Music, Dance and Performance

In Brazil, in 1959, the International Congress of Art Critics was held, a symposium where artists, architects, art and architectural historians were brought together to debate the role of modernity in a new world surfacing in the post-war period. This new reading of the minutes sets out to activate the document, understood as a performative exercise of a past utopian episode that still has huge potency and resonates in a present time in which art history and critique have been displaced from their role and public influence.

In conjunction with the exhibition Pity and Terror in Picasso. The Path to Guernica and the eightieth anniversary of the first showing of Guernica, the Museo Reina Sofía presents Deep Song by Martha Graham (1894–1991), a dance solo created by the American choreographer as a response to the Spanish Civil War and performed, on this occasion, by Blakeley White-McGuire from the Martha Graham Dance Company.

In conjunction with Argentina’s special participation as Guest Country at ARCOMadrid 2017, the Museo Reina Sofía presents a piece by the Spanish-Argentinian composer Fabián Panisello entitled L’officina della resurrezione, which was created in 2013. The work seeks to establish a musical dialogue between biblical texts from the Book of Ezequiel and the writings of Erri de Luca, a prestigious Italian writer known for his commitment to social issues.

Within the framework of the parallel programming in relation to Argentina as Guest Country at ARCOMadrid 2017, the Museo Reina Sofía presents the intervention Eine Brise. Flüchtige Aktion für 111 Radfahrer (A Breeze. Transient Action for 111 Cyclists).

In conjunction with Argentina’s special participation as the Guest Country at ARCOMadrid 2017, the Museo Reina Sofía presents La Wagner, a work by the Argentinian dancer and choreographer Pablo Rotemberg. First performed in 2013, the piece was awarded the Main Prize in Choreographic Direction and Choreography at the World Theatre Awards.

This activity is linked to the Seminar Dance, Gender and Nation 1930-1960, held in the Museo Reina Sofía from 29 September to 1 October 2016, and presents the results of the Workshop of Choreographic Research and Reconstruction: The Bolero School developed at the Conservatorio Superior de Danza María de Ávila between October 2016 and February 2017, inside the framework of the R+D+I project Dance During the Civil War and Francoism (1930–1960): Cultural Politics, Identity, Gender and Choreographic Heritage.

Museo Reina Sofía presents 20 Dancers for the XX Century by the French choreographer and incumbent director of the Musée de la danse, Boris Charmatz. The piece will feature the participation of twenty dancers and performers and will be executed across different gallery spaces housing the Museo’s Collection.

Museo Reina Sofía will hold an encounter with Boris Charmatz, the French choreographer and incumbent director of Musée de la danse, in conjunction with the presentation of his piece 20 Dancers for the XX Century. Engaging in dialogue with João Fernandes, deputy director of Museo Reina Sofía, Charmatz will analyse the relationship between dance and contemporary art, along with the idea of the museum as a living institution which includes dance creation.

The dancer Toni Jodar, a representative of contemporary dance in Catalonia, puts forward this “dancing” lecture, in which he explains the history of dance, illustrated with his own body, across the 20^th century.

Museo Reina Sofía once again welcomes the annual Acción!MAD, International Action Art Encounters, to take place in Madrid across different venues throughout November.

Throughout her career as a performer and composer, Joan La Barbara, a hugely influential figure in the sphere of contemporary experimental music, has explored the human voice as a multi-faceted instrument, developing a true and signature vocabulary of experimental techniques. She uses these techniques to explore the potential range of timbres in a single pitch, circular breathing inspired by French horn playing, and multiphonics, in addition to recovering classics such as choral singing.

To mark International Museum Day, the Museo Reina Sofía welcomes a piece awarded first prize in the 2015 Madrid Choreography Competition: the dance piece entitled …Eran casi las dos (…It Was Nearly Two O’clock), created by Carmen Fumero and Miguel Ballabriga.

On 18 May the Museo Reina Sofía will host a special programme to celebrate International Museum Day, held worldwide since 1977. The idea is to share a day of celebrations with visitors, who will be able to gain a better understanding of the lesser-known spaces and sides of the institution and feel part of its programme, exhibitions and working process.

