Sagunt a Escena closes its 43rd edition with a Sol Picó dance piece about loneliness
Choreographer Sol Picó, born in Alcoy and winner of the 2016 National Dance Award, premieres 'Carrer 024' on 23 August at the Antigua Morería in Sagunto, the street piece that closes this year's Sagunt a Escena festival.
The Sagunt a Escena festival will close its 43rd edition this Sunday, 23 August, with a street performance that tackles one of the defining problems of the 21st century: loneliness. At 19:30, in the Antigua Morería (the old Moorish quarter) of Sagunto, choreographer Sol Picó will present 'Carrer 024', the piece chosen to end a summer of theatre and dance programming in the city.
The work presents modern loneliness as a kind of silent epidemic, fed by individualism, constant use of technology, and a way of living in cities that keeps people apart. On stage, five performers act out a central scene: they climb a set of stairs like the ones used to board an aircraft and struggle not to let themselves fall into the void, while the rest of the cast tries to hold them back and bring them down safely. The set then turns into a large painted backdrop inspired by the work of French painter Henri Matisse, over which the dancers' bodies trace shapes that speak of harmony and the need to come back together. The piece ends with a collective song about reunion, a final gesture of reconnecting with the group.
Behind the piece is Sol Picó, a dancer born in Alcoy (a town in Alicante province) in May 1967, who received Spain's National Dance Award in 2016 in the creation category. Her company marks its 30th anniversary this year, a milestone she links to a career built on mixing genres and a technique that combines physical strength, precision and humour. With 'Carrer 024' she also returns to one of her trademarks: large-scale sets and solid metal structures that contrast with the riskiest dance passages, a style that has taken her work to stages abroad.
Alongside the 2016 award, her career includes ten Premios Max (Spain's top theatre and dance prizes), the Catalonia National Dance Award in 2004, the Barcelona City Dance Award in 2015, and the Creu de Sant Jordi in 2020, one of the highest honours given by the Catalan regional government. Nearly three decades of work explain why her show closes, rather than simply rounds off, this summer's Sagunto festival line-up.
Because it is a street performance rather than a show inside a venue, 'Carrer 024' breaks with the festival's usual format: instead of a defined stage like the one at the Roman Theatre (Teatro Romano), the Antigua Morería becomes an open-air setting for one evening, with the audience gathered around the action from within the neighbourhood itself. That format fits the closing-night feel that the last date of Sagunt a Escena usually has each year, aimed at people simply walking through the old town rather than regular theatre-goers.
'Carrer 024' caps a strong final stretch for Sagunt a Escena, which has brought well-known names to the Roman Theatre and other venues around the city: singer Estrella Morente closed out the Roman Theatre's own programme, Lydia Bosch and Julio Peña brought the Greek myth of Phaedra to the stage, and Coque Malla starred in 'The Threepenny Opera'. The festival is organised by the regional Conselleria de Educación, Cultura y Universidades (Department of Education, Culture and Universities) through the Institut Valencià de Cultura (IVC), together with the Diputación de Valencia (Valencia Provincial Council) and Sagunto City Council.
For Sagunto residents, the show is a chance to see off the summer's cultural programme with a street performance right in the historic centre, in a spot, the Antigua Morería, that does not often host a production of this scale. According to El Periódico de Aquí, with additional background from Wikipedia on Sol Picó's career.