Barcelona’s Summer Arts Festival ‘Grec’ to dazzle until the end of July

Barcelona (ACN).- The 2011 edition of the Festival Grec of Barcelona started on the June 17^th and will run through to the end of July. This year’s Festival pays special attention to French theatre and dance, both large productions and smaller innovative shows. Artists such as Patrice Chéreau, Bartabas or playwright Jean-Luc Lagarce are some of the contemporary French stage exponents who will be bringing their productions to Barcelona. They will be sharing the limelight with established Catalan directors such as Àlex Rigola, Oriol Broggi or Carme Portaceli.

The Festival Grec, a classic event on the Catalan cultural calendar, brings together both international and local productions. According to the director of the festival, Ricardo Szwarcer, the main aim of the event is to bring together “two terms that in principle are opposites, local production and the international scene”.

The estival, which began in 1976, includes theatre, dance, music and other stage arts and is the most important cultural attraction in Barcelona throughout the summer. The name of the festival comes from the place where the opening sessions take place. It is an open-air theatre built in 1929 for the Universal Exhibition, which emulates an ancient Greek theatre.

This year’s opening dance show explored the relationship between the individual and the collective experience with references to Catalan traditional culture. It was staged by Cesc Gelabert, dancer and choreographer.

Some of the most important French theatre productions are “Rules, uses and customs in modern society” by Jean-Luc Lagarce; “The Centaurus and the animal” by Bartabas and “I am the Wind” by Patrice Chéreau. Some of the local productions include “Tragèdia”, by Àlex Rigola, “La nostra classe” by Carme Portaceli, “Luces de Bohemia” by Oriol Broggi and “Desaparecer” by Calixto Bieito. The highly successful Catalan pop-folk band “Manel” will also play and they sold all their tickets within half an hour.

Between June 17^th and July 31^st, theatre, music, dance and circus lovers will be able to attend more than sixty shows. Peter Brook’s show “Une Flûte Enchantée” based on Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” is one of the main international attractions of the festival and is already sold out.