As it continues to add editions – and it is already in its 16th year – the Seismógraf d’Olot, the festival “that detects movement”, looks more and more like a living organism that mutates, evolves and interacts with the public as it progresses in its mission to formulate a new culture of coexistence. It was 2009 when, coinciding with International Dance Day, on April 29, the capital of La Garrotxa became the scene of this celebration of living arts in communion with the landscape. And now, in a third post-pandemic stage, the pageant assumes that it detects the movement of the body and also that of the planet, a position that began after the director and ideologist of the pageant, Tena Busquets, declined to continue being the strategic festival of the Generalitat.
He is the Green Seismograph, “a conscious seismograph that talks about how to inhabit the planet in better ways, promoting shared prosperity and better living conditions”, says Busquets. The date is from April 18 to 21 with an appendix, the Sismodansa, on the 26, 27 and 30. Among the thirty pieces in this edition there are five world premieres and five Catalan premieres.
“We are not concerned if they have already premiered here or not, but that they are innovative proposals and challenge us, that raise important challenges and questions, although we are excited that Eva Durban’s company or the Portuguese Circolando, since we have had a relationship for years”, he adds. Eutopia’s Trickster-P. is also the Spanish premiere.
The festival recovers itineraries that guide the public: the newcomer, the relaxed, the family proposal and the comprehensive. And it has two “eruptions” or plot lines: the first is Geopoetics, about ideas linked to the Earth, in which you will see, among others, Sota terra by Quim Girón and Moon Ribas, about the subsoil and the beings that they live Spectators will wear headbands that will light up the show and bracelets that will vibrate when there is an earthquake somewhere in the globe. “When we say it’s a sustainable festival, it’s not just because it talks about sustainability, but because it tries to ensure that the management is also sustainable”, says Busquets.
Circolando will wax poetic about life in volcanic environments and how humanity insists on living near lava even knowing the dangers. Geophonic, by the English company Lorna Reese, is also proposed, which invites the public to listen through giant speakers to the movement of the tectonic plates and to ascend, accompanied by characters/minerals (pyrite, marble, limestone), the way from Montsacopa to the crater.
Artesanias y tecnologia is the name of the other eruption: “about what worries us about technology but at the same time attracts us – explains the director of the festival -: a new tool can be used for good and for bad, to move forward but also to destroy…” In this sense, Cove, by Última Vèrtebra, is a choreography by the hands of artisans who build a wicker basket on electronic music. The Agrupación Señor Serrano will reformulate Una illa, which premiered in El Grec: a dialogue about how we will inhabit this planet in the future if we have to do it with artificial intelligence. And the audiovisual creator Albert Coma (collaborator of Isaki Lacuesta) premieres a proposal that consists of a night walk through Parc Nou with digital flashlights.
The festival includes a generational range: from young pioneers of performing arts and technology like Kònik. As for the Sismodansa, it will revolve around the premiere of Fairy Tales, by the Czechs Pocketart, in which they explore other endings for fairy tales: for a day and a half, the dance will take to the streets with Raquel Gualtero, Quim Bigas, Núria Guiu , Àngel Duran, Laura Alcalà…
