For the love of Hart: Fusion of avant-garde dance and circus

To return culture to its origins and to whom it truly belongs: the public and the people. Under this premise, the Per Amor a L'Hart festival was born fourteen years ago in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, attempting to carve out a niche in the country's packed cultural agenda, where more and more festivals are proliferating. To do this, in the words of its director, Josep Antoni Hernández Navarro 'Joselito', it champions "art, culture, and public space as essential elements for social transformation and for promoting respect, inclusion, and dialogue."

Dance and circus are the axes around which this street festival revolves, held in the center of L'Hospitalet from July 5 to 7, and reaching its fourteenth edition, "consolidating itself as an essential date in the city's cultural agenda and the country's cultural programming," highlights 'Joselito'. This year, a total of 23 companies will participate, revolutionizing the center of this city for three days with a diverse program that will allow citizens to experience firsthand the vitality and emergence of contemporary creation that fuses avant-garde and tradition.

The program is coordinated by the collective of independent artists and managers from L'Hospitalet 'Bipolart' and will feature about thirty shows, among which productions such as the dance show "Pez esfinge," by Elias Aguirre and Chey Jurado, stand out. But differentiating oneself is becoming increasingly difficult. "Now we find ourselves in a situation where many street art festivals are suffering from an oversaturation of the public. Everyone knows about them, and many people who don't go to the theater due to ticket prices do go to festivals because there are very high-level shows and they are often, like ours, free," explains Hernández Navarro.

On the other hand, this saturation of festivals brings another very positive effect, which is the possibility of making street arts reach a wider audience, turning these encounters into a platform for disseminating a culture that is difficult to find outside specialized media and venues. "I believe that this type of show motivates the public. People curious about what they have seen on the street become more interested in the available offerings, and that's when we believe we encourage them to then go to cultural facilities to consume art," assures the organizer of the L'Hospitalet event.

'Per amor a l'Hart' will begin on Thursday, July 5, on a first day that the festival considers "of the city" because it is the day with the most local audience. The Catalan company Amer i Àfrica will inaugurate the festival with the work "Envà" (Partition), a circus show in which two people muse about the peculiarities of human relationships and the need to communicate without barriers. All this they do through movement, balances with the hand-to-hand technique, acrobatics, humor, and the composition of space amidst 250 kg of straw.

On the same Thursday, one of the highlights will come from Cirque Exalté from Belgium with the show "Furieuse, Tendresse". In 1975, Patti Smith released her album "Horses", a concentrate of wild rock and ardent poetry. Exactly 43 years later, as if by a dizzying coincidence, three enthusiasts take to the stage motivated by that contagious passion, rock music, and fuse multidisciplinary circus with underground music of the 60s and 70s. "Furieuse, Tendresse" is a cry. A show of exaltation born to express the intensity of life and the moment. We hope it will thrill the young and not-so-young audience that comes," says the festival director.

From Madrid will also arrive on Friday, and from the hand of the Elias Aguirre company, which is doing a double feature at the festival, the award-winning "Longfade". The work has won awards such as Unidanza and has toured five continents. This dance piece reflects, in terms of the philosopher Spinoza, a body that suffers an internal conflict, a poisoning. This situation will prolong itself in time enough to modify the body in its essence. It will never leave the process of intoxication; however, it will become strong, resistant.

INCREASINGLY MUSICAL

In recent years, the festival has also made a clear commitment to live music, with a daily concert at night. In this edition, the band in charge of closing the event will be the Barcelona Soul and primitive Rock'n'Roll band Shake, led by the powerful voice of Martell, who has been described as a direct heir to myths like James Brown and Carla Thomas, and driven by experienced musicians.

Although the cultural offer around Barcelona is wide during the first weekend of July and the offer of festivals around the country does not stop growing, Bipolart trusts in repeating the success of recent years that have brought thousands of people through Rambla Marina (space where small and medium-format shows are performed) and Plaza Lluís Companys i Jover (where long-duration and large-format shows are performed). "It's one more proposal, and being original is very difficult. The programming of festivals is quite similar, but we try to differentiate ourselves by quality, dedicating 51% of the budget to the artists' fees, and also offering all shows for free," concludes 'Joselito'.