› SÂLMON< FESTIVAL

It is difficult to define a festival of creation of very live arts, almost until the same moment in which it becomes. SÂLMON< is a festival of contemporary creation, that works from the confidence. El Graner has been at the forefront of the Festival during its first 6 editions and as a promoter in its 7th edition, which has consolidated it as the Festival of Live Art of Barcelona. As co-curator and promoter of the festival, El Graner has worked on a mediated edition with La Poderosa, Antic Teatre, Mercat de les Flors and La Caldera to make visible medium and long-term relationships with the creators of its closest context. Within the SÂLMON< programming, you will find scenic proposals from the inhabitants of the Graner, but not only from them, also from creators related to other structures of the city, with international creators and creators who work in expanded areas of education, artistic mediation and community. SÂLMON<  is often defined with the phrase ‘Movement and more’ since it also incorporates other actions and drifts, because we think that, first and foremost, a festival is an opportunity for encounters, in ways and in multiple spaces, that is why we bet on a programming that expands outside the “theater”. To this phrase of “Movement and more” from now on we have to add the phrase “More voices and more shared decisions”, because the SÂLMON< mutates and looks for a way to make that leads us to different ways of sharing, That’s why Salmon <Festival is closer to being a joint space with the collaboration of the artistic ecosystem that nourishes and welcomes the city of Barcelona.

In its 7th edition, SÂLMON Festival has established itself as the performing arts festival in Barcelona.

This heightened profile has been possible thanks to the growing endorsement and commitment of the Barcelona City Council, with added support from Mercat de les Flors, the Graner, and Fabra i Coats Fabrica de Creación.

The expanded programme activates 13 spaces around the city, representing a cartography of Barcelona’s cultural ecosystem, supporting original proposals and above all, making SÂLMON Festival< more open and more collective.

SÂLMON< Festival promotes encounters among communities, particularly artists, audiences and arts administrators. In its 2019 edition, the festival puts the accent on local creators without losing sight of the national and international scene. Its gaze is focused on experimentation, contemporary performing arts research, and social transformation through culture.

The 7th edition of SÂLMON Festival< has been:

• A festival focused on experimentation, research and process.
• A festival that aims to shrink the gap between artists, audiences and producers.
• A festival that doesn’t center on the commercialization of artistic works but on the transmission of content and ways of making.
• A festival that mutates in form and content at the artistic and organizational level every two editions.

The 6^th edition of SÂLMON< Festival ‘Movement and more’ took place between 8^th and 25^th February 2018. This edition closed the second phase in the history of the festival: the first one had been devoted to the European emergent scene and to the European project Modul-Dance; the second was tied to the local performing arts’ scene while keeping an eye on Latin America, and lead to the consolidation of the festival, which took place in different spaces of the city and reached an average per show attendance of 83,53 percent.

SÂLMON< faces the future. These six years form a compendium of unique and profoundly unrepeatable experiences which go beyond the festival model that is nowadays reproduced all around the world and that commercialises the artists’ labour. SÂLMON< was designed thinking both in points of arrival and trajectories, in both the works and the paths that lead to them. Departing from here, SÂLMON< opens a period of transformation in which new agents will come on stage and in which we will define new contexts which we still do not know about.

In the sixth edition we continued endorsing the local performing arts scene with 4 joint productions and we opt for the most community-based programme we have had, with an opening show with 100 people on stage and in collaboration with Barcelona’s town council ‘Art i part’ programme. Besides, SÂLMON<18 aims to impact the city on many different levels, which is why it includes actions in high schools, collaborates with Radio Nikosia, and presents a whole day of free acts at ‘Fabra i Coats – Fàbrica de Creació’.

On the other hand, we do not forget to give visibility to the artist in all of his/her creative scope, which is why we include artistic processes, practices and actions that go beyond simple stage proposals. As a result of the desire of being an open, sympathetic and collaborative festival, we counted on choreographer Javier Vaquero, Chile’s NAVE space, and the collective Compartir dóna gustet, as partners who shared curatorial tasks and opened and enhanced the Festival’s programme. Programmers and training actions also have their place in SÂLMON<18, thanks to the European Dancehouse Network’s International Atelier for professionals, as well as other proposals that generate discussion and complicity between creators and the network of programmers who are close to the Festival’s philosophy and sort of programme.

We consolidate our ties to the local scene, tightly connected to the everyday life of El Graner’s inhabitants, we maintain our complicity with Latin America and we broaden our dialogue with the city, its spaces, and the artistic and professional contexts that exist in it.

We could feign that SÂLMON< is not a festival like the rest and that this is the reason we are doing it. Yet, like many other festivals, SÂLMON< is thought of as a series of successive events concentrated in a short period of time. We could make the effort to tell you that we have tried other ways of doing it, that we are exploring different ways of working together, and that we think in ourselves individually and collectively. However, there are a lot of people in the world trying to do the same.

