Flamenco

ncgnet · **Joined:** Sun Oct 27, 2002 12:01 am **Posts:** 1845

A Boston filmmaker, Jocelyn Ajami, has made a documentary film: Queen of the Gypsies: A Portrait of Carmen Amaya.

Read about it in the Boston Herald

Azlan · **Posted:** Sun Dec 29, 2002 1:37 pm

Quote:

Passionate folk dance thrives as an art form

Christine Temin, Boston Globe/San Jose Mercury News

SEVILLE, Spain - The dancer floats up from her chair, buoyed by a sea of sound: eloquently nuanced clapping of hands, guitar music that responds to the slightest modulation of her heelwork.

Emma Pegler · **Posted:** Sat Jan 04, 2003 7:07 am

Interested in flamenco - there is one place to be - Seville. And where better than the Flamenco Festival in October. This was one of the picks of top travel writers in London:

Where to be in 2003

Will it be a lemon festival in France, the Galway races, or flamenco in Seville? Simon Calder and ALice Lascelles offer 12 reasons to start planning your weekend breaks right now

OCTOBER: Sex on legs

Quote:

Take your partner to Seville for the World Flamenco Festival. This elegant Andalucian city boasts one of the strongest flamenco traditions in the world. With its dappled squares, beautiful architecture and streets lined with orange trees Seville is a delight at any time apart from summer (when it overheats), but for the full passion of this exhilarating dance, book your trip for 23-26 October.

Getting there: fly from Heathrow on Iberia (0845 6012854, www.iberia.com) or from Gatwick on GB Airways (booked through BA, 0845 7733377, [url=http://www.ba.com).

]www.ba.com).[/quote][/url]

More information: World Flamenco Festival 00 34 954 478 700, www.fibes.es.

more...

ncgnet · **Joined:** Sun Oct 27, 2002 12:01 am **Posts:** 1845

Christine Temin has a preview article in the Sunday Globe, regarding a flamenco performance coming to Boston.

Quote:

Putting two distinctive stamps on flamenco

Festival's leading dancers showcase traditional, modern performance styles

"I am a Gypsy first," says Farruquito. "Then, I am a flamenco dancer."
The 20-year-old comes from a flamenco dynasty; he doesn't diverge from what he calls "the path" set by his ancestors, either in his traditional style of "flamenco puro" or in his attention to Gypsy rites....

Sara Baras is the flip side of flamenco. She does TV ads. She has modeled for a Cartier catalog. She has a Web site and her own weekly program on Spanish TV. She's the official face of tourism for Andalusia, which meant its government paid half the cost of her elaborate new full-length production, "Mariana Pineda." She is a goddess of the new flamenco. ...

The executive director of World Music,[Maure] Aronson is presenting a premiere-packed ''Flamenco Festival 2003'' at the Shubert Theatre this Thursday through Sunday. It's the fourth time he has brought a hefty helping of flamenco to warm a New England winter. Boston is the first stop on an 11-city, coast-to-coast US tour featuring members of both Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras and Juana Amaya y Farruquito.

For complete article....

ncgnet · **Joined:** Sun Oct 27, 2002 12:01 am **Posts:** 1845

A preview article by Theodore Bale in the Herald, for tonight's opening of the World Music’s Flamenco Festival:

Quote:

Pure flamenco: Spanish dancers bring Gypsy family tradition to Hub

When World Music’s Flamenco Festival 2003 opens tonight at the Shubert Theatre, all eyes will be on Seville’s Juana Amaya and Farruquito, two of the greatest exponents of the style know as “flamenco puro.”

This style-within-a-style has been touted as the authentic “no-frills” variety, free of ornamentation and superfluous narrative, but that certainly doesn’t mean it has any less punch.
“When dancing,” says the 20-year-old Farruquito, “we express our power, rebellion, seduction, fight, expressiveness, duende, rhythm . . . among all, our race.”

More...

ncgnet · **Joined:** Sun Oct 27, 2002 12:01 am **Posts:** 1845

Reviews of the opening night World Music flamenco festival in Boston.

From the Globe:

Quote:

A flamenco tour de force dispenses with frills

By Christine Temin

Like Balinese trance dancers or Shakers spinning away sin, the flamenco dancers Farruquito and Juana Amaya maintain no barrier between their inner lives and the rest of the world. The body exists only to transmit the emotions inside it. It’s almost as if the dancers have no skin.

