The Buenos Aires International Festival (FIBA) is in full swing until October 27, with an array of theater, dance, music, and performance works in 40 venues, giving the city’s already vibrant theater scene a boost.
As usual, FIBA offers a selection of renowned plays and performance works from all over the globe. This year, there are two main international programs: Barcelona-Buenos Aires Bridge (with the support of the Ramón Llull Institute) and Italy Window (Ciclo ITALIA XXI – produced by Teatro Coliseo and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura). In parallel, the programming also offers plays by artists from Germany, Canada, Catalonia, South Korea, the UK, and Croatia.
One of the festival’s opening pieces is still playing throughout Monday, October 21, and Tuesday, October 22: Clément Layes’ performance play El Río / The River, from Germany, is an artistic investigation about contemplation while sailing. Both actors and the audience embark on “a dream-like journey to question the concept of an active and productive life and take time to decelerate,” according to FIBA’s program. The play is set in an unusual spot: the Riachuelo River, iconic and once-heavily polluted, that runs the southern border of the country’s capital and separates it from the Buenos Aires province.
Croatia’s Kill B. is a dance performance inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 movie Kill Bill. Directors Mia Zalukar and Bruno Isaković create a performative analysis of their own professional relationship, questioning the hierarchical structures inside the theater-making process and the power dynamic between the two, supposedly, equal partners.
Based in the UK, the Gandini Juggling company has spent three decades observing and drawing inspiration from the work of legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham. Their play LIFE — a love letter to Cunningham, and an attempt to answer questions like “What if Merce had choreographed juggling?” and “Is it possible to create something that is rooted in Cunningham’s universe and leads into another world?”
French director Phia Ménard’s theater company ‘Compagnie Non Nova – Phia Ménard’ will feature the first part of their Immoral Tales, entitled Casa Madre. The play features a cardboard house on stage that is destroyed in each performance, a metaphor for a Europe that is tirelessly rebuilding itself. The company will also stage The Afternoon of a Wind in the festival’s sidebar for younger audiences Platea Baja (Ground Floor Seats).
Two contemporary dance pieces from South Korea both revisit tradition. Art Project Bora – Bora Kim, a rising dance company gaining international projection, will present Somoo. The Goblin Party company, in turn, will bring Once Upon a Time which continues the group’s exploration of the relationship between bodies, tradition, and objects.
Cruzades, from Basque group Kukai Dantza, stages an encounter between two deeply rooted people, engaging in a conversation that at times strains and distances them, but also brings them closer and fuses them into a single body. Spain will also be present with One Night at the Golden Bar, the play that catapulted young queer creator Alberto Cortés onto the international scene.
Italy Window will also bring the festival’s Closing play, the multimedia piece Genesis Revisited, featuring Italian musicians Danilo Rea and Martux_M, who lead a piece designed to “listen with your eyes”, directed by Leo Kreimer.
Tickets for international plays can be purchased online on the website https://fiba.ar/ or in person at the Teatro San Martín box office (Av. Corrientes 1530) from Monday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Tickets for national plays will be free, with a prior online reservation. Reservations can be made on the website https://fiba.ar/ two days before each show, from 2 p.m. Two (2) tickets can be reserved per person and performance. Some performances will not allow entry once the performance has started and it will not be permitted to join the tours that leave from a starting point once they begin.