PICK OF THE WEEK: Andorra (Pyrenees)
Main places:
Andorra la Vella, Escaldes-Engordany, San Julia de Loria, La Massana, Ordino, Encamp, Canillo, Pas de la Casa
FESTIVAL OF DANCE AND CULTURAL TRADITION
v Friday, 8th October from 18h – 21h, Saturday, 9th October from 10h – 21h and Sunday, 10th October from 10h – 17h in the Poble d’Ordino, Ordino (Free) CONTRADANS* The Festival is defined by the three syllables of its name: CON (contemporaneous/modern) TRA (tradition) and DANS (dance), as well as its main motto “From the roots to modernity”, a sample of how traditions have evolved to adapt to new times. Under the tutelage and accompaniment of the Esbart Valls del Nord, it will consist of performances by different international dance groups, as well as dance groups and artistic groups that have been created from popular culture.
Around this festival, there will also be other artisanal activities on the streets as part of a traditional craft fair where, in addition to exhibiting their work, artisans will offer practical workshops.
*CONTRADANS is the project that won the participatory process of the Comú d’Ordino for the 2021 budget.
CINEMA
v Monday 4th – Thursday, 7th October at 20.30h at the Cinemes Illa Carlemany, Escaldes-Engordany (in English). No Time to Die. Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. Starring: Daniel Craig, Ana de Armas, Rami Malek. The Story: James Bond has left active service. His peace is short-lived when Felix Leiter, an old friend from the CIA, turns up asking for help, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology. To book online go to https://cinemesilla.com/ Click on 007. Click on grey line for the date you want. Click on VOSE for English. Click on the + sign for the number of seats you want. Click continuar and then click on the seats you want – note they are all in pairs. Continuar again. Fill in the form and pay.
EXHIBITIONS
v Until Thursday, 14th October at Casa Rull Museum, La Massana. (Free admission. Limited capacity.) Women Of The World. An art exhibition originally created to be presented on March 8th (International Women’s Day), in Santander and on September 23rd in commemoration of the International Day against Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking in Women, in La Massana. Now Women of the World moves to Casa Rull, as a free exhibition, to enjoy the work in a cultured and protected atmosphere. The collection pays homage to womankind and, as a woman, the artist Ona Saumell, views feminine singularity without noise, only with colours and beauty. Every woman is unique and is made up of many colours, each colour makes up a part of her being. Black, absence of colour, welcomes all colours, all women, who shine due to their differences.
v Until Sunday, 31st October at La Peixera, Escaldes-Engordany. (Free Admission. Limited capacity) An Exhibition by Daniela Martins. The series that Daniela Martins exhibits at La Peixera revolves around the figure of Serge Gainsbourg, French singer, writer and film director. 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of his death. Serge Gainsbourg happens to be one of the artists Daniela Martins admires. It is for this reason that Daniela, who is also a mythomaniac, has wanted to pay her particular homage to Serge Gainsbourg and carry out a series of pictorial portraits inspired by her life and work.
The portraits that we can see in the exhibition of La Peixera were made between March 2nd and April, 2nd 2021. In the artistic universe and mythomania of Daniela, the dates had to be these to include the day and month of Serge Gainsbourg’s date of birth as well as the day and month of his death. Opening: Saturday, October 2nd at 18h
v Until Friday, 5th November at Galeria Alta, Chalet el Roure, above Anyós, La Massana 42º31’59.0″N1º31’38.9″E (Free admission by appointment. Limited capacity. [email protected] or www.galeriaalta.com or @galerialta) New Gallery. New exhibition. Vivian Maier: Black and White and Colour. The Galeria Alta opens its doors with a sample of the work of the acclaimed American photographer, Vivian Maier. The work of the enigmatic Vivian Maier is already inscribed in the history of twentieth-century photography, alongside big names in street photography, such as Helen Levitt, William Klein, Joel Meyerowitz and Garry Winogrand.
Vivian Maier (1926–2009), born in New York to a French mother and an Austro-Hungarian father, worked as a nanny for forty years. In her spare time, Maier took pictures, which she then jealously hid from the eyes of others. In many cases she did not see the result herself, although at times she was able to have a precarious darkroom mounted in the bathroom.
Her life is a mystery. She is said to have died in absolute poverty and to have lived on the streets for some time, until the children she had cared for in the 1950s bought her an apartment and paid her bills until the day of the her death in 2009.
Most of Maier’s work shows everyday scenes of the streets of Chicago and New York throughout the 1950s to 1980s. The photographs spontaneously capture the uniqueness of “urban America,” an everyday reality and characters whom the camera looks at on an equal footing, with an apparent sweetness that often contrasts with the harshness of
the reality it reflects, with a great ability to communicate both humour and tragedy.
Vivian Maier is considered the forerunner of self-portrait long before the advent of Instagram. Maier took many self-portraits, and showed herself reflected in shop windows and mirrors, or in the shadows she cast on the floor, always with the camera hanging around her neck. In her photographs there is also a taste for more formal, almost abstract experiments that play with light, geometric lines and reflections.
When, in 2007, a young Chicago historian, John Maloof, bought Vivian Maier’s abandoned belongings at a small neighbourhood auction, he stumbled upon an immense and unknown photographic work of more than 100,000 negatives, homemade footage, and sound recordings. Maloof then began a thorough investigation of Maier’s life and the recovery and protection of the archive of her work, which culminated in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Finding Vivian Maier” (2014 Available on Netflix).
