Afanador

The Auditorio de Tenerife opens its 2026-2027 season with the dance performance ‘Afanador’ by the Spanish National Ballet. Under the artistic direction of Marcos Morau, and inspired by the photography of flamenco enthusiast Ruven Afanador (Colombia, 1959), this production brings together more than 30 dancers on stage, showcasing their spectacular technique. These two performances mark the BNE’s return to the Tenerife Auditorium after 16 years, having last performed there – also in the Symphony Hall – with El café de las chinitas.

Marcos Morau acknowledges that this show draws its inspiration from the books Ángel gitano and Mil besos, as well as from the photographic sessions of Ruven Afanador, who —according to the choreographer— views flamenco through a distorting lens, made of dreams, desire and memory. He also believes that the Colombian photographer’s surrealist perspective on flamenco is very similar to the one he himself has developed over the years at the helm of the La Veronal company. For his part, the playwright behind this production, Roberto Fratini, believes that this work aims to reflect the perspective Ruven Afanador adopts when he looks at his models.

Afanador
Inspired and captivated by the books Ángel Gitano and Mil Besos, I could not simply content myself with reproducing such beauty. Ruven Afanador’s masterful photographic sessions in Andalusia are unique. The alchemy that emerged between the photographer and such charismatic figures as Israel Galván, Matilde Coral, Eva Yerbabuena, José Antonio and Rubén Olmo is truly one of a kind.

My journey begins where those sessions end. When I awake from dreaming of them—unable to recall every detail or impose a logic that has been lost along the way—the urge to awaken fully takes hold.

Afanador emerges from the tension between my fascination with Ruven Afanador’s photographs and the fascination I feel for all that mystery—at once diurnal and nocturnal—that once captivated him.

I studied photography and am the grandson of a photographer. Although I never pursued it professionally, photography has always been central to my work as a world-builder and stage director. Through his extraordinary ability to stage and conjure images, Ruven Afanador has led me to reflect on the profound kinship between photographic and choreographic composition: the visceral challenge shared by both—the attempt to capture life, that which, by definition, cannot be captured.

Ruven Afanador observes flamenco through a distorting lens shaped by dreams, desire and memory. If the elements of tradition are, by definition, reassuring, what happens when they become strange and unrecognisable? Afanador’s surrealist vision of flamenco closely resembles the perspective that has nourished my work at La Veronal over the years: not to represent the world as it is, but to invent a new one.

Speaking of cinema, Estrella de Diego, whom I quote freely, once said: ‘One should enter the darkened auditorium without premeditation, once the film has begun, without knowing the programme in advance, carried along by chance. One should sit down and surrender to one’s senses without preparing them, without guiding them through opinions or synopses. One should go to the cinema in search of something other than the story being told. To know that in cinema, as in life, one always ends up identifying with oneself, never with the character or the plot.’

I would like people to come and see us in this way: as in certain dreams where we recognise the places, the people and the landscapes and, without fully understanding what is happening, somehow know that they are speaking about us.

Marcos Morau