Welcome!
We’re so happy that you have answered our call. Today’s the opening , the ribbon is going to be cut, we’re going to see each others’ faces, we’ll pay tribute to ourselves, we’ll introduce ourselves to start this journey through time, an entire day stretching until early July. We’ll straddle spring and summer. We’ll celebrate every time of day as if it could happen again next year, to set the precedent, to meet again and to gather and recall what there is to celebrate. There’s always something to celebrate, and if it’s not a saint’s day it will be our gathering.
With an opening speech, an announcement and a proclamation of the festivities, along with dances and a welcoming atmosphere—that’s how we’ll meet up at this local festival.
La Sorny will appear, link elbows with us and lovingly take us across dimensions. Jaime Conde Salazar will add words and body. The words he chooses will get us to enter this round of festivities. And after that Rosa Romero will appear to tell and sing ‘Soy un Baile Breve’ [I Am a Brief Dance].
Plus, throughout all the Picnic Sessions, we’ll have a flea market where you can find publications, t-shirts, scarves and more by our artists and many others. This table will be lovingly tended by Imprenta Sandelfín.
La Sorny. Photo: Álvaro Panda
Master of ceremonies, La Sorny. La Sorny is a club kid (a figure she interprets with an uncertain, extravagant aesthetic; a figure without either gender or artistic rules) fuelled by 1980s London culture and Chris Burden’s performance.
This illusion springs from constant artistic exploration and the need to drain the daily dose of intrusive creative thoughts.
Laughing at yourself was never so profitable: their vocal cabaret shows, always-live (not to show off her voice but to avoid complaints about sound) give rise to more histrionic performances and dramatic playbacks until your jawbone aches.
Every evening of the Picnic Sessions will be opened by La Sorny, the best master of ceremonies. As Lola Flores said: ‘she can neither sing nor dance, but don’t miss her!’
Jaime Conde Salazar
Opening speech by Jaime Conde Salazar s.u.s. The dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language says that an opening speech [a pregón] is ‘a eulogistic speech that announces to the audience that a festival is being celebrated and encourages them to participate in it’. Thus, the opening speech that will kick off this local festival will open the doors, hit the road, put art at the service of the festival, summon the awakening and blossoming of excited bodies, start the shared pleasure, invoke the overwhelming power of peace and joy and together savour the sweetness of our fleshes deified in late spring.
Jaime Conde Salazar s.u.s. has a bachelor’s in Art History (Complutense University of Madrid) and earned his MA in Performance Studies (2002, New York University) thanks to a MEC-Fulbright scholarship. Between 2009 and 2010, he enjoyed a grant from the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, where they morphed into a blond lady. In 2015, he published his first book, La danza del futuro (Contintametienes). That same year, Bárbara Sánchez introduced him to Macarene cults and he has admitted to being a handmaiden since then. Over time, he has accompanied the creative processes of artists like Antonio Tagliarini, Aimar Pérez Galí, Bárbara Sánchez and La Ribot. Today he is working on his doctoral thesis while producing ceramic devotional pieces in a frenzy.
Rosa Romero
Soy un baile breve [I Am a Brief Dance] by Rosa Romero. ‘My body blurs and the desire to be something else emerges, a striptease, a drag performance, a folkloric number, a simulation of another plane of existence where bodies can become sounds, objects or a dance. The current mechanical system capitalises on bodies to such an extent that the only possible way to fight back is to destroy them. That is why it is necessary to invent new alternative bodies, new boxes to contain them and new methods so they remain living, sensitive beings not materialised in physicality. Being a dance should be a dignified form of embodiment’.
Rosa Romero found herself on this quest for new and less painful forms of existence when she realised that the title of this piece was working like a spell. In the exercise of making her body disappear, it became clearer and more present than ever. This title, in the present tense, is far from the idea of a body in process waiting to be validated and instead appears as a body that already is and that dances to proclaim itself.
