Performing arts talent from Spain and Portugal will form the focus of the Kennedy Center’s 2015 festival.
‘Iberian Suite: arts remix across continents’ will feature a programme of contemporary music, dance and theatre over three weeks in March 2015.
Alicia Adams, Kennedy Center vice president of international programming and dance, said: ‘This festival will offer an extensive and vibrant panorama of contemporary cultural traditions whose roots are more than a millennium ago.
‘The intersections of arts across continents show the movement and metaphor, the quality, plurality, and creativeness of the various genres and trends that have emerged from contact and collaboration between artists that share the Spanish and Portuguese languages.’
Spanish names on the line-up include flamenco troupe Compañía María Pagés (pictured) and María Muñoz. Both will make their US debuts at the festival.
The theatre and music programmes are dominated by Portuguese artists, and feature Lisbon-based theatre company Mala Voadora and fado singer Camané.
Performers and companies from Brazil, Mexico and the US will bring a broader international scope to the festival, including the Washington DC-based PostClassical Ensemble, an experimental orchestral ‘laboratory’ specialising in music from 20th century Spain and the Americas.
Next season will also see the Kennedy Center stage its first ever musical. With lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty, Little Dancer will be loosely based on the young ballerina who posed for Edgar Degas’ famous sculpture Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. The production will be choreographed by Tony Award-winner, Susan Stroman.