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The 54th edition of the San Javier International Theatre, Music and Dance Festival, to be held from August 2 to 22, 2024, will kick off in the gardens of the Parque Almansa park, with ‘La Carroza del Real’ (pictured, above), one of the most successful plays at the Teatro Real in Madrid, which will be performed for the first time in the Region of Murcia.

 

The full festival programme, which will be unveiled in May, includes outstanding performances by the Nacho Duato Company, with a show made up of three of his legendary choreographies. The actress Victoria Abril will be performing for the first time in the Parque Almansa auditorium with ‘Medusa’, one of the main attractions at Classical Theatre Festival of Mérida this year, directed by José María del Castillo. And from Canada will come, for the first time ever in Spain, a company as original as it is technical, ‘People Watching’, with its latest production ‘Play Dead’, in which different performing arts are intermingled in a show brimming with lyricism.

 

The Festival, which will offer 10 shows in the auditorium – its main venue – one in the neighbouring Teatro de Invierno winter theatre and another three in the street, will kick off on Friday August 2 with a free show, including a programme of opera and Spanish ‘zarzuela’ music.

 

The Nacho Duato Company will arrive at the San Javier Festival on Saturday August 10 with an unmissable programme by the former director of the National Dance Company for 20 years, consisting of three choreographies from his brilliant period at the Netherlands Dans Theater. Nacho Duato’s new company is made up of young international dancers trained in the Nacho Duato Trainee Program in Madrid, under the director’s own guidance, and one of its objectives is to present some of the choreographer’s most important works, currently dispersed in international companies. On this occasion, ‘Jardí Tancat’, Nacho Duato’s first choreography inspired by centuries-old texts in Catalan with music by María del Mar Bonet, which was premiered in 1983, will be on show. Duato was inspired by Debussy’s music, ‘Duende’, also premiered by the Nederlands Dans Theater, in 1991. The programme in San Javier is topped off with ‘Na Floresta’, a musical triptych that recreates the beauty of the Amazon jungles, which was first seen in The Hague in 1990.

 

Victoria Abril, Natalia Millán, Adrián Lastra and Ruth Lorenzo are part of the impressive cast of ‘Medusa’, a tragicomedy that reformulates the classic Greek myth, with script and direction by José María del Castillo on Thursday August 15.

 

 

In the final stretch of the Festival, on Saturday August 17, the Montreal-based Canadian company People Watching will be performing for the first time in Spain, at the San Javier Festival, with their latest show ‘Play Dead’ (pictured, above). The company is made up of six multidisciplinary artists who came together in the spring of 2020 to investigate how to interact with the audience during the isolation imposed by the pandemic. In this creative process, a unique language emerged that combines acrobatics, physical theatre and choreography in their striking stage proposals in which they also use video and photography, using contemporary performing arts at will to launch their message. In Play Dead, they present a chain of interconnected stories in a domestic universe in which they review the different faces of human behaviour with a surrealist touch that underlines the absurdity of routine while showing a desire to celebrate life and connect with the rest of the universe.

 

More information about the San Javier International Theatre, Music and Dance Festival will be released next month.

 

 

 

Images: Ayuntamiento de San Javier