Rosa Romero is an actress and creator from Cádiz who has a bachelor’s in Dramatic Arts from ESAD Málaga. She started her journey towards personal creation in 2014 by paying attention to the body, the revival of inherited dance and raw communication with spectators. She released her first single, Esta no es la vida privada de Rosa Romero, in 2018. She was chosen to be a resident at La Caldera (Barcelona) with DEBUT in 2020. Soy un baile premiered in September 2023 and earned her awards for best performer and best new show from the Andalusian association of dance professionals. She currently lives in Seville, where she has worked on projects like Pelo de trol with Silvia Balvín and Estación espacial with Alberto Cortés and Álex Peña, produced by the Teatro de la Abadía for the Teatro confinado [Lockdown Theatre] series (2020). As a playwright, she has supported the creation processes of María Férnandez, Adriana Reyes, La Basal, África Martinez and the bailaora María Moreno. La Escuela del Sur, a space of encounter for contemporary performing artists from the province of Cádiz, is one of her latest projects in conjunction with the Cádiz Town Hall and the Government of Andalusia.
Lara Brown (Photo: Diego Marín) and Anto Rodríguez.
Proclamation by the mayor’s office. Proclamation: ‘public acts and ceremonies to declare and usher in a new reign, princedom, etc.’
Lara Brown and Anto Rodríguez propose ending the first day of Picnic Sessions with a happy dance party, a bingo game, silly socialising. We will proclaim the opening of this BIG DAY which will last until July, in which we hope to meet each other with love and desire.
Anto Rodríguez is a gay artist-researcher. He has a PhD in Arts, Humanities and Education Research from the UCLM. He is a member of the Dorothy Michaels Creation and Research Office.
He does things for the stage, universities, podcasts, books, articles, concerts…
He has been publishing the podcast-documentary Color Julay since 2022, in which he talks about the history of songbooks and transformism in Spain.
In 2023, he published the book Boca abierta: la práctica artística del lip sync como archivo vivo (Ed. Desiderata) and in 2024 ¡Eres tan travesti! Breve historia del transformismo en España (Ed. Egales).
His stage creations have been performed at venues like Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Teatro Español, Teatro Pradillo, La Casa Encendida, MET Guadalajara, Mexico, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, DT Espacio Escénico, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Conde Duque, Teatros del Canal and others.
Lara Brown, an artist and a performer, works in Madrid and Barcelona. She views creation as generative of a poetic gesture that works like a gift, like an exchange of affects that help us to be in the world as pleasantly as possible.
One of her most recent works inquires into the origins of folklore, the folklore archive and the popular archive, the influence of the social and political context on popular dances and their impact on a contemporary body. This has led her to create a trilogy comprised of three pieces, Bailar o Lo Salvaje / El Movimiento Involuntario / Lo Imposible es Desaparecer [To Dance or Wildness / The Involuntary Movement / Disappearing Is Impossible], which have been presented at venues like the Quinzena Metropolitana de la Danza, Centro de Cultura Conde Duque, Festival Dansa Valencia, Expo Dubai 2020, Picnic Sessions, Museo Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, Festival Moüjuic, Graner Centro de Danza y Artes Vivas, Fira Mediterrànea de Manresa, Teatros del Canal, Centro de Danza La Caldera and others.
She also generates critical thinking contexts in the field of the Live Arts, supports artistic projects and invents tools for blurring and rethinking the boundaries of performance.
Foto: Imprenta Sandelfin
Flea market organised by Imprenta Sandelfín. There is a table with two cute guys behind it. In front of it is a catcall that comes from a dream, from revelry, from a transvestite speech. The table is set with the best tablecloths. Fanzines, posters, books and poems from the most varied pens we’ve found: they all share a radical tenderness and a way of doing based on the body. Printing has always been for the group. Come, buy whatever you like or just look and discuss. We’ll be here every Thursday the way we are, caring for ourselves.
Imprenta Sandelfín is Amalia and Nati. They view a printing press as a political tool with which to affect the outside world, the streets and bars, the kitchens and bathrooms of friends and acquaintances. They print as a way of sharing themselves and sharing the materials they think might have an impact on everyday life by serving as complaints and hugs, poems and amulets.
