Maña

As part of its performing-arts season, Auditorio de Tenerife has scheduled MAÑA, an open-air show of Cía Manolo Alcántara, to be performed in the square.

The key to the show MAÑA is ingenuity, where the choreography of an everyday action with the set design is the performance in itself. Craftsmanship is the indelible protagonist, a performance-installation that lies somewhere between knowledge and intuition. This work was awarded as the most innovative show at the 2022 TAC Valladolid and received the Susana Herreras Award for best show at the 2022 Arca Festival – Aguilar de Campoo ‘for being a show that is surprising, innovative and hypnotic as an installation, which is a minority genre within the street arts’, according to the jury.

MAÑA is the transmission of knowledge from grandparent to grandchild through my gaze, bringing on a transformation from artisan to artist. It is a performance-installation which revolves around ingenuity, that timeless, universal and transversal attribute, as seen through an artistic and artisanal lens. I show the construction of a giant arch made of hefty boxes, using the premise of economy of effort and of movement and ancestral technologies that are still relevant today: the lever, the pulley and the wheel, …

The choreography of this everyday element of set design is the performance in itself, in which craftsmanship plays an indispensable role, eschewing intelligent materials and tools in order not to limit my effectiveness as an artisan, and negotiating between knowledge and intuition. My father taught me how to build arches, and MAÑA is the way I would teach my son how to build them. MAÑA is a direct and honest show that wears its heart on its sleeve from the get-go. The key to the show is ingenuity.