Dansa València, the dance and movement arts festival of the Valencian Community organized by the Institut Valencià de Cultura (IVC), and the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía host the world premiere this Thursday of Las hijas de Bernarda, the new creation by Taiat Dansa.
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Co-directed by Meritxell Barberá and Inma García, the piece offers a contemporary version of Federico García Lorca’s drama La casa de Bernarda Alba, which also includes original texts by screenwriter and film director Paula Ortiz, with dramaturgy by Roberto Fratini. Ortiz carried out a film adaptation of Bodas de Sangre in 2015, titled La novia. “She is a great researcher of Lorca’s figure and a creator deeply connected to his poetic universe,” Barberá notes in a press release. “We knew Bernarda was an important story for her and we deeply admire her cinema, where there is a very choreographic view of the body and staging,” she adds.
This choreographic reading focuses on the confrontation between the principle of authority and the desire for freedom, as well as other major themes of the original text such as oppression, social injustice, hypocrisy, and structural violence exerted on women. The Valencian arts center will host the world premiere on Friday, April 17, 2026, at the Teatre Martín i Soler, with additional performances on April 18 and 19, within the context of the festival celebration.
The deputy director of Performing Arts at the IVC and director of Dansa València, María José Mora, emphasizes the importance of this co-production between Dansa València and the Palau de les Arts and the role of the festival as a professional platform. “The programming of Las hijas de Bernarda during the dates of Dansa València facilitates its visibility in a context where national and international programmers and professionals converge, favoring its dissemination beyond our scope.”
“Since 2019, dance has been part of the Palau de les Arts season as its own cycle that consolidates and grows with each edition, shaping a multifaceted proposal that invites discovering dance from multiple artistic and aesthetic perspectives, while maintaining a firm commitment to the talent and creative fabric of the Valencian Community,” states the artistic director of Les Arts, Jesús Iglesias Noriega.
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Since choreographer Mats Ek premiered ‘La Maison de Bernarda’ in 1978, this Lorca classic had not been approached with such rigor from contemporary dance. Taiat Dansa now takes up the text to transfer it to the body, movement, and a stage device that turns the confinement of the five daughters into the true tragic core of the work.
The proposal places the audience in a ‘voyeur’ position. “It’s as if the audience functions as Big Brother observing the experiment of depriving five women of freedom in a closed space, under the absolute authority of a mother,” Barberá maintains.
The five daughters are performed by seven dancer-performers: Lara Misó, Julia Cambra, Irene de la Rosa, Mariona Jaume Camps, Eila Vals, Wilma Puentes, and Celia Sandoya. In this version, Bernarda Alba does not appear physically on stage.
For the creators, Bernarda embodies a much broader system: “She represents the principle of authority of a dark, castrating Spain that repressed women’s freedom and denied them any capacity for decision-making. It was an everyday reality at the time. The extraordinary thing was that Lorca dared to tell it.”
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