SIGNS. ISABEL VILLANUEVA AND ANTONIO RUZ

Viola player Isabel Villanueva and choreographer Antonio Ruz work together in this encounter between disciplines that proposes a dialogue between sound, movement, voice, objects, and light.

Approximate duration: 50minutes.

Price: €16 and €12. Special discounts with Youth Card and PIC card (Pamplona Iruña Card)
Access the waiting list here to get your ticket.

At the end of the performance, Isabel Villanueva and Antonio Ruz will hold a meeting with the audience.

Following its premiere on February 20 and 21 at the Teatro Central in Seville,Signos arrives at the University of Navarra Museum. A show in which violist Isabel Villanueva and choreographer Antonio Ruz work together in a meeting of disciplines that proposes, without prejudice, a dialogue between sound, movement, voice, objects, and light.

With meticulous staging and lighting, the beautiful and complex sound architecture of the pieces and musical miniatures by composers György Kurtág and Johann Sebastian Bach, masterfully performed by Villanueva, will merge with the physical score proposed by Ruz and a choreographic dramaturgy that blends the dreamlike, the poetic, and the unsettling.

Music program

György Kurtág,Signs, Games and Messages, for solo viola Johann Sebastian Bach, Partita No. 2 BWV for solo violin (version for viola)

Artistic credits

Musical direction and live performance (viola): Isabel Villanueva

Stage direction, choreography, and performance: Antonio Ruz

Lighting Design: Olga García

Costumes and set design: Antonio Ruz Company

Production: Paola Villegas – Spectare

Distribution: Valeria Cosi - Tina Agency

Promotional photography and video: La Famosa Productora

External eye: Julián Lázaro

ISABEL VILLANUEVA

The prestigious magazine The Strad describes her as "an artist who takes risks," and Pizzicato Magazine describes her as "a sensitive artist who knows how to immerse herself in the depths of music." Villanueva defends music with passion, promoting her instrument with her own voice, combined with her charismatic performances, full of expressiveness and beautiful sound, which immediately connect with the audience.

Isabel Villanueva has had a busy career that has taken her to play with major orchestras in Latin America, Russia, the Middle East, China, and Europe. Intense, lively, and imaginative, she is extremely active as a concert performer, teacher, and researcher, premiering contemporary works, performing chamber music projects with prestigious colleagues, and launching her own festival, Pamplona Reclassics.

The important awards she has received attest to her dazzling career and her boundless energy and talent. Winner of the 2015 RNE El Ojo Crítico Classical Music Award and the 2019 Classical Music Culture Award from the Community of Madrid, among others, Villanueva is one of the most highly regarded and accomplished violists working today.

As a soloist, he has performed with prestigious orchestras and appeared at major venues and festivals. His first album, Bohèmes, received rave reviews and cemented his reputation when it won the award for Best Classical Music Album of the Year at the 2018 MIN Independent Music Awards, the first time a viola album has received this award.

Isabel Villanueva plays an Enrico Catenar viola (Turin, 1670).

ANTONIO RUZ

An independent choreographer and dancer, Antonio Ruz is one of the most prominent creators in dance in our country. His discourse is based on a marked interest in the more open nature of dance; an openness that is the result of both his extensive training and the development of his creative homily, framed within contemporary dance, but also within Spanish dance and flamenco and the encounter between the two.

Antonio Ruz (Córdoba, 1976) trained in flamenco, Spanish dance, and classical ballet. He began his professional career with the Víctor Ullate Ballet and later joined the Ballet of the Grand Théâtre de Genève and the Ballet de l'Opéra de Lyon. In 2006, he returned to Spain to join the Compañía Nacional de Danza, under the direction of Nacho Duato.

Collaborations with other artists and disciplines are a constant feature of this choreographer's work. In this vein, since 2007 he has been developing an interesting creative relationship with the company Sasha Waltz & Guests (Berlin) and with the Spanish dance company Estévez-Paños & Compañía.

It was in 2009, as a result of a personal and artistic need, that he created his own company.

In 2019, he was commissioned by the University of Navarra Museum to direct the creative project Transmutación (2019).

Among the mentions and awards that mark his career are the recent 2018 National Dance Award in the Creation Category and the 2013 RTVE "Ojo Crítico" Dance Award. Ruz is a member of the Spanish Academy of Performing Arts.