‘Its About The Art Form: Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana Turns 40
In the hot atmosphere of flamenco dancing, where passionate self-expression is valued, divas abound. But Carlota Santana is not one of them.
"I'm not a great flamenco dancer," she said recently. "I know and I think others know that too."
However, he achieved something worth mentioning: he led a flamenco company in the United States for 40 years. Such longevity is very unusual, as is Santana's approach. Although her name Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana is part of the company name, it is no coincidence that flamenco comes first. It's not a star. And he is not a choreographer. "It's an art form," he says.
That blurry focus can be a bit confusing. Since he is not Santana and has never choreographed, his group has long lacked a clear identity—a defined artistic style—of a group led by a choreographer. Involving dancers and dance creators over the years, the Flamenco Vivo company has often felt different in every aspect: innovative and quality, or artisanal or conventional.
It is of high quality this week of the company's anniversary season at the Joyce Theatre, led by Spanish dancer and choreographer Emilio Ochando. Most of the cast is the same as in Fronteras, the famous play the company performed at the Joyce last year. But notably, it also has several guest stars, including the respected dancer Maria Bermudez, who first performed with the group in the 1980s.
Where is Santana in all this? "He's the one who makes it all happen," Bermudez said.
It has been like this since the beginning. The group was born in New York in 1983, as a Spanish dance art group, under the direction of a Californian choreographer, Roberto Lorca. Born in New York, Santana recently left her career as a psychiatric social worker when she fell in love with Spanish dance and moved to Spain to study. In New York, she takes Lorca's dance lessons and becomes his dance partner. Together they decided to create the Spanish Dance Art Group. "We wanted people to feel like us when we dance," he said.
Santana asked the dancer Maria Benítez, who founded the flamenco company in 1972, how it was done. Benitez, he says, advised him to buy a good typewriter.
The committee outlined Santana's role. He worked with the new group while Lorca directed and choreographed, but he also wrote the scholarship applications and filled the roles that made it all possible. And after Lorca died of AIDS in 1987, Santana continued to fulfill that role, adding more people to the choreography, new people every few years (and eventually settling on the group's current name).
Flamenco Vivo has become an institution and not just a ballet group. From the beginning, Santana has been dedicated to the arts in education. Flamenco Vivo currently teaches at dozens of schools in New York and North Carolina, where Santana lives part-time, occasionally teaching flamenco at Duke University.
Recently, Flamenco Vivo has expanded its training for pre-professional flamenco dancers. With the prestigious Madrid competition, el Certamen de Coreografía de Danza Española y Flamenco, it has led to the creation of a New York version that combines lessons and prizes. (I was an unpaid judge.)
Where can these dancers rehearse in New York? Few studies have allowed hard-soled shoes to hit the ground. In 2009, Flamenco Vivo converted two rented squash courts into a rehearsal space on the top floor of what was once a Columbia University clubhouse in midtown Manhattan. Far from glamour, the venues are one of the few places in the city where percussionists are welcome. Mexican dancers and folkloric groups sometimes rent out the studio, generating revenue for the company, but the sign on the wall proudly proclaims, "Flamenco, for flamenco."
Here's the crew last week while Santana was still in North Carolina. Ochando led the mostly Spanish dancers through his intricate group choreography.
"He likes to create opportunities," he said. He added that when he tells Santana his ideas, he doesn't represent her; he finds a way to get his way. "It's not normal for managers," he says.
Bermudez, who also rehearses, said Santana "looks very dry and dry, very practical, but his work shows love, respect and care for the art."
Bermudez notes that while many companies, including his own, specialize in one aspect of flamenco, Flamenco Vivo is "like the fans" — it has a wide range of styles, from traditional to contemporary, and employs a variety of professionals, from veterans to veterans. the expert . down and up "You never know what you're going to see, which is why audiences keep coming back," he said.
In the interview, Santana was reluctant about where she was born - "when I started, you had to be born in a cave in Granada", she said - or at what age she started dancing: in her early twenties. It was an expression of concern that flamenco was taken seriously. But 40 years is an undeniably serious figure. They also serve as movers and agitators.
