Bogotá theaters, concert halls, exhibition spaces and Cinemateque (Cinemateca Distrital) are all reopening to the public from this weekend as part of the city’s cultural reactivation. The return to in-house events comes as the capital almost completes a full year since the first case of coronavirus was confirmed on March 6, 2020.
All venues belonging to the District Arts Institute have implemented biosafety measures from social distancing to use of protective elements and crowd controls. “Every day we work so that our audiences, our communities, have access to the transforming power of art. We are constantly witnessing what the arts achieve in people’s lives, and that is why we believe in the importance of the reactivation of the arts sector in Bogotá,” states Idartes’ Catalina Valencia.
After a year in which the private and public cultural institutions were forced to close to strict quarantines declared by both local and national governments, Bogotá’s emblematic theater and music hall Teatro Jorge Eliécer Gaitán will stage on March 12 the production Campo Muerto by the urban contemporary dance company Danza Común.
One of Bogotá’s outdoor venues, La Media Torta, known for jump-starting new musical acts and alternative festivals, opens to the general public with a soon-to-be-announced program. The city’s largest art gallery, Galería Santa Fe, launches on March 13 the National Salon of Young Artists making visible emerging talent to in-situ audiences. And for cinephiles, Bogotá’s Cinemateca will screen premieres of national and international films. On March 8 to mark International Women’s Day, the center’s new Movable Stage will present the first edition of the Colombian Performance Biennial.
The Teatro Colón inaugurates its 2021 season with a repertoire of Bach, Mozart and Brahms performed by the National Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Adrián Chamorro. The first concert takes place on March 4 with the curtain rising at 7:30 pm. The next classical concert inside this historic edifice takes place on March 24 with Mozart’s Symphony No.41 (Jupiter) conducted by the theater’s musical director Olivier Grangean.
In keeping with its tradition of welcoming to the city renowned soloists, vocalists and many of the world’s most important orchestras, Bogotá’s largest cultural center Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo brings to its main stage the accordionists of the coastal music genre vallenato on March 13. The preview to the 54th Vallenato Legend Festival (that takes place every April in Valledupar), is followed on March 26 with the Bogotá presentation of the 47th Andean Music Festival Mono Nuñez.
After the celebrations of the country’s bicentenary, followed by a pandemic, the Museo Nacional, offers visitors the chance to view Hijas del Agua (Daughters of Water), by the acclaimed fashion photographer Ruven Afanador and artist Ana González. A post-conflict initiative to document the cosmogeny of indigenous women who inhabit rural Colombia was unveiled in the 17th-Century Santa Clara Convent in 2018, but now, will reach a larger audience inside the country’s most important museum.