The two Seville-based performers opened World Music’s fourth flamenco festival last night, with a sensational two-hour world premiere program of “flamenco puro,” the style unsullied by plot, props, and the other theatrical devices of the “new” flamenco espoused by tonight’s festival company, Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras.

More from the Globe....

And from the Herald:

Quote:

Flamenco fest packs punch with premiere

by Theodore Bale

Last night’s performance of “Por Derecho” by Juana Amaya and Farruiquito and their first-rate ensemble of dancers and musicians had the quality of a primordial ritual. Cathartic and powerful, it asserted the value of flamenco at its most straightforward - without narrative, without exaggerated costuming, without those cloying castanets.

More from the Herald...

ncgnet · **Joined:** Sun Oct 27, 2002 12:01 am **Posts:** 1845

A mixed review from Thea Singer in the Boston Globe:

Quote:

Ballet Flamenco's mix of forms puts out the fire

Flamenco came into being in the latter part of the 18th century in Andalucia, a region in southern Spain, not as a performing art but a way to express raw emotion. Anger, joy, fear - you name it - drove the performers who, spurred by song and sometimes guitar, would improvise within traditional forms that went by names like alegrias (which translates as “joy”) and soleares (“loneliness”), each of which was characterized by a particular rhythm and mood.

Now along comes Sara Baras with her Ballet Flamenco, a troupe of 11 dancers and 12 musicians, to stretch the boundaries of the genre by commingling traditional flamenco with essences of modern tap, contemporary dance, even ballet (these dancers actually spot when they turn) - and to codify the amalgam in the bargain. The success of the effort - a stringently choreographed evening-length work called “Mariana Pineda” - was decidedly mixed last night.

More....

Azlan · **Posted:** Sat Jan 25, 2003 3:36 pm

Quote:

The fierce elegance of pure flamenco

Jesse Tinsley, Cleveland Plain Dealer

Two young dancers from Spain credited with keeping alive the spirit of flamenco puro, pure flamenco, debut in Cleveland this weekend.

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Wed Jan 29, 2003 7:09 am

Not the Same Ol' Song and Dance
By Valerie Gladstone for The Washington Post

SEVILLE, Spain

Flamenco is booming. Once generally regarded as corny and arcane, it is now performed in opera houses and theaters all over the world. Children -- and their mothers -- take classes, and pop musicians sample its plaintive chords. Go clubbing and watch the patrons try their hand at it. Increased exposure and a higher level of performance have given the art this boost.

Still, for all its popularity, until the Spanish impresario Miguel Marin established Flamenco Festival USA in 2000, few American venues consistently offered high-quality performances. A flamenco lover who grew up in Andalusia, Marin set out to fill the void. "I want people to know just how good it can be," he said.

Marin took the Seville Bienal as the model for his festival. A rousing success since its founding in 1980, the Bienal offers a month of top-flight flamenco every other September. Audiences who pack the city's elegant old concert halls are treated to a premiere every day. In 2001, 63,000 people attended the festival from as many as 15 countries.

click for more

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Flamenco Evolves, With an Eye to the Past
By Lisa Traiger for The Washington Post

"ALMOST EVERY flamenco artist sooner or later wants to play Lorca," declares Sara Baras, Spain's most acclaimed flamenco dancer of the moment. Federico Garcia Lorca, along with Cervantes, remains Spain's best-known literary figure. Closely connected with flamenco culture, his poetry and plays have been acclaimed for their deft blend of passion, drama and lyricism. So when Baras approached Lorca, she selected his rendition of "Mariana Pineda," his first success in the theater. On Tuesday, Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras opens the third annual Flamenco Festival D.C. at Lisner Auditorium with Baras's evening-length flamenco ballet inspired by the popular Andalusian ballad of Mariana Pineda, which sings of a revolutionary woman who fought against a ruthless Spanish monarchy in the 1830s.

click for more

ncgnet · **Joined:** Sun Oct 27, 2002 12:01 am **Posts:** 1845

More on the Flamenco Festival last weekend, this time from Marcia Siegel of the Boston Phoenix:
(the second half of the article is about the men of ABT upcoming TV show....)

