Strategies for survival

Sunshine tour and winter’s tale

Photo credit: Anthem © Iari Davies

As the dust settles on the now-distant holiday season, and winter is not yet out of sight, take solace in these stellar cultural distractions.

Offering sunshine and dancing, Brazil’s premier dance troupe São Paulo Dance Company are guaranteed to lift the spirits. Their debut tour will bring a joyous programme of Latin American skill and sensuality to venues across the UK and Ireland.

Meanwhile, the start of another year also means the beginning of Oscars season. The full list of nominations yesterday revealed the Latin American films in the running, including Maite Alberdi’s The Eternal Memory for Best Documentary Feature and Pablo Larrain’s El Conde for Best Cinematography. J. A. Bayona’s Society of the Snow (La sociedad de la nieve) is representing Spain amongst the five finalists competing for Best International Feature, but its retelling of the Miracle of the Andes it is a truly Latin American story. 

Photo credit: Agora © Iari Davies

Sunshine Tour: São Paulo Dance Company UK Premiere, Sadler’s Wells, 9th / 10th Feb

Brazil’s number one dance ensemble, São Paulo Dance Company, will be bringing their unique blend of infectious joy and technical prowess to 14 towns and cities across the UK and Ireland next month, with the UK premiere at Sadler’s Wells on 9^th and 10^th February

Ranked amongst The Telegraph’s 10 Top Ballet and Dance Shows to See in 2024, their UK tour will include a triple bill of choreographies rooted in Spanish and Latin American culture.

Goyo Montero (resident choreographer with Carlos Acosta’s company Acosta Danza) explores the idea of life cycles and collective identities in Anthem. The epic and emotionally charged piece for 14 dancers was created for the Company in 2019 and features Montero’s signature muscular and fast-moving style, beautifully visualised with dramatic lighting.

Nacho Duato, currently Artistic Director of the Berlin State Ballet, draws on the Mediterranean colours and flavours of Valencia for his piece Gnawa, powered by the hypnotic, ritualistic music of North Africa.

Finally, Brazilian Cassi Abranches, a former Grupo Corpo dancer, presents the colourful and vibrant Agora which sculpts the movement of each dancer’s body to the percussive beats and bass grooves of Sebastian Piracés’ score, mixing drums and Afro-Brazilian percussion with rock music and vocals.

Founded in 2008, São Paulo Dance Company has produced more than 100 classical and contemporary works, toured nearly 20 countries and performed to more than 900,000 people.

 “São Paulo is a dance company with a very special Brazilian accent,” Artistic Director Inês Bogéa says. “We have the passion for dance, we have the energy of Brazil and we love to share that with audiences around the world.”

São Paulo Dance Company - Sadlers Wells, 9th and 10th February.

The performance on 9th February will be followed by a post-show talk.

Survival of the fittest: La sociedad de la nieve (Society Of The Snow, Dir. J.A. Bayona)

The true story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which in 1972 crashed in the Andes with 45 passengers and crew on board, of which only 16 eventually survived, has inspired numerous retelling, including the sensationalist Survive (Mexico, 1976) directed by Rene Cardona (Night of the Bloody Apes) and Frank Marshall’s Hollywood rendering Alive (1993) starring a young Ethan Hawke.

However, Spanish director J. A. Bayona (The Orphanage, The Impossible) distinguishes Society of the Snow (La sociedad de la nieve) from its predecessors in its focus on authenticity, realism and faithfulness to historical facts. The film is based on Pablo Vierci’s book of the same name, the cast is made up of Uruguayan and Argentine actors and there are even cameos from nine of the plane crash’s survivors, who, along with their families, were closely involved in the making of the film and portrayal of their story of against-the-odds survival.

The result is “a fervent film, heartfelt and shot with passion and flair.” La sociedad de la nieve won the Audience Award at San Sebastian International Film Festival last year and is amongst the final five films competing for Best International Film at this year’s 96th Academy Awards on March 10th. The film racked up 51 million views in just 11 days after Netflix released it on its platform, making it one of Netflix’s Top 10 non-English language films.

As critic Mark Olsen concluded writing in the LA Times, “the story places an emphasis not on individual heroics but on the collective effort of the group, their sacrifices up to and including the giving of their very bodies and flesh. As the final moments of the film make explicit, the meaning of what they went through is up to the individual, for each to take away what they will. Bayona mixes a sense of survivalist adventure with an otherworldly spirituality — the idea that they were somehow touched by something bigger, but also that the answers to what they needed were there with them all along.”

Society of the Snow is available to stream on Netflix

EUREKA (dir. Lisandro Alonso, Argentina) - In cinemas 16 Feb

Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso reunites with actor Viggo Mortensen for their second cinematic collaboration following the 2014 Patagonian Western Jauja. Eureka is an “Intoxicating, Time-Hopping, Reverie of Indigenous Realities” which seeks to rewrite the legacy of the Native American people. One Cannes review asserted that the film “sides not with the white strangers in strange lands that had long peopled Alonso’s oeuvre, but with the native communities facing these invaders.”

Eureka will be in UK cinemas on 16 Feb.

That’s all for now!

Saludos,

The Argentine Film Festival team