Two works linked to El Canal have been recognised at the 28th Critics’ Awards for the Performing Arts. CHER, by Juan Carlos Lérida, received the Solo award in dance, while Jovent, by Mambo Project, received the Novaveu award. This double recognition reinforces the value of El Canal as a space for artistic support, residencies, co-production and the development of new stage creations.
In the case of CHER, the link with El Canal comes through Juan Carlos Lérida’s residency in September 2024 and through the support given to the project’s creative process. Lérida’s solo is presented as a research piece around “an autotune for bodies”, a work that connects body, transformation, image and ethical and aesthetic limits, while exploring the friction between tuning and distortion in movement.
Juan Carlos Lérida is a dancer, choreographer, educator, dance researcher and artistic curator. Trained between Seville and Barcelona, he received the 2007 Extraordinary Award from the Institut del Teatre, where he has been teaching flamenco, contemporary dance and composition since 2002. His artistic path has been shaped through the concept of empirical flamenco, with works and research processes such as El arte de la guerra, El aprendizaje, the trilogy Al Toque / Al Cante / Al Baile and La liturgia de las horas.
In CHER, Lérida takes this line of research into particularly personal and contemporary territory. The piece uses Auto-Tune —the vocal correction technology popularised in the late 1990s— as a starting point, transferring its logic to the body and movement and opening up questions about image, age, dissidence and the possibility of a new kind of stage “tuning”. In his review for Recomana, Jordi Bordes highlights Lérida’s ability to go beyond the boundaries of a dance solo and turn the work into an exercise in performance, irony and poetic statement.
Fotos: Pol Naranjo (ERAM)
As for Jovent, its relationship with El Canal is equally significant: the project was selected in the second edition of the Resident Companies Programme and developed as a co-production between El Canal, FITT: Noves Dramaturgies and La Cremallera, with residencies and artistic support throughout 2025.
Mambo Project is a multidisciplinary theatre company that blends theatrical and cinematic languages, creates immersive formats and explores documentary theatre as a central line of work. Their trajectory includes works such as La Festa, iaia and ASSALT TEATRE; iaia also received the Audience Award at FITT 2022 and was part of the 2024/25 season at the TNC.
In Jovent, the company gives voice to real testimonies from young people imagining their future, placing them in dialogue with the bodies and voices of older performers to create an immersive and intergenerational stage experience. Directed by Nina Solà Carbonell and Jordi Font Alonso, the piece proposes a shared reflection on the passing of time, life expectations and the difficulty —or the need— of imagining ourselves ahead. In her review for Recomana, Marina Valls particularly emphasises this collective and sensitive device, capable of turning the space into a meeting point between generations without forcing individual audience participation.
These two recognitions arrive at a time when many of the creations that have passed through El Canal continue their journey through leading festivals, fairs and circuits. The fact that CHER and Jovent have been honoured by the critics is also a celebration of sustained work with artists and companies who place research, risk and a relationship with context at the centre of their practice. From El Canal, we celebrate this double award with pride and with the conviction that supporting creative processes is also a way of helping contemporary performing arts grow.
Fotos: Nico Maurino (ERAM)
