Javier Cárcel Hidalgo-Saavedra
Contemporary Performing Arts Maker
Javier is a performance maker, actor, director, and singer born in 1990 in Valencia, Spain.
His practice plays with storytelling, the exploration of living sound and alive singing, dramaturgical burning territories, the grotesque, irony, and the research on organic physical action, voice, and movement. His work navigates between tradition and contemporary artistic expression. As a researcher, he is fascinated by the potential of performance as a means to cultivate tools for developing the performer’s craft through presence, immediacy, and self-awareness in relation to “the other”, be it the audience, the fellow performers, a given context, or the world in constant change inside and around him.
After graduating in 2010 from the International Laboratory of the Actor in Movement of Valencia, he traveled to Barcelona to complete a Bachelor of Arts in Physical Theatre,
at the Institut del Teatre (2015). From 2010 to 2016, he worked as a performer, co-director, and singer in numerous performances with theatre directors and choreographers such as Ximo Flores, Matej Matejka, Lluis Graells, Jordi Basora, Pedro Galiza, Amalia Fernández, Eulàlia Bergadà, and Andrés Corchero (National Dance Award of Catalonia 2003). He also collaborated as an actor with Obskené Theatre Company, and with MOVEO physical theatre in "Tu vas Tomber" (Winner of the public award in the Festival Internacional de Danza de Huesca 2016, as well as the prize For Emerging Artist – Festival imaginarius of Portugal), directed by Stéphane Lévy.
His artistic research leads him to continue training with theatre, dance, and singing specialists such as LosCorderos.sc, Gey Pin Ang, Milòn Mela, Pere Sais, Teatr ZAR, Natalka Polovynka, Matej Matejka, Carlota Subirós, Alejandro Tomas Rodriguez and Thomas Richards.
From 2016 to 2022, Javier worked at The Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards – National Theater / Teatro Della Toscana, where he delved, under the direction of Thomas Richards, into the praxis of the performing arts research initiated by the Polish theater master Jerzy Grotowski based on ancient songs of tradition and theatre arts, that Thomas Richards developed after Grotowski's death. He performed with The Workcenter in Europe and Latin America as an actor and singer in Sin Fronteras, The Underground, and Songs of Tradition.
Currently, he is studying the Master of Arts (MA) - Contemporary Physical Performance Making (CPPM), a pioneering program at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theater (2022-2024), where he is working with widely recognized artists and companies such as Hannes Langolf (DV8 Physical Theatre), Eddie Martínez (Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch), GECKO, Theater Re, Song of the Goat, La Pocha Nostra, Electric Company Theatre, Olivier de Sagazan, Ephia Gburek, Peader Kirk, Juan Dominguez, Stacy Makishi, Mart Kangro, Rob Hayden (Última Vez), Jasmin Vardimon Company, Sasha Pepelyaev, Young Boy Dancing Group, Rakesh Sukesh, Fran Barbe, Mirko Rajas and Taavi Tõnisson, Imanuel Schipper (Rimini Protokoll), and Giacomo Veronesi, among others.
From 2015 to the present he teaches workshops for different schools, universities, theater companies, and independent professionals in Spain, France, Italy, Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and the U.S.A.
In 2022, Javier founded NO(W)HERE - Performing Arts Lab, with which he continues his nomadic pedagogical activity started in 2015, and the creation of new performances as a result of the laboratory's research and collaboration with other artists.
