XXI Max Awards Winners

The Jury of Selection of Winners of Madrid of the XXI edition of the Max Awards of the Performing Arts, 2018, chaired by Mr. Ignacio Amestoy and composed by Mr. Julio Bravo, Mr. Juli Disla, Mr. Maxi Rodríguez, Mónica Runde Y D. Juan Luis Mira, as representative of the Organizing Committee (without vote) and Ms. Andrea de Gregorio, Technician of the Performing Arts Department of Fundación SGAE, as Secretary without vote.

Report that to the XXI edition of the Max Performing Arts Awards There have been a total of 395 shows, of which 137 were candidates, and 38 ended up being finalists being, therefore, reviewed and analyzed by the present jury within the period established by the organization.

After the deliberations made today by the members of the Jury, they agree

admit as Winners for the XXI edition of the Max Performing Arts Awards, 2018 to the following shows and professionals, arranged according to category (nineteen) and alphabetically:

1. Best theater show
· Solitudes by Kulunka Teatro, S.L.

2. Best dance show
· The nudity He said. Daniel Abreu

3. Best musical or lyrical show
· TIC Tac of Institut Valencià de Cultura (IVC) and Diputació de València.

4. Best street show
· Meeting point of Ertza.

5. Best show for children, youth or family audiences
· Kiti Kraft by Bambalina Titelles, S.L.

6. Best revelation show
· Fairfly of La Calòrica and Teatre Tantarantana.

7. Better theatrical authorship
· Borja Ortiz de Gondra by The Gondra (a Basque history).

8. Best revelation authorship
· Joan Yago for Fairfly.

9. Better adaptation or theatrical version
· Ángel Solo and Adolfo Fernández for On the shore.

10. Best musical composition for stage show
· Luis Miguel Cobo for Solitudes.

11. Better choreography
· Daniel Abreu for The nudity.

12. Best stage direction
· Julio Manrique for L'Ánec salvatge.

13. Best design of scenic space
· Elisa Sanz for Blood Wedding.

14. Best costume design
· Maria Araujo for Ricard III.

15. Better lighting design
· Lola Barroso for Furious Scandinavia.

16. Best actress protagonist
· Pilar Gómez for Emilia (Women who dare, 1st part).

17. Best leading actor
· Nacho Sánchez for Ivan and the dogs.

18. Best female dance interpreter
· Eva Yerbabuena for Appearances.

19. Best male dance interpreter
· Daniel Abreu for The nudity.

'Joc de xiquetes', from the Valencian company Bullanga, Max Prize of the Public 2018

Written and directed by Adrián Novella, the work is based on real events and proposes the inclusion of the public in the work
Almost 5000 people have voted for their favorite shows through the Max Awards website and the #VotaMax application

The organizing committee of the Max Performing Arts Awards has granted the Max Public Award to Joc de xiquetes (Game of girls), work written and directed by Adrián Novella for the Valencian theater company Bullanga. It is the first time that the Max awards this special award – which adds to the Max of Honor and Max Amateur or Social Character awards, as well as the 19 contest categories-, with which you want to recognize the favorite show of this Season for Performing Arts fans. Almost 5000 people They have voted through the website of the Max Awards and a mobile application for two months.

"When we received the news of the prize we did not believe it," enthuses the Valencian playwright and director Adrián Novella. "We obtained two nominations (Best Revelation Show and Best Revelation Authorship) in this XXI edition of the Max Awards, but we did not make it to the final. It gave us a lot of pain. For that reason, that the public has opted for a work of a small company and that barely takes four years in active like ours, we were very excited. The best of all is to think that a work in which the audience is involved has been recognized by the public. How well everything fits! "He stresses.

The architects of the assembly Joc de xiquetes will receive the award on June 18 at the gala of the XXI edition of the Max Awards of Performing Arts organized by the SGAE Foundation, with the collaboration of the City of Seville, Seville Tourism, INAEM, Cartuja Center CITE, Ernst & Young and Fluge, in the new cultural space Cartuja Center CITE of the Andalusian capital.

Based on real facts
Written and directed by Adrián Novella and interpreted by Miquel Arnau, Resu Belmonte, Vicent Domingo, Gemma Taberner, Ariana Higón Y Jorge Valle, Joc de xiquetes It has been defined by the theatrical company Bullanga as a "bitter comedy for an adult audience". Thus, from a real event, the montage recreates a meeting of fathers and mothers in a school while the public is part of the comedy to be assigned a role to enter and participate actively in this "game of girls and boys."

