´Paula Quintana’s sold out LA CARNE, opens the busiest week in the festival, which goes on until December. 

Cabildo de Tenerife’s councillor for culture, Enrique Arriaga, presented the 2020 FAM Special at a press conference today. The festival will run until December and includes sixteen theatre and street shows by national companies. Enrique Arriaga, in this first press conference as Culture councillor,  highlighted that "this is a new era that comes with a steady, long-lasting project for Tenerife culture, with the new technologies playing a fundamental role".

Along with Cabildo de Tenerife’s councillor for Roads, Mobility, Innovation and Culture,  the island director of culture, Alejandro Krawietz, and dancer and choreographer Paula Quintana revealed the details of the 10th FAM.  Quintana’s show LA CARNE, opens the busiest week of the festival tomorrow, the 7th.

Arriaga explained that "FAM 2020 was meant to take place in June but had to be restructured and made longer to cater for the needs of this sector". He also highlighted Quintana’s professional curriculum and said that she "is a Tenerife artist that is well-established nationally" and revealed that "no one will be unmoved" by her new piece. 

For his part, Alejandro Krawietz stressed his current position: "with this new responsibility I’m privileged to take on, we’re going to start a lasting cultural scheme, which is what Tenerife creative companies need". Regarding FAM, he pointed out that "this festival started in 2010, so it’s not new to crisis, and its goal since 2019 has been to show the contemporary quality of national dance in Tenerife". "There’s quite a lot of dance activities on the island, that’s why our intention is for the crisis to affect dance as little as possible and reinforce it through FAM", Krawietz stated.

"We’ve tried to include as many companies as possible in the programme, that’s why there may be newcomers in the next weeks, especially Canarian companies’ shows”, the island director explained. When programming special attention was given to work done in artistic residencies in agreement with the Cabildo de Tenerife’s grants given to creators for professional stage productions. 

So, although the current programme ends on 6 December, Canarian dancers will continue to be supported with new proposals that are being carried out in residencies and productions to be shown at FAM shortly. Finally, the island director was clear that "all the necessary measures have been put in place to make sure that taking part in the festival is safe".

Paula Quintana admitted that “I’m extremely pleased and proud these leading national and international companies can come to Tenerife as part of the FAM programme". As for her premiere, LA CARNE, she explained that "the piece is about the arrival of a new time, a new era when the flesh is more dignified, and so are the bodies that have raised again and again throughout civilizations". Fiction, music, and text are brought together in this piece  of dance, a discipline that is "fundamental in our time when we need art as a way of imagining, thinking, asking yourself questions." she revealed.

You can enjoy the force of live dance at Sala Sinfónica, Sala de Cámara and Auditorio de Tenerife’s grounds, and also at the Canarian Government’s venue Espacio La Granja. Information on the shows and tickets, at 8 euros, on www.famtenerife.com.

The Government of the Canary Islands’ Espacio La Granja collaborates with FAM  by housing some residencies and performances, plus the Spanish Theatre Network’s Danza a Escena scheme, and of the Circuito Acieloabierto of the street and unusual places dance network, both under the Spanish Ministry of Culture’s INAEM. The festival has the European Union EFFE label, (Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe) a quality mark that is granted to festivals with an artistic mission, commitment to local communities and strategic vision at European level. 

In 2019, FAM changed its approach to become a platform of national dance while facilitating Canarian companies a space for creation and exhibition. The Auditorio turns into a multipurpose space during the festival to welcome the different Spanish contemporary dance shows. 

Audience members are kindly asked to come to Auditorio early enough to enter the theatre gradually. On buying the tickets, users accept the measures implemented at this Cabildo cultural centre to tackle COVID-19, such as wearing a face mask or coming only with people you live with. The full measures and the AENOR-certified contingency plan are available on Auditorio’s website. Both the GastroMag and the car park are open to the public. 

The tickets for most shows are now available on www.auditoriodetenerife.com or on  902 317 327 Monday to Friday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm and Saturday from 10:00 to 2:00 pm, except holidays. You can also make an appointment to come to the box office on //www.auditoriodetenerife.com/contactar and on 922 568 625, where they can also answer all your queries Monday to Friday from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm, except holidays.

The programme 

After Carlota Mantecón’s DANCE, NO GOAL on 31 July and Ígnea by Colectivo Lamajara on 20 September, comes the premiere of LA CARNE by Paula Quintana, the second part of a trilogy that started with Las Alegrías, whose successful premiere at 2019 FAM led to its national and international distribution. In this piece, the body, movement, text, installation, and electronic music make up an epic and contemporary tale. Tickets are sold out for the first three performances. 


In the Sala de Cámara at 6:30 pm on Monday 21 October Danza Mobile is putting on El festín de los cuerpos, a choreography by Manuel Cañadas, Ana Erdozain and Arturo Parrilla, a celebration of the bodies, their movement and diversity. 


Anhelo, by Marcat Dance, nominated for three Premios MAX de las Artes Escénicas is on the stage at 8:30 pm on the 13th in the Sala Sinfónica. Mario Bermúdez’s choreography focuses on the feeling of human desire, taking the frailty of some Armenian lullabies as a starting point to recreate, through the body, their own language of movement beyond its limit. 


On 15 October Una gran emoción política will take Sala Sinfónica’s stage at 8:30 pm. Luz Arcas pens this total show, inspired by Memoria de la melancolía, María Teresa León’s autobiography that deals with the decisive years of our recent history, the time of the Civil War and exile: years marked by political fervour, the myth of the Revolution and the belief in utopias. 


On Saturday, 17 October open-air performances start every half hour from 5:30 pm. The shows included are: Expectations will not kill you, by OSA+MUJIKA; Idi-Begi, by Proyecto Larrua; Colectivo Glovo’s Mapa; Kintsugi, by Iron Skulls Co, and Young Blood, by Arnau Pérez. The day ends at the Sala Sinfónica where Instituto Stocos is performing Marriage of Heaven and Hell at 8:30 pm.On 21 October at Espacio La Granja Instrucciones para mejorar la vida, by Compañía Provisional Danza in coproduction with Compañía Nómada, will show the result of bringing together four veteran performers and choreographers while the setting is a homely living room.  


Marco Vargas & Chloé Brûlé bring to FAM Los cuerpos celestes, a series of landscapes where five performers meet and get together to try to learn about the undefinable. Duos, trios, quartets, and quintets will be displayed on 26 October at Auditorio’s Sala Sinfónica to reflect on the place of each individual and their relation to the other. 


The mountain, the truth and the Paradise is the new show by the company Mal Pelo, made up of María Muñoz and Pep Ramis. The latter is giving a solo performance on 1 November at Sala Sinfónica. This show emerges from the need to build a very personal fiction, to update previous works and look into today’s artistic interests. 


The last FAM show this year is on 6 December. It is Lava Compañía de Danza’s new show: Kick the bucket, a choreography by de Iván Pérez. In addition, Auditorio de Tenerife’s company will also dance Bending the walls, a Korzo Theater and de Nederlands Dans Theater production.