- Fura dels Baus, La
- La Fura may be described as the Catalan performance group of the rock age. Founded in 1979, they include artists from various disciplines, including music and dance. As with Els Joglars, the acting style of La Fura is physically very demanding on the actors. They have been innovative in their use of different urban spaces for the performance of their shows. These include markets, train stations and disused factories. They have adapted their performances to the particular setting in which each individual performance takes place. These settings are extremely varied: for instance, Suz/o/Suz has been performed in locations as different as a Madrid morgue and a Sydney garage.An Artaudian primitive ritualism is an essential ingredient of La Fura's shows, some of which are characterized by destructive violence, as when the performers destroy a car with sledgehammers in Accions. The Who's smashing of guitars on stage comes to mind. Like other Catalan performance groups, La Fura dels Baus have marketed products related to their shows. They have made a maxi-single "Ajoë" (1986) and two LPs, Suz (1988) and Noun (1990) (the LP Noun was produced before the show of the same name, in collaboration with the flamenco singer Ginesa Ortega). The video Ulelé (1987), made by Francisco Montoliu, includes fragments of the production of Suz/o/Suz relocated in open landscapes. La Fura's interest in machinery led them to organize Autòmates (Automata) in 1988, a dynamic exhibition of machines and sound contraptions used in Suz/o/Suz and Tier man. Like Els Comediants, La Fura participated in the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992 by organizing the opening ceremony, Mar Mediterrània (Mediterranean Sea). It was conceived as a spectacular cosmogonic fight, derived from the ancient Roman naumachia (naval battle), between ignorant irrationality on the one hand (represented by animals and fantastical monsters like the hydra) and civilization on the other (represented by the sea, a ship and Hercules). This plot was introduced through a sophisticated, prerecorded video portraying the movement of masses and set to music by Ryuichi Sakamoto.The result was a kind of gestural "score" which created a new conceptual and aesthetic precedent for Olympic ceremonies of the future.Further reading- Saumell, M. (1996) "Performance Groups in Catalonia", in D.George and J.London (eds) An Introduction to Contemporary Catalan Theatre, Sheffield: Anglo-Catalan Society (the only fulllength study of the phenomenon in English).DAVID GEORGE
Encyclopedia of contemporary Spanish culture. 2013.