Through this format of participatory theater, the piece proposes a hard reflection on communication or, better yet, on that hyper-communication that we face today and in which nothing and nobody seems to be safe. The WhatsApp groups of parents of the schools are, according to Novella, a good example of those cases in which the "misrepresentation of reality can end up causing fatal consequences. In any case, during the development of the work, we never judge the facts. It is the public who finally decides whether these are real or not. Our objective is to show how this bad communication between one and the other can end up generating an excessive protection of the parents to their children ".

Adrián Novella came to this model of participatory theater through his work as an actor in the company The Cuban. In addition, during his time in the Master in Theater Studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), he conducted an investigation on dramaturgies for the inclusion of the public. "I analyzed the work that different companies do in this field and I discovered a formula to introduce it. It's what I wanted to do and, for that, I had to get the audience to identify with the story, to enter fully into it, "he says. Based on this premise, and drawing on a real event around a complaint to a professor for abuses, this work was awarded the Max Prize of the Public, Joc de xiquetes.

The piece premiered in 2016 at the Russafa Escènica theater festival and, after touring various stages of the Valencian Community and Catalonia, it was enjoyed in 2017 at the Third Setmana festival. There he received enthusiastic applause; including that of a Chilean programmer who took the assembly to the Santiago OFF International Festival. Joc de xiquetes it was also represented in Peru and in recent months it has combined its presence in theatrical stages with educational meetings in the classrooms of municipal schools.

About Bullanga Theatrical Company
Created in 2013 by a group of young actors from the School of Dramatic Arts of Valencia, Bullanga was consolidated as a cultural association in 2015. Since its inception, the company has produced its own shows, with the support of a number of collaborators linked to the Performing Arts: dancers and choreographers, musicians and singers, light and sound technicians … The company premiered with The glory of the people and has continued with titles like The dream of the galaxies or Maruschka Comèdia russa on the terreta nostra.

For its part, the author and director of the award-winning Joc de xiquetes, Adrián Novella, is a founding member of Bullanga, a company with which he has directed some of his works, and teaches theater in different educational centers and institutions. The dramaturgy for the inclusion of the public is the hallmark of his latest creations; between them, Maruschka Comèdia russa on the terreta nostra (Premi Micalet de Teatre 2017) or Joc de xiquetes.

Three special prizes
In addition to the 19 contest categories, this year there are three special awards: Max de Honor, which has recognized the career of the dramatist and theater director José Sanchís Sinisterra; Max Amateur or Social Character, this time for Dance Mobile; and the Special Max of the Public, in which more than 5000 people have voted for their favorite shows through a mobile application and the Max Awards website.

Organized by the SGAE Foundation since 1998, the Max Awards, whose award is designed by the poet and artist Joan Brossa (Barcelona-1919/1999), promoter of one of the renewing collectives of post-war Spanish art, has been consolidated over these years as the broadest recognition in the field of Performing Arts in Spain.

The company Danza Mobile, Max Amateur or Social Prize 2018

The organizing committee of the Max Performing Arts Awards has granted the Max Amateur or Social Character Award 2018 to Dance Mobile (danzamobile.es) and has highlighted his extensive professional career as a benchmark in the world of contemporary national and international integrative dance. More than 60 professionals from the field of Performing Arts have participated in this tour, with which they have produced 25 shows. Outstanding are its more than 500 performances and its program of continuing education for interpreters with disabilities at the Centro de Creación Danza Mobile in Seville.

Choreographer Esmeralda Valderrama, director of the company, will receive the award on June 18 at the gala of the XXI edition of the Max Awards for Performing Arts organized by the SGAE Foundation, with the collaboration of the City of Seville, in the new Cartuja Center CITE cultural space of the Andalusian capital.

In 1995, Esmeralda decided to give shape to a puzzle highlighting art, social participation, training and cultural management as fundamental pieces. With these wicks Danza Mobile began to arm itself, project where to create a space in which professionals of these sectors were united to contribute to the creative, social and personal process of the people with disability. An initiative that now receives the Max Amateur or Social Character Award and that the choreographer thanks: "it is a recognition of our work, but above all to begin to accept diversity, that difference is what enriches us and makes us unique: The Max Prize gives visibility to all this philosophy that we have been fighting for many years "(See the complete interview: https://youtu.be/_65ObhIx3jM).

Origins of a comprehensive project
The road has not been easy and, despite the difficulties, in 1996 the first of a long list of projects was launched: the School of Dance. After him would come the Creation Center, the Dance Company, the Festivals and collaborations with institutions and professionals from various fields. Danza Mobile has thus become a comprehensive and global proposal, although "it is born from an artistic project committed to enrich the stage with different bodies, different energies," says Esmeralda. In fact, "all the professionals who work in our center come from the world of art; they are dancers, actors, choreographers, musicians … ", he continues.

Dance as a universal language
As Esmeralda Valderrama points out, the language of dance, which from a young age she considered totally curative, gave her the opportunity to offer that teaching and that passion for art "with the intention of giving other people another reason to live". "Not being able to stand up with good phrases what you want to say does not mean having nothing to say. Sometimes you have to give other means of communication in addition to the word, "he says, and insists that for her" Performing Arts and plastic what they do is to build communication channels to others and to everything that surrounds us. "

Goals
Among the main objectives of Danza Mobile are to contribute to an improvement in the quality of life of people with disabilities, offering them alternative activities within the field of art and "simply, to be able to show a professional company where part of the cast are dancers with disabilities intellectual ", explains the founder of this initiative. Undoubtedly, the company's greatest achievement is having joined the professional field of dance, making it possible to get to know and accept Danza Mobile shows on equal terms with other professionals in the sector.

For Esmeralda, however, there is still a very important gap to cover in society and is to work "from very young" in diversity, especially through art. "I would like to be able to do in Seville a wonderful center of outsider art, which still does not exist anywhere in Spain, especially to put more values ​​into art".

A recognized common learning
Although at the beginning, a project of these characteristics in Seville involved walking on untrodden lands, the knowledge of works of this nature in other cities, outside and inside Spain, made them accumulate courage to start a common learning that, nowadays, He has reported many awards and recognitions. The Dionisos Prize for theatrical projects with social repercussions, awarded by UNESCO-Comunidad de Madrid (2012); the Andalusian Award for Good Practices in Attention to People with Disabilities of the Ministry for Equality and Social Welfare of the Junta de Andalucía (2010); the 'Solidarity' Prize of the Union of Actors and Performers of Andalusia (2010); the Mayte Theater Award for the Normalization of Disability in the Theater (2007); the City Medal for its trajectory in the promotion of culture, art and dissemination of the name of Seville, among others. Prizes have also been received for the pieces Paths by Ana Erdozáin at the Choreographic Competition of Madrid 2014 and Mirror of Vanesa Aibar in the Choreographic Competition of Tetuán-Madrid 2016; as well as three Lorca 2017 Awards granted by the Andalusian Performing Arts Association (ARESAN), together with the SGAE Foundation, for the show In vain by Arturo Parrilla, are a clear example of everything that remains to come.

In recent years, Danza Mobile has also become part of other cultural and artistic projects that go beyond dance. In addition to the School of Dance and the Occupational Center, in 2007 they launched one of their most relevant initiatives, the International Festival Escena Mobile de Arte y Discapacidad, an event that brings together the best dance and integrated theater and dance productions in Seville. The Festival has managed to show professionals and the general public that art and disability, far from being incompatible, are areas of mutual enrichment that can, and should, go hand in hand.

Likewise, other of its lines of work are the plastic exhibitions, the International Cinema Mobile Contest, conceived as a natural extension of the Festival, or the artistic creation and interpretation, for which Danza Mobile has facilitated that artists with intellectual disabilities can participate in productions. from other dance and theater companies or in film productions (case of the works Cassandra, Theater and Human Rights of La Fundición; the flamenco shows of the Cia. José Galán In my senses Y The pixie of the senses, and the cinematographic works in short format, The flight of Coco by Andrés, JM Muñoz and Daniel Parejo or I also, feature film by Antonio Naharro and Álvaro Pastor.

Three special prizes
In addition to the 19 contest categories, this year there are three special awards: Max de Honor, which has recognized the career of playwright and theater director José Sanchís Sinisterra; Max Amateur or Social Character, this time for Danza Mobile; and the Special Max of the Public, which will be known once the voting period has concluded.

Organized by the SGAE Foundation since 1998, the Max Awards, whose prize is designed by the poet and artist Joan Brossa (Barcelona-1919/1999), promoter of one of the renewing collectives of post-war Spanish art, have been consolidated as over these years as the broadest recognition in the field of Performing Arts in the Spanish State.