Niño de Elche ofrece en el Museo Reina Sofía un concierto cuyo título, Animal Numero, se basa en los números que portaban en sus cuerpos los presos marroquíes de Guantánamo. Cuenta para el evento con la colaboración de los músicos Raúl Cantizano y Darío del Moral, y Benito Jiménez a cargo de las luces. 

The Museo Reina Sofía once again takes part in the activities that mark International Dance Day, organising two sessions that aim to grant visibility to and assimilate inside its spaces an artistic practice that is becoming increasingly prominent in the Museo’s programming, lines of research and Collection.

This double performance serves as an introduction to the Hito Steyerl retrospective in the Museo. The studied disappearance of the image in modern surveillance technology is developed in a performance lecture by the artist, followed by an exploration into the new acoustic landscape of war – between military noise and sounds from consumer devices - by Kassem Mosse. Both performances are a posthumous homage to Harun Farocki.

The Museo marks the 55^th anniversary of the OuLiPo group with two activities: The presentation of the work 66 Exercises in Style by Colectivo Armadillo, and a discussion which revolves around the group, which includes participation from illustrious specialists and certain members of this historic literary experiment.

The Limitless Place is the first collaboration between Museo Reina Sofía and the Centro Dramático Nacional (National Drama Centre) and Teatro Pradillo, with the latter conducting a programme of performances, lectures and encounters. It comes about from the desire to question the forms and language of the stage with the will to think about the theatre we actually want; what is, in short, the world we strive to build our society upon.

Resonance is a series of sound interventions for a specific site, activating the acoustic and historical space in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Sabatini Building. The programme refrains from using the auditorium and electronic amplification, which means guest artists, musicians and composers will present a series of pieces that set in motion alternative contexts for sound and contemporary music.

To mark International Dance Day, the Museo calls on all those interested in taking part, for 10 minutes, in the reinterpretation of one of the most emblematic pieces in the history of contemporary dance: Rosas danst Rosas.

Once again, the Museo joins in with the activities held to mark International Dance Day, to take place on Wednesday 29 April, with a view to giving an artistic practice that is becoming increasingly more prominent in the Museo’s Collection and activities visibility and integrate it into its spaces.

After organising activities with Merce Cunningham and Simone Forti, the Museo presents the choreographer and dancer Steve Paxton (USA, 1939), a central figure in the development of contemporary dance and the creator of contact improvisation. On this occasion Bound, a solo devised by Paxton, will be performed, for the first time in Spain, by the dancer Jurij Konjar, who will also hold a workshop.

This programme of activities, which relates Sahrawi culture to a broader social and cultural framework, aims to become tuiza, a space that reimagines an alternative possible geography, where its centres are not metropolises of financial power, but narrations and accounts of a periphery that lives on in expressions of identity and cultural contamination.

Eclectic, poppy, sophisticated, the music of Arto Lindsay evokes reverse trajectories and unexpected influences. Educated in Brazil during the emergence of Tropicália in the 1970s, Lindsay added the references and characteristics of this broad cultural movement in Brazil, focused on diluting art in a multifarious and impalpable experience, to the No Wave scene in the USA.

Short Dance Films is a touring programme that includes a selection of forty-five short dance films produced in Europe in recent years. It is curated by Núria Font/NU2’s, commissioned by the European Dancehouse Network, a network with the participation of 20 dance houses from 16 countries.

Performing Gender is a European project that takes a critical look at the politics of gender and sexuality using dance and performance tools. Bodies and their multiple gender inscriptions are the subject of exploration and experimentation by a group of artists that, over the course of one year, have carried out their research by touring around different European institutions.

Once again, the Museo Reina Sofía joins the annual celebration of International Museum Day (IMD) with two open days and a selection of activities that aim to take a deeper look at the dialogue between the collections and the public, as well as reinforcing the idea of the museum as a space for non-disciplinary education and collective learning.

The Association of Dance Professionals in the Madrid Community and the Cultural Association for Dance, together with the Museum, have organized a total of 10 performances with different dance styles coexisting alongside plastic arts.

