Four years go by very quickly, but sometimes it’s almost an eternity. Especially if there is politics involved. Four years ago, the Prague Scenography Quadrennial, the largest in the world, dedicated for more than half a century to theatrical scenography and costumes, but already converted above all into a space for live experiences, performances, and immersive proposals, was alive. a controversy related to the current political situation in Spain. This time, Prague has been a party that has concluded with the Asturian Rodrigo Cuevas dancing the jota in the ABC theater in Prague.
Four years ago, Catalonia presented a proposal to the official competition of Countries and Regions in which the police charges of 1-O were shown, but also the confinement of emigrants in the cathedral or the demonstrations in front of the Parliament in 2011. A controversy broke out, The Catalan delegation was not invited to the reception at the Spanish Embassy in the Czech capital, there were tensions and, finally, the Catalan commitment won one of the main prizes of the contest for its political commitment.
This time, the only thing in common with four years ago is that Catalonia has once again won an award for its Crop proposal, the one for the project with the greatest social sensitivity. On the other hand, the Catalan delegation, headed by the director of the Institut del Teatre, Silvia Ferrando, has been invited and has attended the lively reception in the garden of the residence of the Spanish ambassador. And, above all, the two Catalan proposals, the one for the main section and the one for the Student competition, have been included in the official program of the visit with journalists organized by the National Institute of Performing Arts of the Ministry of Culture on the Day of Spain in the Quadrennial, not like four years ago.
Two proposals, both the winner Crop, and the student pavilion, entitled El cant de la Sibil·la, which have Marta Rafa and Pau Masaló as curators and start from the crisis situation of the planet. Crop is the most surprising because it consists of piles of clothes in which all kinds of plants and fungi have grown. It is located 30 years from now and imagines a world in which perhaps humans are no longer there and the wardrobe of the National Theater of Catalonia has been taken over by fungal life, so fashionable with the series The last of us. The authors of the piece are the set designers Albert Pascual and Carlota Ricart and the stage director Raquel Cors.
The Spanish representation, both that of the Countries and Regions competition and that of Students, has also revolved around a common theme: in a Quadrennial dedicated to the strange, they have chosen to talk about how the popular festivals, always unique and singular of each site, rare, they create their own temporary scenery, sometimes with ribbons and decorations, others with stilts, dances or with bodies, like the castellers. The Spanish proposal, with Maral Kekejian as curator, seeks to take advantage of that popular wisdom when it comes to building exceptional times and spaces.
Under the title of ¡Viva la montaña!, the Spanish pavilion, led by the National Institute of Performing Arts of the Ministry of Culture, and in which Acción Cultural Española, Aecid and Cervantes participate, is inspired by the Catalan castellers, the dance of the stilts of Anguiano in La Rioja, the chospona wheel of Covarrubias in Burgos, the Corpus de Finojos, in Huelva or, in its title, in the dance of Ibio, in which it is precisely shouted ¡Viva la montaña!. A proposal that is built every day from scratch by three performers who raise a scenery between mountains and castles with irons and trunks and cover them with ribbons and fabrics with current materials mixed with traditional weaving techniques.
The Spanish student pavilion, Terra, curated by Felisa de Blas, also takes part in the popular festivities to make a playful and interactive proposal with which the public plays, including revolving and distorting mirrors that are a nod to Valle-Inclán and the grotesque It has been created by students from the higher schools of dramatic art in Madrid, Córdoba, Seville, Valencia and Vigo.
All in a contest that this year has been held in the old slaughterhouse of the city because the fabulous Industrial Palace is undergoing renovations until 2025 and in which the Golden Triga, the grand prize, has been won by Cyprus for some small scenic boxes with screens behind empty building facades broadcasting tourists’ walks through Varosha in Famagusta, an abandoned ghost resort town on the island in no man’s land after the 1974 Turkish invasion.
The Spanish representation has also included in the Fragments section, in the National Gallery, a powerful proposal by the artist Marta Pazos, Matria, a gigantic three-meter vagina through which one enters a somewhat greenish-yellow room-womb that provokes changes in perception of color in the eyes, which at times begins to see purple. There has also been a small installation by Montse Amenós, a scenic box with a large base of red shoes, which has paid homage to Carles Santos and his Patetisme Il·lustrat. María Jerez has taken the installation of ella Yabba in a model version, with bright fabrics that form a live scenic landscape thanks to a motor and an air and smoke system that operates in a loop.
And if the exhibition La verbena de la Paloma, Cult, fiesta and zarzuela has been set up at the Instituto Cervantes in Prague, which shows the union between ritual, popular celebration and scenic culture through the famous fiesta presided over by Madrid’s August, its curator, Fernando Carmena, is also the creator of the concert-show Barbián, the zarzuela-cabaré that the popular Asturian singer Rodrigo Cuevas, who has successfully recovered the popular songs of several generations ago, starred in last night to close the Day of Spain in the Quadrennial.
The central ABC theater in Prague hosted a performance presided over by Cuevas dressed this time in a syncretic regional costume, somewhere between Lagarterana and Charra, a kind of dark and funny virgin with a long skirt with a crinoline and wearing impossible platforms that seemed like a revision of her traditional madreñas. A crinoline with which she would stay once her skirt fell, accompanying her already traditional stockings and garters. Cuevas won over the public by speaking in English – “I am the Spanish Laura Pausini, who made an entire album in Spanish without knowing a word” – and Czech, with the help of various little cards and sometimes with the public’s, plus subtitles on the songs.
Accompanied by electric guitar and electronic music, he reeled off a zarzuela repertoire and, in between, took the opportunity to dance the jota and mess with good Czech women -the audience seemed to recognize them and laugh- and Spanish women, like Esperanza Aguirre and her wrong for not paying a fine of nothing, he recalled. He also spoke about the price of rents in Madrid – “freedom has a price” – and winked at the public when he recalled that it was much more accurate to say that one is a bohemian -Prague is in the Bohemian region- than from Segovia, he played with sexuality with the legend of Aben-Jot, and ended in a tremendous way with Amor de hombre with the public standing.
