The Barcelona artist, one of the innovators of flamenco dance, presents on October 18 and 19 the piece that closes his trilogy after The jump y Dance of beasts
Madrid, August 2025
Survivor, the closing of the trilogy that the dancer Jesús Carmona (Barcelona, 1985) promoted in 2020 from The jump and later with Dance of beasts, It delves into the world of the mental illness of personality dissociation and its relationship with the artist himself, as the creator of different characters throughout his career. Teatros del Canal in the Community of Madrid will host two performances of this flamenco dance work, the premiere in the Madrid region, on October 18 and 19.
Carmona exhibited The jump in 2020. This reflection on masculinity in relation to fatherhood was followed a year later by Dance of beasts, An exploration into the artist's pain and inner beasts, learning to live and dance with them. Both works, according to Carmona himself, carried a "strong emotional charge and an intense knowledge and exploration of the subconscious." Their conception took place during the artist's years of consecration, after an early start on stage, at the age of 16, consistent with his studies at the Institut del Teatre y Dansa de Barcelona and apprenticeship with artists such as Antonio Canales, Eva Yerbabuena, Domingo Ortega, Manuela Carrasco, and Ángel Rojas. In 2020, he received the National Dance Award; in 2021, he won the Benois Award for best dancer; and in 2022, the Max Award for the Performing Arts for the second installment of his trilogy..
From the emotional charge and the exploration of the subconscious of his previous works he came to Survivor to conclude this cycle about the world “where our fears and uncertainties are buried, but where the most creative ideas and greatest passions also emerge, where many of our dreams and hopes grow.”
Carmona left from The question of how to detect, express, communicate, and, in this case, dance, the processes of self-construction, and how personality disorders such as dissociative personality disorder can affect them. Based on this question, Carmona held a series of theoretical meetings with psychiatrists, philosophers, neuroscientists, and other experts in the field, who provided him with theoretical and practical materials to put together his show.
With these materials, the dancer, under the direction of María Cabeza de Vaca, conceived a work in Four scenes that reflect certain aspects of the artist's psychology: his presence in the media, his exposure to the public, his personality derived from his childhood life experiences, and his social relationships with friends.
For all these moments, the artist creates just as many personalities. “Depending on the environment I find myself in,” Carmona explains, “my 'original' personality highlights certain aspects and behaviors and obscures others. Could we change so much that we no longer recognize the original 'me'? Uncomfortable with this sense of being an imposter, I explore and defend the theory that human beings, as a means of social protection, develop a kind of chameleon-like disorder, which allows a unique personality to change to adapt to its environment and thus find the approval of others.”