The Museo welcomes the choreographer and dancer Simone Forti. The encounter is made up of a conversation between Forti and Tania Arias, with a presentation in the Nouvel Auditorium Hall of the results of some of the work produced by students in the workshop run by Forti in La Casa Encendida.

Portuguese choreographer Cláudia Dias presents her latest composition, Vontade de Ter Vontade, a solo inspired by two works by the writers and thinkers Tony Judt and Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Through this piece Dias prolongs her work on identity and territory.

A workshop based on the technique created by the Portuguese artist João Fiadeiro. Composition in Real Time is a method of investigation on different forms of encounter, and its use perpetually aims to be in relation with the other. Its utopia is collective experience, being together, whether in a social or artistic context.

Through the gaze of three curators, this lecture series inquires into different topics such as feminism, video dance and the diversity of languages present during these years.

This year the Mexican dance company Tumakat presents, in connection with Latin American art, the work Maravillosa at the Museum. This chamber piece is an exercise in reflection on the nature of dance as spectacle. Using humour, Federica Folco, from Uruguay, and Josie Cáceres, from Ecuador, have created a piece about the questioning of limits.

Acoustic Space began in 2010 as a way for the Museum to make a place in its programming for the wide range of currents in today's heterogeneous musical scene.  This time the series features a selection of artists who have released, all of them, a new album in 2013: Kalabrese, Helado Negro, Carmen Villain, Amateur Best and Emika. 

On Sunday, April 28, Museo Reina Sofía will be the host of a series of Dance Attacks. An initiative of the Association of Dance Professionals and the Cultural Association for Dance of Madrid, working in collaboration with Museo Reina Sofía, this activity is held in celebration of International Dance Day, which is April 29.

The new direction taken by political and social happenings in recent years has once again made public space an excellent place for manifestations by the community. In contrast with the situation during the last third of the 20th century, dissident action does not avoid urban spectacularization, hiding in private or clandestine spheres. Instead it transforms and is shown in public space. This seminar explores the use of “theatrical” gestures, behaviours and performances in social space for the purpose of expressing disagreement and dissidence, and it also examines the way that today's art, specifically theatre, has taken in and dialogued with these non-artistic theatricalities.

Three mysterious occurrences in a city haunted by images, of people known to me, and others unknown. Images abandoned by their occupants; some have become ruins. An image is invaded, a new face moves in—sometimes an ally, sometimes an old foe. One vanishes, while another travels from one picture to another

Rabih Mroué.

Over the past thirty years, the social sciences have highlighted some aspects of contemporary social life that appear to be incompatible with traditional forms of representation and theatricality: nomadism, liquidity, ongoing identity construction, virtual communication, hyperexhibition, etc. The replacement of a theatre paradigm by a performative paradigm can be understood as a sign of transformation and liberation.

El Periférico de Objetos is a theatre group with a dramaturgical style capable of conjuring up the trauma, fear and collective unconscious of the Argentine dictatorship. With both the doll and its manipulator playing a prominent role, its dramatic works, in allusion to Antonin Artaud, Witold Gombrowicz or Heiner Müller, explore the return and liberation of a repressed body. This performance reflects the importance of El Periférico and engages in a dialogue with the exhibition Losing the human form.

Inspired by the tragic event that took place 75 years ago, Guernica is much more than a work of art. It has become a universal statement on the massacre. This condition, a synthesis of avant-garde pursuits and political engagement, has had a great influence not only on the visual arts but also on literature. The poetry reading, given in front of the painting by the writer Bernardo Atxaga (Guipúzcoa, 1951), includes poems by Luis Cernuda and Paul Éluard and traces the impact that the mural by Pablo Picasso has had on the written word.

Acoustic Space is a music series that brings together national and international proposals that reflect the various facets of contemporary musical creation.

Fluxus to the People is a program of concerts, activities, guided tours, lectures and also a documentary exhibition, all of which explore the imagination of the collective, the idea of art as a community tool and the process of de-specialization of the artist figure that is at the heart of the Fluxus movement. This program has consciously been given the format of a festival. First of all, it defends the playful, participatory and even burlesque nature of many of the avant-garde manifestations from 1960 onwards. Secondly, it explores new ways of approaching contemporary art from public activity.