We could even make up a great discourse and use this season’s fashionable words to show you that we are cool and that we are radically committed to the current situation. Yet, there are many people who have much clearer ideas and are expressing them using much stronger and much more beautiful words.

To be honest, all this would be trying to seduce you to make you believe that, in fact, SÂLMON< is a unique and very special chance you cannot miss, a festival in which you will see wonderful things and in which the artists are great…

Yet, we say it is unfinished… why? Because we have missed you a lot during these months of preparation, and it was the possibility of your presence that allowed us to do all the work. We want to see you; we need your body to be with us. Each and every one of the artists is specifically waiting for you. This effort is pointless if you do not come. Do you want to come?

If the work of artists is important nowadays, it is because their proposals have the power of overflowing their limits, of coming out of themselves and establish a direct dialogue with everything that surrounds us. A work of art is, above all, a performing invitation to imagine possibilities of understanding the world we live in and to burst the banks of what we know. Beyond the building, theatre has become a meeting point and a place to exchange ideas and images about what we are and what we can come to be.

People assuming the role of spectators are in many senses accomplices to what the artists suggest. Our presence and experience are a fundamental part of the play. As the audience, we have an inexcusable responsibility: BEING THERE. Without our feelings and our thoughts, plays would not exist or would remain isolated and inert.

After years of collaboration and dialogue with artists and their projects, El Graner has elaborated a programme that includes many different ways of understanding the world and the art of dance.

All these perspectives form the landscape that you will find in this programme, with a very special attention to Latin America.

During two weeks, the plays will take place and, little by little, we hope that a rich and complex constellation will emerge out of the experiences shared between the artists and those who decide to accompany them.

The programme of this festival allows us to see the most recent works of some of El Graner’s Creation Factory residents. In its third edition, SÂLMON< Festival consolidates as showcase for local creators with a different viewpoint on the language of movement. Among others, we present the new works of Manuel Rodríguez, Aimar Pérez Galí or Albert Quesada.

Besides, this year closes a phase during which the international programme was tied to Modul-dance, a European project that has eased the mobility of 50 artists from 18 European dance houses. During this time El Graner has hosted more than a dozen international artists associated to Modul-Dance. This year, the following artists related to the said European project are going to be present: Jefta van Dinther, Tânia Carvalho and Mala Kline, as well as two Catalan companies chosen from the project: loscorderos.sc y La Veronal.

At the same time, the festival hosts during four days the closing conference of the project, which will bring together international artists and the directors of the main European dance houses. A meeting that explores different work methodologies and approaches to contemporary dance and creation.

SÂLMON< is in for talent, and supports creators in the search for their personal language: ten days of activities that offer a panoramic view of local contemporary creation related to the language of movement from very different departure points, aesthetics and languages; an invitation to exchange, action and reflection that takes movement as its reference point.

A look into the local and international creators within the framework of the artistic residencies offered by El Graner creation centre and the European project Modul-Dance, lead by Mercat de les Flors and integrated by another 19 European dance houses. Two weeks of an intense programme with different formats and various approaches to the body and to movement.

Umma Umma Dance, which will show us an advance of its new work, and Lali Ayguadé, who has collaborated with Marcos Morau and LaVeronal. We will mix support to the artists of the past edition with the work of the new residents, with interesting creators such as El Conde de Torrefiel, Diego Anido and Sebastián García Ferro.

The Loose Collective opens the festival with a concert-performance about the Old Testament, a very personal perspective from these Austrian artists. Other artists who have been in residency at El Graner during the preparation of their works will present their plays during SÂLMON<: Alessandro Sciarroni, Eugénie Rebetez, Patricia Apergi (Aerites Dance Company) and Jurij Konjo with Martin Kilvady, a member of Les Slovaks collective.

El Graner networking efforts will allow for the presentation of artists related to other creation spaces. This year we have invited Guy Nader, with a work in collaboration with Mickael Marso and another work with María Campos. Sonia Gómez will also present in this occasion a research in progress on which she is working with the English choreographer Lucy Suggate.

SÂLMON< offers a two-week programme where we present artists who have been selected by Modul-dance project, lead by Mercat de les Flors. El Graner coordinates Modul-Dance through the residencies it offers and through the White Letters: small work showcases at an international level that are offered to Catalan and Spanish artists with the goal of establishing links with other creation spaces and generating artistic synergy.

Other artists who have developed a residency at El Graner and have been selected by the festival’s curators also take part in SÂLMON<.

SÂLMON< is a space of visibility and discovery, a meeting point between audience, artists and people who are curious to comprehend new approaches to movement and dance within the European and the local context. SÂLMON< is structured as well as a driving engine in the city to link the artists who come to the festival and the local artists thanks to the organisation of meetings in which to talk and exchange information and experiences around artistic mobility.