JANET NOVÁS
Dancer, actress, and teacher, receives the National Dance Award (2025), the Goya Award for Best New Actress (2024), the Ojo Crítico Award by RNE (2021), the Catalan Critics Award (2021) for Best Dancer, and the Injuve Award (2011) for her creation “Cara pintada”.
She trained in contemporary dance in Madrid, Brussels, Berlin, and Vienna. In 2008, she began developing her own dance and performance projects, which have been presented at prestigious national and international festivals such as Rencontres Chorégraphiques, Festival de Marseille, Festival Nouvelles–Pole Sud, Cement Festival, FIDCU (Montevideo), Mercat de les Flors, Centro Cultural Conde Duque, and Festival de Otoño, among others. She was selected as a resident artist at El Graner Fàbrica de Creació (Catalonia, 2022–2023).
In the film field, she debuted in 2023 as the lead actress in “O Corno” by Jaione Camborda, which won the Golden Shell at the San Sebastián Film Festival. She has recently filmed “Harta” by Julia de Paz and “Romería” by Carla Simón, selected for the Cannes Film Festival.
Janet Novás combines her work as a dancer, creator, and actress with teaching, giving classes and workshops in different centers across Spain, Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
A collaborative martial art (C.M.A.)
In CMA, using the principles integral to judo, couple dancing and contact improvisation, by weight interdependence through touch with one or several partners, we create challenging situations we then look to survive and resolve together. We consider each other as weight, stimuli, companinon, evironment, mass, surface, and our partner(s) do(es) the same. We function on a reflexual level – our actions are not premeditated in the moment, though they can be practiced. Softness and openness are our way of staying continuously responsive, which in turn is our way of being ready, of not getting hurt, of protecting the other and ourselves. When tonus is necessary it’s momentary, after which it again softens up.
The goal of this practice is not dominance, deffence or even some kind of a final resolution. It’s collaboration through meeting the challenges, for a continuous “survival” of situations for all involved. By communicating through touch, weight interdependence and reflexual movement. A practice of stillness and softness while relaxing in a state of continuous surprise. Full physical engagement, while letting go of planning the outcome. Plus training the body in order to be ready to instantaneously find solutions. Instead of an opponent there is a partner. No-one needs to prevail over the other, and one wins only if both survive, collaborate and learn.
