Three productions, one dancer: a season profile at Figueres a Escena

In the cobbled streets of Figueres, where the wind drifts down from the Albera mountains and the light catches the pale stone of Teatre El Jardí, a familiar figure can often be seen moving between rehearsal rooms. Laia Vilanova, a local dancer whose presence has grown into part of the city's rhythm, is preparing for a demanding season ahead. Across three productions staged between Sala La Cate and the main theatre, she will move between contemporary dance, physical theatre, and a piece devised for very young audiences.

This season marks something of a milestone, for a performer able to trace her earliest steps back to the Salle Polivalent and ATEB. She trained through the organisation's youth programme before moving on to study contemporary dance in Barcelona. Returning home with a broader vocabulary of movement, she has since become one of the trusted collaborators that directors call upon when a production demands both technical precision and emotional openness.

Audiences familiar with her work will recognise her particular gift for stillness as much as for motion — a quality that has drawn quiet comparisons to the groundedness of companies like Bangarra Dance Theatre when they tour. Like the Australian ensembles that pass through venues such as the Sydney Opera House or the Arts Centre Melbourne, Laia's practice is rooted in place but speaks fluently to international stages. Her triple bill gives a clear window onto the breadth of what Figueres a Escena offers, from the most demanding contemporary dance to the most tender work for the very young.

A local path through ATEB and beyond

ATEB has long served as a creative cradle for many of the dancers who now appear on the Figueres stage. Laia joined at seven, attending Saturday classes in the same rooms that today accommodate community workshops. The training was rigorous, but the teachers were equally attentive to playful exploration — a balance that still shapes how she approaches a role. The autodidactic spirit the school nurtures has stayed with her, and she now teaches some of the same classes she once took.

After secondary school, she moved to Barcelona, where she spent four years at a conservatoire. She returned to the Empordà with a particular interest in how movement can carry narrative weight — a thread that connects all three of this season's productions. Her trajectory mirrors that of many Australian dancers who, after training in Sydney or Melbourne, bring back a layered practice to regional scenes from the Illawarra to the Hunter Valley. That return is rarely a step backwards; instead, it tends to seed new artistic vocabularies into the home stage.

Three productions, three conversations with the audience

The triple bill is unusual even by Figueres a Escena's varied standards, where a single season might span opera, circus, family theatre, and cinema within the same week. Laia's three roles have been chosen to showcase that breadth while allowing her to refine a recurring question: how can a body on stage make space for the audience's attention rather than competing with it?

The first production is an evening-length contemporary dance piece staged in Sala La Cate, an intimate room of around two hundred seats and one of the Empordà's most responsive venues. The work, directed by a visiting choreographer from Barcelona, is built around a single hour of unbroken choreography that examines grief through abstract movement. Rehearsals have been intense, with the company gathering for two weeks in the foothills before moving into the venue. The opening weekend coincides with the Melbourne International Arts Festival, a fixture she has followed from afar, and the coincidence has shaped how she imagines the audience arriving.

The second and third productions could hardly be more different in scale or register. One is a physical theatre work for adult audiences that fuses puppetry, mime, and choreographed ensemble movement. The third is devised for children under five, a category that Figueres a Escena has been quietly championing through bespoke programming. Together, the trio reads as a portrait of the organisation's philosophy: demanding work for connoisseurs, generous work for neighbours, tender work for very young viewers.

Movement, puppetry, and the living object

The puppetry-infused production is a co-creation with a small Catalan company whose previous work has toured internationally, including to festivals in Edinburgh. Laia's role is less about manipulation than about dancing beside the puppets, building a shared stage vocabulary with objects that have weight, breath, and an occasional stubbornness. The collaboration has required her to rethink her sense of scale: a gesture that reads well across a large auditorium can feel monumental in a tight ensemble scene, and the puppet's silhouette often sets the room's true measure.

This is the territory documented by platforms like the puppet24 platform, which catalogue the breadth of contemporary puppet practice across Europe. Producers across regional Australia, from Adelaide's Festival Centre to the Brisbane Powerhouse, have begun to programme similar hybrid works, recognising that audiences who travel to see Bell Shakespeare's productions or the slate of Australian Theatre for Young People are hungry for this register. Laia's approach — to treat the puppet as a co-performer rather than a prop — fits naturally into that conversation. Her ATEB training, which included modules on object manipulation, has returned to her hands in unexpected forms.

A tender vocabulary for the very young

The third production in the season is the one Laia speaks about most carefully. Devised for audiences from zero to five, the piece unfolds inside Sala La Cate's smaller configuration, with cushions and a single low platform. The choreography is built from simple motifs — a lifted arm, a kneeling descent, a repeated breath — that invite the youngest viewers to mirror, anticipate, and respond. For Laia, this work is as technically demanding as the abstract piece, though the demands are different. A toddler's attention is sovereign and unpredictable; the dance must be ready to wait, to repeat, to begin again.

Programming for very young viewers has become a quiet specialism at Figueres a Escena, and the approach has been refined across recent seasons. A recent feature on the organisation's news page traces how productions are adapted for young audiences, from shortened run times to careful calibration of light and sound. Laia has been closely involved in those conversations, particularly around how a dancer's breath can replace the spoken word. The work has drawn interest from international programmers, including those curating early-years strands at the Adelaide Festival and the Perth International Arts Festival.

Rehearsal days and the rhythm of the season

Between productions, Laia's week has a shape that anyone working across multiple arts organisations would recognise. Mornings often begin with a class at ATEB, either teaching a youth group or taking a session herself. Afternoons are spent in rehearsal at one of the two venues, weekends at public workshops and post-show discussions. The schedule leaves little room for the long lunches the Empordà is famous for, though she tries to keep Sunday afternoons free for family.

She is honest about the costs of a triple season. Sleep is rationed, and the body demands more careful maintenance than it once did. The physical therapy she receives every fortnight is partly funded by the organisation, a meaningful investment in artists who carry the work. She is also aware that not every dancer gets to programme a season this way; the opportunity came through years of working with directors who trust her range. As she moves between the three productions, she carries the sense that each sharpens the others: the abstract piece gives her stamina, the puppetry work gives her play, and the early-years piece gives her patience.

Tickets for all three productions, alongside the broader Figueres a Escena season, are available through the organisation's website and at the box offices of Teatre El Jardí and Sala La Cate. The triple bill offers a rare chance to follow a single dancer across three very different productions in a single season, and to see how a local artist can hold an entire programming philosophy in her body.