Bienal de Artes Vivas opens in Santa Clara

Pontevedra is trying something pretty ambitious with Santa Clara. Instead of treating the old convent as a beautiful backdrop, it is turning the place into a working machine for contemporary performance. The first Bienal de Artes Vivas was presented this week, and the festival will run from July 2 to July 12 inside the convent’s church, choir space, and gardens. The bet is simple — if you want a historic site to matter now, you have to fill it with living work, not just preservation talk. (lavozdegalicia.es) ### What is this event, exactly? This is the first edition of Pontevedra’s Bienal de Artes Vivas, a new program focused on performance, dance, music, theater, poetry, circus, and other forms that depend on bodies, sound, and presence in real time. The edition carries the title “Nas marxes,” and it was presented by the Deputación de Pontevedra with Iñaki Martínez Antelo as curator. More than 20 artists are involved. (depo. ([lavozdegalicia.es)ded spaces — old, enclosed, and historically quiet. Organizers are flipping that identity. They want the church, the coro, and the gardens to act as active stages for experimental work. That contrast is the hook — contemporary live art inside a place built for silence and seclusion. (lavozdegalicia.es)ram notable? The numbers are strong for a first edition. The biennial will stage 22 performances involving artists from six nationalities and seven disciplines. Four of the works are absolute premieres, and 14 more will be shown in Galicia for the first time. So this is not just a local sampler — a lot of the programming is being positioned as genuinely new to the region. (lavozdegalicia.es)hey actually bringing in? Not one lane. The lineup mixes dance, sound work, theater, performance, poetry, and circus, which tells you the festival is leaning toward hybrid forms rather than neat categories. “Live arts” is basically a useful umbrella for work that happens in front of you and often spills across disciplines. That also makes Santa Clara’s different spaces useful — a garden can host one kind of piece, while the church can hold something more formal or acoustic. (atlantico.net) ### Why launch it now? Because Pontevedra has been building a broader cultural strategy around Santa Clara. The biennial was first announced in December 2025 as a new event for the years between the city’s better-known Bienal de Arte. The idea is continuity — not one big exhibition every so often, but a steadier cultural calendar that keeps the site active and gives Pontevedra a stronger profile in contemporary creation. (farodevigo.es)t seems to be people who might come for the space, the novelty, or the mix of formats. Live arts can be more accessible than they sound — you do not need to decode a wall label for half an hour. You show up, and something happens in front of you. That matters for a city trying to widen its audience. (farodevigo.es) ### So what’s (farodevigo.es). A first biennial will not settle that on its own. But this one gives the project a shape: international artists, premieres, a defined curatorial idea, and a strong use of the building itself. Basically, Pontevedra is testing whether heritage can be an engine for new work instead of a container for old stories. (lavozdegalicia.es)0003_202605P5C4995.htm)) ### Bottom line The news is not just that a festival is coming in July. It is that Pontevedra has decided what Santa Clara should be for. If this works, the convent stops being a restoration project and starts acting like a live cultural institution. (lavozdegalicia.es)