Quote:

Flamethrowers
World Music’s Flamenco Fest, and the men of ABT

It’s hard not to talk about flamenco in clichés. You know the audience will leap to its feet roaring, after the inner soul of the Gypsy has been revealed, and will head out, warmed, into the frigid winter night. All this was true of World Music’s Flamenco Festival last weekend at the Shubert Theater, but it doesn’t tell us anything about the differences between the two alternating companies.

More....

Azlan · **Posted:** Thu Jan 30, 2003 1:32 pm

Another report:

Quote:

Americans saying 'olé' to flamenco

By Nancy G. Heller
For The Philadelphia Inquirer

Flamenco: It isn't just for aficionados anymore. We've come a long way from mistaking the word for the name of a pink bird or from baby-boomer memories of José Greco on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Fri Jan 31, 2003 4:50 am

The heart of the Gypsies beats to staccato feet
Celebrated Spanish dancers sizzle on stage in Flamenco Festival. By Iris Fanger for The Christian Science Monitor.

The bare stage at Boston's Shubert Theatre is far from the caves of Andalusia, but that's where the two fiery Spanish troupes of Flamenco Festival USA began their tour last week, carrying enough heat to melt this winter's deep freeze.
The two companies make up the festival - Farruquito y Amaya and Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras - represent different approaches to flamenco, one of the traditional forms of Spanish dance.

Miguel Marin, the youthful impresario who originally packaged the festival in Spain, compares the diverse styles of flamenco to modern dance in America.

"Flamenco has changed a lot in the past 10 years," says Mr. Marin. "We not only have great interpreters but also great creators. Now, it's not only that you dance a certain way and repeat that over and over, today other artists have interest to create new things."

click for more

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Fri Jan 31, 2003 4:53 am

And the prize for the worst headline goes to:

Que Pasa?
Flamenco producers castanet widely. From the NY Daily News

It took a couple of hundred years, but now even flamenco has an old school/new school rivalry.
On one side are the traditionalists - including Farruquito, the 20-year-old grandson of legendary dancer Farruco - who adhere to the spontaneous, emotive centuries-old style of flamenco puro (pure flamenco) passed on from their Gypsy ancestors in Spain.

Then there are the purveyors of flamenco de hoy, flamenco of today. Represented by such innovators as Sara Baras, these dancers use showy, choreographed set pieces to tell theatrical stories.

Though rooted in traditional Andalusian music and dance, Baras' thematic works are often dismissed as being more like ballet - albeit with foot-stamping.

click for more

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Mon Feb 03, 2003 11:50 am

Sara Baras's Flamenco of Freedom
By Lisa Traiger for The Washington Post

Sara Baras dances as if her life depended on it. And when she plays the Andalusian heroine Mariana Pineda, a libertarian who rankled the supporters of Fernando VII's Spanish monarchy in 1823, freedom and flamenco become intertwined. Tuesday evening at Washington's Third International Flamenco Festival at Lisner Auditorium, Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras presented a passionate 90-minute distillation in flamenco of Pineda's story, one traditionally told in mournful ballads as well as the work of playwright and poet Federico Garcia Lorca.

With director Luis Pascual's Moorish gates and mirrors, an 11-piece orchestra seated above the dance floor and playing Manolo Sanlucar's lushly romantic score, and Baras's scintillating choreography, this is flamenco for a new generation.

click for more

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Tue Apr 15, 2003 1:51 am

<img src="http://www.dancing-times.co.uk/Pics/dancetoday/200304/cover.jpg" alt="" />

Flamenco Fling
Like the taste of sherry and the sound of stamping feet and a bit of gypsy spirit? Then why not try a Flamenco holiday in Spain for a change? Diana Dicker for Dance Today went with DanceHolidays and came back with unmissable memories and colourful photographs.

In the fresh morning light that promises a hot day, I walk down the narrow, cobbled street. Vespas nip at my heels. The air is filled with sharp retort and ricochet of percussive sound.
This is Sanlucar de Barrameda in Andalucia, the heart of Flamenco. I am here to dance. And if the sound of hard-soled shoes stamping rhythms on terse wooden studio floors did not reveal being in the Flamenco dance district, then the sharp-eyed would have spotted another clue: The clutch of shops oozing the multi-coloured, polka-dotted frills of Flamenco dresses.

I and 21 others have come with DanceHolidays to spend a week studying Flamenco, exploring the rhythm and beauty of gypsy spirit and emotion in contra-tiempo palmas clapping and intense, percussive feet.

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