In this edition, four countries will exhibit theatrical and dance works. Decentralizing the event is a pending task. The Foundation for Performing and Audiovisual Arts plans to hold the 13th version of the International Performing Arts Festival (FAE Panama 2024) from April 17 to 20. But it’s been 20 years since the FAE has promoted contemporary theater and dance in the country.

The FAE Panama began as a biennial in 2004, to become an annual event in 2019. “The FAE began in 2004 because we considered that the development of contemporary dance and theater was very slow compared to what happened in other countries. A group of artists decided to do this festival; it was the first festival that covered theater and dance in Panama,” said Roberto Enrique King, president of the FAE.

Two decades later, King believes that thanks to the festival, theater and dance have had an important development in the country. The audience has grown and events related to the disciplines as well. “Since the beginning, the festival has given high-level shows and has offered training workshops. We have brought teachers from all over the world, both theater and contemporary dance,” the cultural manager told La Estrella de Panamá.

A pending issue is to be able to take the FAE to other parts of the country, but that entails costs. There have been conversations with managers from different parts of the country, since currently the organizers of the FAE cannot hold a festival in other latitudes. “We concentrate all our effort to get the festival to be done in the city. Once we have the guaranteed festival here, we will be able to make the extensions. We can’t do both things in parallel, precisely because of the budgetary constraints we have.”

For this edition, the FAE reduced the number of its activities due to lack of budget. It will be done for four days, instead of the week customary by its organizers. The foundation “has been suffering a deterioration in its financial profile and image for five years, due to the fact that it has not yet been able to collect the important pending sponsorship of the Mayor’s Office of Panama of $50,000, for the realization of the festival in 2019 within the framework of the fifth centenary of the city, since despite having an endorsed agreement and a letter from the current mayor of the district [José Luis Fábrega] that confirms that the payment is in process, this has not been made due to different municipal bureaucratic delays,” he said in a press release King when he made the announcement of the cut.

“The response to our sponsorship management, in these electoral times, has been low and slow, both in the public and private spheres, which does not make it possible for us to maintain the original design of this scenic meeting that now celebrates 20 years of its creation,” King added.

To decentralize the FAE it is necessary that there is a counterpart, for King this means that a cultural manager, anywhere in the interior, receives the artist.

“We have had the availability, that is, if we have an international artist, for example, for a week it could be taken, but it would have to be planned for the costs they can carry; the counterpart has to pay for the hotel, food, transportation and pay them.” “Since cultural management in the interior of the country is not developed, managers do not dare, since when they are told what they have to cover as a counterpart, that is where interest comes. Because they believe that artists work for free, artists work and charge for their functions. To get the artists to reach the interior there has to be a great sponsorship for the FAE, or that managers, in each of the places of the interior, manage their local sponsorships. And neither of the two things has been possible,” he said.

The international works will be presented between the National Theater, the Athenaeum of the City of Knowledge and the Theater in Circle and will be, from France, dance with the Resodancer Company with the piece ‘Prologue’; a work inspired by the universe of Alfred Hitchcock. While Rey Marciali Producciones will come from Argentina with the presentation of ‘La Celestina: Tragicomedia de Lita’, a contemporary version of the well-known work on love and death among lovers.

From Brazil, the Giro 8 Company will present ‘It would all start again: María Bethania’, a piece that revolves around love and its manifestations, relying on realities that cross contemporary relationships. With songs and poems interpreted by the famous Brazilian singer-songwriter Maria Bethânia as a background, the show presents the intense faces and nuances of that deep and uncontrolling feeling that has always shaken humanity.

On the part of Panama you will be able to see, from Malamaña Teatro, ‘Tía Sam’, written, directed and performed by Maritza Vernaza, who reinterprets the life of the so-called zonians in the old Canal Zone in the 1940s, to be presented in the library of the ACP. And the production company El Saloncito de Abdiel will present ‘Diario de un loco’, an adaptation of Gogol’s classic story about an official obsessed with his boss’s daughter.

This piece is written, directed and performed by Abdiel Tapia. In national dance there will be the pieces ‘Horas’ by Andrea González, in which two people who are waiting for something or someone, despair. There will also be the piece ‘Bruta’ by Carla Lozano; ‘Bruta’ questions “who we are and how we are supposed to be, both in the Espacio Creativo de Santa Ana Foundation,” the press release detailed.

The FAE Training Laboratory will present in the City of the Arts the theatrical workshops: of Clown Theatral, dictated by the artists of Mexico, Silvia Merlo and Benjamín Pavón, and of Psychodrama by the Venezuelan specialists based in Panama, Patricia and Ariadne Betancourt. And dance master classes with the choreographers of the companies of France, Laura Lamy and Tristan Robilliard; of Brazil, Joisy Amorim, and of Panama, Andrea González and Carla Lozano. There will also be a conversation with the Resodancer Company of France, in the French Alliance.

With ‘El FAE al aire’ the festival will close, on Saturday 20 from 4:00 p.m. in the Cathedral Square, with a family artistic and cultural afternoon, which in addition to a craft and gastronomic fair will feature the shows ‘Poli Aquatics’, Peripecias: trip with Luca and ‘Cerrando mundo mágico’.