Maier’s photographs have been the subject of several publications and have been exhibited in the world’s leading cultural institutions.
v Until Saturday, 6th November at the Plaça de les Fontetes, Museu del Còmic, La Massana. (Free activity. Number of places limited depending on the health situation.) Exhibition: Al Centro de la Tierra (In the Centre of the Earth) displaying the original illustrations by famous cartoonist, JAN. A review of Verne’s book, Journey to the Centre of the Earth from the characteristically humorous point of view of the cartoonist and his best known character: Superlopez.
OPENING HOURS
Monday: 15h to 19h.
Tuesday: 15h to 19h.
Wednesday: 10h to 14h.
Thursday: 15h to 19h.
Friday: 15h to 19h..
Saturday: 10h to 14h and 15h to 21h
v Until Sunday, 9th January, 2022 at the Thyssen Museum, Escaldes-Engordany. Talents with similar origins: from Rigalt to Puigdengolas. The exhibition, Talents with similar origins: from Rigalt to Puigdengolas, features a selection of paintings by Catalan artists that the Crèdit Andorrà art collection has been forging since 1989. Casas, Urgell, Mir or Meifrè are some of the protagonists of the show. The exhibition is complemented by some works from the Carmen Thyssen collection shared by the owner. Among the selected paintings, we will learn about the work of artists specializing in different types of landscape and portraiture, and other versatile people who reflect their expertise on canvas.
The exhibition takes a look at the work of Catalan artists from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, painters who agreed together on their training or who created their own school. The selection of exhibited works aims to show the similarities and divergences between Catalan painters of this period, the most unique styles and affinities in their work.
v Until Saturday, 8th January 2022 at the Espai Caldes, Escaldes-Engordany. Les Escaldes: Pioneers of the hotel industry 1900 – 1960. (Free entrance. Reservations on tel .: 890 879 or [email protected]) An historic walk through the most emblematic hotels in Escaldes that remind us of times past when the benefits of thermal water became a claim to attract a tourism of bathers. The exhibition, with nostalgia, recalls the history of these establishments but also that of their owners.
Les Escaldes: pioneers of the hotel industry 1900-1960 is presented with various areas consisting of photographic reproductions, images, objects and memories provided by individuals. The exhibition is complemented by a tour of the streets of the Upper Part, from the CAEE to the Espai Caldes with several photographic panels that testify to the many commercial activities that transformed the economy of Les Escaldes and the country.
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday from 9.30h – 13.30h and from 15h – 19h
Activities
· Guided tours for schoolchildren, individuals and groups round the exhibition.
· Routes: on Saturday, 2nd October at 17h: Water Itinerary trade route and on Saturday, 6th November at 17h: the pioneer route.
· In autumn, menus from the past with the touch of today’s chefs in the restaurants of Escaldes-Engordany.
v Until Sunday, 27th August 2023 at the Casa d’Areny-Plandolit Museum, Ordino. (Admission: 2.5€. Free on September 25th and 26th.) Abracadabra: Illusionism and magic in Cal Plandolit. Discover one of the least known facets of the Areny-Plandolit family: the connection between some of its members with the world of magic, a field in which they stood out prominently on a Spanish and international scale during the first half of the twentieth century.
CONFERENCES Remember they are all in Catalan unless otherwise stated.
v Monday, 4th October at 19h, ONLINE CONFERENCE IN ENGLISH with Catalan simultaneous translation. Summer and Autumn University of Andorra 2021. The European Union: challenges and perspectives. After a period of inactivity, forced by COVID-19, the Summer and Autumn University proposes a calendar of sessions spread over the last months of 2021 with a combination of face-to-face and online formats. In collaboration with the Secretary of State for European Affairs, it reflects on Europe at a crucial time in its history following high-impact global events such as the pandemic and Brexit. ‘The European Union and Brexit’ presented by Robin Niblett, political scientist and director of the Chatham House think tank.
Summary: Britain has adapted to the difficult task of making the new Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU work in practice. As expected, the TCA (EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement) has posed some difficult, though no bigger, problems than dealing with the trade relationship between Britain and Northern Ireland. Along with disputes over COVID-19 vaccine exports, the risk is that the relationship between the UK and the EU will deteriorate before it can be established in a new modus vivendi. How could the relationship between the UK and the EU evolve in 2021 and the following year? And to what extent could close alignment between the UK and EU member states in most foreign policy challenges (Russia, China and the fight against climate change, for example) help stabilize the relationship? Will the Biden administration also prove to be a positive external influence in the relationship between the UK and the EU?
v Tuesday, 5th October at 19h in the Escades-Engordany assembly hall. (Free) Transversal Cycle: The poetry of matter (in Spanish) with Carmen Santana. A series of lectures in which culture is traversed by various disciplines and fields of knowledge to become the seed of ideas and new approaches. It is at the confluence of disciplines and people from diverse backgrounds that an interesting space for transformation and learning is generated. From the urgency of building a city from a systemic vision based on the symbiotic economy arises a question: how urban planners and architects can contribute to accelerating the necessary and urgent economic, ecological, energy and social transition to redraw a new course more supportive and respectful of our planet? The solution starts from matter as a structuring element.
Culturally yours,
Clare.
_____________
Look for about the author of the blog Clare Allcard
_____________
Look here for the whole blog “Cultural events in Andorra with Clare Allcard
See also Andorra travel guide
See also Pyrenees travel guide
See also France travel guide
See also Spain travel guide
