(Community announcement by the Vancouver International Flamenco Festival)

The Vancouver International Flamenco Festival announces its spellbinding 2018 lineup of local and international flamenco artists with free workshops and ticketed performances at various Vancouver venues.

The 2018 Festival proudly presents the Canadian debut of Spain’s Sara Calero Company in Petisa Loca at the Vancouver Playhouse on September 22. Sara Calero is one of the main current references in the renewal of both Spanish and flamenco dance. The company’s piece shares the diaspora diaries of a woman and all women as thousands of Spaniards were forced to emigrate between Europe and America in the mid-twentieth century. An emotive work, Petisa Loca asks the question: "Is there a place for oneself?" as it works through issues of fear, hope, uncertainty, and displacement in a new, unfamiliar world. Petisa Loca features dancer/choreographer Sara Calero, singer Loreto Arnaiz, guitarist José Almarcha, and the electronic music of The Lab (José Corredera and Miguel Lázaro).

The Festival also features some of the finest Canadian Flamenco artists with performances at the intimate Annex (Orpheum); 

La Azulita Flamenco Ensemble works within the traditional realm of flamenco, drawing on antiquated elements and expressing flamenco as a dialogue of emotion through rhythm, movement and melody (Nova Scotia), Kasandra Flamenco Ensemble Solo Flamenco, takes the audience on an emotional journey through the passionately dark to the delightfully cheeky and Passages & Rhythm with special guests including contemporary award-winning dancer Alvin Erasga Tolentino (Co.ERASGA) where Flamenco and contemporary dance collide in this transcultural amalgamation of movement and tradition (Vancouver), Monique Salez & The Dream Cab Los Labios de La Lobo, a dreamscape that wanders through questions of identity, flamenco, life & learning (Victoria); and Vancouver's own Flamenco Rosario’s premiere of Dialogue Extended – a creation and collaboration with two other highly regarded couples/flamenco artists - Spain’s Mariano Cruceta and Gloria Solera and Mexico’s Marien Luévano and Ulises Martínez, in an exploration to find the balance between their domestic and artistic lives in this intergenerational exchange.  

Music is at the forefront in this exciting event La Musica del Flamenco hosted by guitarist Victor Kolstee and featuring Sara Calero Company Artists (Vancouver/Spain).

“We return for the 28^th season with a passionate and fiery lineup of some of the most innovative and revered flamenco artists of our time,” says Rosario Ancer, Artistic Director and Founder, Vancouver International Flamenco Festival. “Furthering our legacy of exposing audiences to premiere traditional & contemporary flamenco, we proudly present Spain’s Sara Calero Company as the festival’s headline event.”

As one of few celebrated festivals devoted to Flamenco Art in North America, the VIFF has since its beginnings in 1990 grown to a mature understanding of Vancouver’s multicultural audiences by nurturing the form’s hybridized roots in Sephardic, Persian, Gypsy and Indian cultures and by striving to reflect and connect its diverse sociocultural identity through work narratives underlining flamenco’s universal message of humanistic tolerance. Now a two week long annual event, the festival lends its visibility throughout multiple venues and locales in downtown Vancouver including the Annex, Vancouver Playhouse, Scotiabank Dance Centre, Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre, the Kino, and Vancouver Public Library. With over a quarter century of flamenco presence behind it, the festival brings the city into stronger light for younger generations of dancers all around the world, while building new relationships with growing sister organizations across the nation through its eastern border, helping to forge a more integrated Canadian identity of flamenco.

ACCESS:

September 21 – 29, 2018. 

Vancouver venues including Vancouver Playhouse, Scotiabank Dance Centre, Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre, Annex, Vancouver Public Library.

MORE INFO:

http://www.vancouverflamencofestival.org/