ESCENA PATRIMONIO, Festival and platform for choreographic creation in heritage spaces continues to strengthen its commitment to the enhancement of the «living heritage» of the 15 Spanish World Heritage Cities, their local talents and international contemporary creation articulating a space for exchange between UNESCO sites, artistic territories and diverse audiences.

To date, the Festival has welcomed more than 90 choreographers and companies from all over Spain as well as international artists, offering them the extraordinary opportunity to inhabit and dialogue with these great vestiges of the past and of our present. 

ESCENA PATRIMONIO has become a national reference for the decentralisation of the cultural offer, beyond the limits and networks of the great metropolises, serving as a model in the exploration of new formats for the outreach of audiences for dance and movement arts.

The night of the 16th September, the cities of Alcalá de Henares, Ávila, Baeza, Cáceres, Córdoba, Cuenca, Ibiza, Mérida, Salamanca, San Cristóbal de la Laguna, Santiago de Compostela, Segovia, Tarragona, Toledo and Úbeda will host the sixth edition of the Festival which this year will focus on different approaches to traditional dance expressions and their contemporaneity under the leitmotiv  «rehearsing the folklore of the future».

Folklore is an essential aspect of human culture. It includes stories, myths, legends, customs and traditional practices that reflect the beliefs and values of a given community. 

Folklore is a powerful tool for transmitting knowledge, values and historical and cultural heritage, and plays a vital role in shaping collective identities.  

Many contemporary creators are asking themselves what is the path taken by a dance that begins as entertainment, then becomes a habit and ends up becoming a shared belief or tradition.

In an historical moment of constant social changes and globalisation, what does folklore mean for us as a society and what are its implications – is it possible to create a new folklore?, or rather, what will be the folklore of the future? 

To answer these questions, our guest artists will present new works or in-situ performances working with the younger generations to think of a new tradition for the future through contemporary social dances with which they can better identify, or using elements of regional folklore to introduce them into new contemporary languages, hybridising and creating a dialogue between tradition and currrent artistic creation.

And so, traversed by this common thread, this new edition of the Festival will feature national artists such as Alberto Cortés, Ana Morales, Antonio Ruz, Carmen Muñoz, Guillermo Weickert, Helena Martin, Juan Carlos Lérida, La Imperfecta, La Ribot, Laia Santanach, Lara Brown, Montdedutor and Olga Pericet, and international artists such as Ricardo Daniel from Mexico and Maguelone Vidal from France.

Accompanied by a large programme of free context activities as dance practice and writing workshops, video creations and post-show talks, the 15 pieces will be accessible with free admission in the 15 Cities to all their citizens and visitors and all over the world through our live streaming Inglés theheritagenight.com on the night of 16th September.