "approaches the multiverse of Andalusian folklore through desire. Afanador forces it to reveal itself, and it does. As if dreaming it, he lets the slips of the tongue, the delirium, the subconscious of flamenco, its impulses of eros and death, its undocumentable truths, emerge. He unravels it in a thousand amplifications, like a grotesque and sumptuous world, an unthinkable body of shadow and light."

The success of its première at Seville’s Maestranza Theatre last December augurs a brilliant future for Afanador in the repertoire of the Ballet Nacional de España, under the direction of Rubén Olmo, the protagonist of one of the pages of Ángel Gitano, which he brings to life, also with his dance, in this original production. 

Marcos Morau invites us to enter Afanador “like in certain dreams, where we recognise the places, the people, the landscapes and, without fully understanding what is happening to them, we know they are speaking about us.”

Programme:

AFANADOR

Ballet Nacional de España

Teatro Real (Madrid)

Friday 9^th February, 2024 at 19:30.
 Saturday 10^th February, 2024 at 17:00 and 21:00.
 Sunday 11^th February, 2024 at 18:00.