By Lorraine Gabina – EM TV International
Valdivia, in Southern Chile, witnessed an extraordinary performance by over 200 acrobats and a theatre group on Saturday, January 16.
The inaugural event featured spectacular acrobatic performances to a crowd of about 50,000 people.
The event marked the inauguration of the naming of Valdivia as the American Capital of Culture 2016.
The Catalan theatre company, La Fura dels Baus, performed in a high-flying, acrobatic event with about 200 local and regional acrobats and musicians, opening a special year for Valdivia. The performance was a tribute to the brotherhood between man and nature.
Macarena Ojeda, a young resident of Valdivia said, “I thought it was very interesting and beautiful. I found it was a chance for people to get together and get to know something culturally new and from these art shows that we usually don’t see here. So the fact that they’ve done it in this public space, and that it’s free, it’s something that’s much more accessible to the people.”
An orchestra composed of the Philharmonic of the Region of Los Rios, the Chamber Orchestra of Valdivia and the Choir of the Universidad Austral de Chile collaborated to perform an accompanying interpretation of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.
La Fura dels Baus, whose name means “The Ferret from Els Baus,” is a street art and theatre performance troupe founded in Barcelona in 1979. Well known for breaking the wall between spectacle and spectators, they often incorporate the participation of local acrobats, dancers and other artists into their performances. The group produced the opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.
