María Jurado: "I embody a struggle that identifies us all a little"

BarcelonaThe latest piece by dancer, choreographer and performer María Jurado (Murcia, 1996) is born from a feeling that has haunted her in recent times. "I feel like I am constantly projecting myself onto an infinite road where I never stop parading, but which leads nowhere. I want to go to a place that I don't know what it is and I never end up getting there either," says the artist. Wrapped in this feeling of confusion, one day she imagined an angel stepping onto the stage and, from this image, she began to build Angelical.

The figure of the angel is the central axis of the work, which flees from religious aspects to focus, above all, on the idea of transparency and purity in relation to the present. "Angels are witnesses of reality without participating in it. I relate this directly to the contemporary artist: I miss having a stance in current artistic pieces, that they go beyond relating culture to well-being and that they be artifacts for the development of critical thinking," expresses Jurado. The show premieres this Thursday at the Teatre Alegria in Terrassa, as part of the TNT festival.

Angelical is Jurado's first soloand her third piece, which arrives after Black sun (2021) and Spooky (2024). Although the artist's training is in contemporary dance, her proposals are situated more in the line of performance and seek to provide answers to existential questions that are crossing her mind at that moment. "Based on philosophical themes, I build a staging with certain conditions. My body enters it and relates to it. I start from the action and concrete images, but each performance is different," points out Jurado. In the case of Angelical, the stage space resembles a half-abandoned warehouse and contains elements such as a greasy mattress and a large Hollywood H that represents the search for success through the craft. For the dramaturgy, the artist has let herself be guided by the thought of Simone Weil and Julia Kristeva. "They are two great women and reading them has contributed a lot to me. Maybe I don't understand it all 100%, but they inspire me," affirms Jurado. The piece, without text, contains original music by Macarena Bielski, who has worked to give the work "the feeling of an ambient journey, reinforcing its sensitivity".

Although the seed of Angelical is a personal sensation, Jurado seeks for the audience to connect with it through their own experience. "I feel that I embody a struggle that identifies us all a little. There are many people like me, who feel lost and are eager to continue, to find a small light," the artist highlights. On stage, she uses the angel as an ambiguous figure and contrasts the idea of good with the more abject part of people. "To achieve good, you have to follow dynamics that generate neutrality, while evil is suppressed or hidden. But both parts are within us: we are neither one nor the other. We simply coexist with them," the artist reflects. After training at the Conservatory of Music, Jurado studied choreography at the Theatre Institute, where she received the dance award for Black sun. "I came to Barcelona because the type of art I was interested in is here, as is the relationship with Europe and with performance –she explains–. I have been living here for ten years now and I already feel like I'm from here".

Prohibited not to play

Angelical is part of the TNT festival program, which this year is structured under the motto "Prohibited not to play" and will take place from this Thursday until Sunday. Among the featured pieces are Zero by Manuel Rodríguez, El discurso by Rosa Romero and (cau) by Quim Bigas. Pere Jou and Aurora Bauzà will also be at the festival with The wolf's light does not weigh and Banda Esfèrica will bring Frogs in the sky, water on the earth! The main novelty of the 19th edition is TNT in the squares, a new programming line that brings live arts to public spaces to reach new viewers with six free performances.