La Ribot & Asier Puga

La Ribot 

Born in Madrid, La Ribot lives in Geneva and works internationally. She has been awarded a Golden Lion by the Venice Dance Bienniale in 2020, celebrating the whole of her career, the Swiss Grand Award for Dance by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture in 2019, the Award for Plastic Arts by the community of Madrid, Spain in 2018, and the Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts and the National Dance Award by the Spanish Ministry of Culture in 2015 and 2000, respectively. “La Ribot is a choreographer, a dancer and an artist. Her work, which emerged at the end of Spain’s transition to democracy in the 1980s, has profoundly altered the field of contemporary dance. She defies the traditional frameworks and formats of both stage and museum, borrowing freely from the vocabularies of theater, visual arts, performance, film, and video to realize a conceptual displacement of choreography. Solo shows, collaborative explorations, experiments with amateurs, creative installations, and cinematography characterize her multifaceted work, which never ceases to challenge the rights of the body” (Marcella Lista, writer and New Media curator - Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2020). Her choreographic work has been presented at the Tate Modern (London), the Théâtre de la Ville de Paris, the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), the Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Aichi Trienniale (Nagoya, Japan), the Soledad Lorenzo gallery (Madrid), the Fondation Serralves (Porto), Art Unlimited – Art Basel, the S.M.A.K. (Ghent), and the MUAC (Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico DF). Her visual art is part of the public and private collections of the Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the CNAP –Centre national des arts plastiques (Paris), the MUSAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León), the Artium (Centro - Museo vasco de arte contemporáneo), and the FRAC Lorraine (Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain), among others.

Asier Puga – conductor

Asier Puga, conductor and artistic director of OCAZEnigma, the Zaragoza Auditorium Chamber Orchestra, trained as a conductor at the Royal College of Music in London, graduating with Distinction. He also attended the Higher School of Music of the Basque Country (Musikene) in Spain. In addition to conducting, Asier studied composition and, in 2016, was selected to join the prestigious London Sinfonietta Academy. Since then, he has conducted the Basque Country Symphony Orchestra, the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra, the Explore Ensemble, the Enigma group, the Covent Garden Chamber Orchestra, the Burgos Symphony Orchestra, the RCM Philharmonic Orchestra, the RCM Symphony Orchestra, the Liceu XXI Ensemble (Higher School of Music of Liceu - Barcelona), the Classical Orchestra of Lanzarote, the Symphonic Wind Band of Vitoria and Bilbao, the Bizkaia Symphony Orchestra and the RCM New Ensemble. Asier has also performed at several renowned festivals and institutions such as Kings Place, the Kursaal Auditorium, the Palau de la Música de Valencia, the Teatros del Canal (Madrid), the Musical Fortnight in San Sebastián, the Juan March Foundation, the Britten Theatre, the Euskalduna Palace, the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, Alexandra Palace, and the Guggenheim Museum. In 2014, Asier made his debut as an opera conductor with F. J. Haydn's Armida, and in 2015 he conducted the premiere of Singularity, the third opera by English composer Michael Oliva.  His increasing interest in the voice has led to collaborations with numerous vocalists, including Helena Orcoyen, Maria Ostroukhova, and Maciej Nerkowski, just to name a few. Passionate about contemporary music, Asier has conducted the premieres of 50 works in both Spain and England, and has worked with renowned composers such as Núria Giménez-Comas, Iñaki Estrada, Nuria Núñez, José Luis Campana, Mikel Urquiza, Lisa Illean, Benjamin Oliver, and Cheryl Frances-Hoad, among others. He also writes articles about music and contemporary art for various magazines.