Diva abounds in the conservatory atmosphere of flamenco dance, where passionate self-expression is valued. But Carlota Santana is not one of them.
“I’m not a great flamenco dancer,” she said recently. “I know that, and I think other people know that too.”
Yet she has achieved something worth showing off. She has continued a flamenco theater company in the United States for her 40 years. Such longevity is highly unusual, but so is Santana’s approach. Her name is part of her company, Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana, it is no coincidence that flamenco comes first. She’s not a star performer. Nor is she a choreographer. “It’s about the art form,” she said.
That understated focus can be a little confusing. Because Santana no longer performs and does not choreograph, her company has long lacked the distinct identity of a choreographer-led theater company—the defining artistic hallmark. Over the years, with dancers and dance-makers coming and going, Flamenco Vivo often seemed like a separate entity each time it appeared. Now it’s innovative and high quality, and now it’s quiet and generic.
incarnation Performing inaugural season at the Joyce Theater this week A high quality team led by Spanish dancer and choreographer Emilio Ochando. Much of the cast overlaps with that of the well-received show “Fronterrace” that the company offered Joyce last year. What is unique, however, is that it also includes various guest stars, including a revered dancer. Maria Bermudezfirst performed with the group in the 1980s.
Where the hell is Santana? “She’s the one who makes it all happen,” Bamdez said.
It’s been that way from the beginning. The company began in New York City in 1983 as the Spanish Dance Arts Company led by Californian choreographer Roberto Lorca. Born in upstate New York, Santana had just given up her career as a psychiatric social worker to study in Spain after falling in love with Spanish dance. She returned to New York where she took Lorca’s dance classes and became his dance partner. Together they decided to form the Spanish Dance Arts Company. “We wanted people to feel what we felt about dance,” she said.
Santana asked Maria Benítez, the dancer who founded the Flamenco Company in 1972, how it was done. Benitez told her to buy her a good typewriter.
That advice pointed to Santana’s role. While Lorca was directing and choreographing, she performed with her new company, she also wrote the grant application and filled out the paperwork to make it possible. And after Lorca’s death from AIDS in 1987, Santana continued in this role, bringing in new people to the choreography every few years (and eventually settling on the group’s current name).
Flamenco Vivo is more than just a dance company, it is an organization. From the beginning, Santana devoted herself to the art of teaching. Flamenco Vivo currently teaches workshops in dozens of schools in New York City and North Carolina, where Santana lives part-time, and regularly teaches flamenco at Duke University.
Recently, Flamenco Vivo has expanded the education of pre-professional flamenco dancers. The association with El Certamen de Choreographia de Danza Espanola y Flamenco, a prestigious competition in Madrid, led to the creation of the New York version, which combines training and awards. (I used to be an unpaid judge.)
Where in New York City can such dancers rehearse? In 2009, Flamenco Vivo converted his two rented squash courts into her rehearsal space on the top floor of what was once the Columbia University club in Midtown Manhattan. Far from glitzy, this room is one of the few places in the city where percussive dancers are welcome. Tap dancers and Mexican folklore troupes sometimes rent studios to generate revenue for the company, while plaques proudly hang on the walls: “By flamenco, for flamenco.”
This is where the company was rehearsing last week while Santana was still in North Carolina. Ochando had mostly Spanish dancers perform intricate group choreography.
“She loves creating chances,” he said. He added that when she tells Santana what she thinks, she doesn’t replace hers. She finds a way to understand his feelings. “This is not normal for a director,” he says.
Bermudez, who was also at the rehearsal, said of Santana, “She seems very concise and dry and very practical, but what emerges from her work is a love, respect and compassion for the arts.” Told.
Bermudez said that while many companies, including hers, specialize in one aspect of flamenco, Flamenco Vivo is “like a fan”, from traditional to contemporary. He pointed out that it exhibits a wide range of styles and employs a wide range of practitioners, from veterans to young people. And come. “You never know what you’re going to see, and that’s why the audience keeps coming back,” she said.
During interviews, Santana asked about where she was born — “When I started, she said, I had to be born in a cave in Granada,” — and how old she was when she started dancing, in her twenties. I hesitated to reveal the second half. This was a sign of anxiety about being taken seriously in flamenco. But there is no doubt that 40 years is a serious number. They also act as makers of things.
