Pasión y Arte presents Flamenco de Las Americas: A Tablao Experience May 23-24 at 9 pm, May 25 at 3 pm and 7 pm at the Shubin Theatre.
Philadelphia’s Critically Acclaimed Feminist Flamenco Dance Company Establishes a New Tradition
PHILADELPHIA, PA – Founded by Bolivian-born Elba Hevia y Vaca in 2000, Pasión y Arte quickly achieved a reputation for staging groundbreaking contemporary feminist flamenco dances that are simultaneously deeply steeped in the teachings of the southern Spanish masters and Hevia y Vaca’s personal experiences as a woman, Latina, Boliviana, and American. She is not alone. Other contemporary choreographers create experimental work influenced by the homegrown culture of Latin America and the US, which is why Hevia y Vaca has decided to initiate a special series of three annual tablao performances featuring Flamenco de Las Americas. The performances have two main goals: to promote the work of high-level flamenco masters who are not from Spain and to educate the Philadelphia public about tablao.
What is tablao? Like the atmosphere once created when beat poets gathered to recite verses, tablao refers to the milieu in which flamencos showcased their dancing until the art was institutionalized in theatrical performances. Flamenco emerged as a unique art form in the 15th century. Spanish Gypsies (or Roma) danced flamenco privately in their rural homes. The dance gradually migrated from the countryside to south Spain’s cities, where Gypsy artists performed on the streets and in plazas. By the 1840s, nightclubs called “cafes del cante” began to host flamenco tablao, giving flamencos the opportunity to demonstrate their extraordinary skills at improvising movement within the confines of rigid rhythmic structures. The cafes were the first enterprises to pay flamenco dancers, singers, and musicians. Commercial flamenco was born. From the mid 1800s-early 1900s, highly acclaimed flamenco artists danced in cafes del cante. Tablao performances helped flamenco to grow in expressive range and aesthetic precision, exposing non-Gypsy audiences to the art. Flamenco de Las Americas will recreate the feeling of the tablao setting, using the intimacy offered by the Shubin Theatre to greatest effect.
Production Facts: Each tablao performance will run 60 minutes. Friday and Saturday shows will feature Pasión y Arte dancers and guests from other US cities. Pasión y Arte Conservatory students will star in both Sunday performances.
Location/Tickets: The Shubin Theatre 407 Bainbridge Street (one block south of South Street)
Friday, May 23 and Saturday, May 24 – 9 pm Sunday, May 25 – 3 pm and 7 pm
About Pasión y Arte Pasión y Arte is a nonprofit dance company and educational and cultural organization founded in 2000 out of a strong and intensely personal conviction that highly stylized traditionally Spanish flamenco dance is the perfect vessel to empower women. Pasión y Arte’s mission is to simultaneously preserve, strengthen and challenge the flamenco tradition by creating and performing works that maintain flamenco’s classicist artistic integrity and focus on women’s empowerment. Even while preserving flamenco’s rigidity, Pasión y Arte seeks to push its boundaries, embracing the tension that that creates and drawing inspiration from personal experience just as our foremothers did.
Copyright 2008 - All posts remain the property of the individual authors. The Philadelphia Dance Web Forums and PhiladelphiaDANCE.org are funded by Music & Motion Dance, a 501 c 3 non-profit, youth performance oriented dance company.
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic
