Artist statement
La Danesa is a text-based company founded in 2011 by Ota Vallès, Jumon Erra and Elena Fortuny.
We are staging our 7th production, our current project will be performed next Dec, 4th in Mercat de les Flors and it is a community piece created by around thirty participants in collaboration with Pere Faura, a creator and coreographer. In this piece, called Barris i Pandèmia (Hoods and Pandemic) we discuss the pandemics we have had to deal with in the last 40 years (from AIDS to COVID).
We work with a diverse community, in origin, ages, gender and sexualities as well as experience on the health condition, stigma and prejudice. The piece is a party that will occupy the whole theatre house and we will use text, music, installation, movement and visuals. It is our second community piece. The project is financed by Art for Change, Fundació La Caixa and ICEC.
Our last piece for a theatre house is a text-based show, the adaptation of the short autobiographical novel The swimmer of the secret sea by William Kotzwinkle on his experience on perinatal death. The piece combines original music, visual arts and text and it premiered in the renowned Temporada Alta Festival in Girona and Catalonia National Theatre. The project was awarded best production in Quim Masó 2020 and was co-produced by TNC, Bitó, OSIC and La Danesa.
As a company, from our first show till now, we create or adapt material that puts at viewpoint issues that are not at the centre either in the media or in our political or social life. We try to use the theatre as a vehicle to give them voice.
So far we have worked on different subjects such as the non-written rules of friendship in My danish Chagrin, on the climate emergency in The distance between the crack and the thunder, on real democracy in Seeing, and on exile and the purpose and service of theatre itself in Untitled.