Washington DC-based flamenco performer, teacher, and choreographer Edwin Aparicio has been described by critics as “the most amazing dancer seen in years,” “a technical powerhouse dancing with blistering conviction,” having “hellfire footwork” and choreographies with “beautiful, evocative imagery.”

Featured in Dance Magazine’s annual “25 to Watch” list, Aparicio has garnered critical acclaim for his highly polished technique which combines innovative choreography with contemporary themes.

In Flamenco Deconstructed, he will be joined by the Flamenco Aparicio Dance Company as well as guest artists Omayra Amaya (grandniece of the legendary Carmen Amaya), dancer Defne Enç from Spain, singers Isabel Soto from Spain and Jesús Montoya from Long Beach, California, and guitarists Roberto Castellano from New York and Richard Marlow from Washington, DC.

If Aparicio’s standing ovation performance during the inaugural 2009 VelocityDC Dance Festival was any indication, Flamenco Deconstructed should not be missed. Although Saturday’s show is sold out, limited tickets are available for Sunday’s performance.

Time: Saturday, December 5th at 8pm & Sunday, December 6th at 3pm

Location: GALA Theatre – 3333 14th Street NW, Washington, DC

Cost: $30.00 general; $18.00 students; $50.00 festival package.  Tickets available by phone at 202.234. 7174/800.494.8497 and online at galatheatre.org

Want to see Edwin and the Flamenco Aparicio Dance Company LIVE? Don’t miss out – Get your tickets NOW!

Led by founders Hugo and Rebecca Medrano, GALA has received numerous artistic excellence and service awards for both for its work in promoting and creating art that engages and resonates with diverse audiences as well as for its efforts to preserve and promote Hispanic culture and heritage. In 2008, the Medranos were awarded the Order of Queen Isabella II by the King of Spain, in recognition of their promotion of Spanish culture in the United States.

VelocityDC recently caught up with Hugo Medrano, GALA’s co-founder and Artistic Director, to discuss the organization’s mission and the 5th Annual Fuego Flamenco Festival.

vDC: GALA Hispanic Theatre is known for showcasing traditional and contemporary Latino performance art from a diverse range disciplines, including dance and theater. What can you tell us about the company’s underlying artistic philosophy?

We believe in the delivery of high quality, culturally authentic work that speaks to the diversity of Hispanic traditions and explores new visions and expressions of Latino performing arts in Spanish and English. In addition, we are also deeply committed to producing and presenting works that create a relationship with the audience that is intimate, immediate and relevant.

vDC: How does this philosophy come into play during the Fuego Flamenco Festival?

The annual Fuego Flamenco Festival explores the diversity and profound amalgam of other cultures that have influenced the passionate and time-honored Spanish art form of flamenco. From its Moorish and gypsy influences to the contemporary rhythms derived from art forms of the Americas like jazz and tango, flamenco contains and transmits the powerful voices of many races.

I love Spain’s flamenco tablaos, the real ones, those of Seville and some of Madrid. It is the intimacy, I believe, that mesmerizes me. The atmosphere is almost ritual and celebratory of the place and the symbiosis that occurs between the artist and the audience. That’s what we are creating at GALA with Fuego Flamenco; it is an encounter of lovers of flamenco with its artists. GALA’s space, which is smaller and more intimate than the usual setting for this type of event, permits that vibration, that communication between the performers on the stage and the members of the audience.

vDC: Speaking of Spanish tablaos, give us some insight into your presenting partnership with the Fundación Conservatorio Flamenco Casa Patas from Madrid.

Our partnership with the Casa Patas Foundation fits perfectly with our belief in building collaborations and associations to broaden and deepen our engagement with new artists, different cultures and the community. Casa Patas is a world-renowned Madrid tablao, hosting some of the best and most authentic flamenco in Spain. The Fundación Conservatorio Flamenco Casa Patas grew out of this club and today sponsors workshops, seminars, and exhibitions promoting the art of flamenco.

As a result, famous groups and new talent sometimes share the same stage of Casa Patas to create memorable productions. For example, Isabel López, bailaora and choreographer of November 20th’s Flamenco desde Abajo, is a regular attraction at the famous tablao Los Gallos de Sevilla and whenever she decides to dance in Madrid, she does it only in Casa Patas.

vDC: So what can we expect to see at this year’s Fuego Flamenco Festival?

For the next three weeks, we will present artists from Spain and the DC-Baltimore region whose works reflect the latest trends of classical and contemporary flamenco. The first weekend runs from November 20th until November 22nd and showcases Casa Patas’ Isabel López and a fabulous company that includes her dance partner, Felipe Mato, and a group of exquisite musicians and singers. I am sure people will be happy to know that beloved cantaor Francisco Luis Trinidad Angel (“El Trini de la isla”) is returning and this will be his third visit to DC.

By popular demand, we are also bringing back Diego Villegas, a talented young Andalucian saxophonist and flutist from Cádiz. Diego and guitarist and musical director José Luis Silva (“El Morito”) will provide the musical accompaniment. This year we are also proud to introduce cantaora Sara Salado, one of the best Spanish saeteras. The saeta is a flamenco song sung on religious occasions to exalt devotion and penance; it is a beautiful lament and requires a very particular quality of voice to be sung. It is rarely performed for this reason.

Beginning the weekend of November 28th, we have Flamenco en familia, a program that is really dear to me since it is aimed at children and their families. It introduces the kids to the world of flamenco through interactive workshops on basic flamenco footsteps, castanets, and palm technique. Baltimore-based Natalia Monteleón and her company, ArteFlamenco, will lead these lively sessions.

The festival wraps up on December 5th and 6th when we present the world premiere of Flamenco Aparicio Dance Company’s Flamenco Deconstructed. The work was choreographed and directed by our own Edwin Aparicio, a brilliant bailaor of international lineage that has cultivated a horde of fans in the area. The show features Omayra Amaya, a powerful bailaora of gypsy blood and grandniece of Carmen Amaya, arguably the greatest flamenco dancer ever.

vDC: Given that the festival has been running for the past five years, has each iteration evolved over time? If so, how?

Given the characteristics of our festival, which are those of exploration of traditional forms and innovation in contemporary flamenco, its artistic evolution is intrinsic, since each year we present new artists with a different approach. What is notable, however, is the evolution of our audience. We started with a loyal pack of flamenco fans, but every year more people come out of curiosity including a surprising number of young people interested in this Spanish art form. Today, we have a multicultural audience with an impressive percentage of young adults interested in both the musical and the dance components of flamenco.

vDC: Any last thoughts for those who might be interested in attending?

I think that the most important thing is to come with an open mind. If you don’t know much about flamenco, these presentations will make you understand where its passion comes from – how sorrow and happiness flow from the agile body of the bailaora or vibrate in the hoarse voice of the cantaores. For the experts, it will be a pleasure to see how the most pure cantejondo (deep song) or the high-spirited bulerías can be expressed and performed with a new breath. With Fuego Flamenco, we hope to catch the attention and the heart of a new generation of artists and audience.

Photo Credit: Isabel López

The 5th Annual Fuego Flamenco Festival will be held from November 20th, 2009 until December 6th, 2009.

Don’t miss your chance to see the best in world-class flamenco with Casa Patas’ Isabel López and DC’s Edwin Aparicio live at the historic Tivoli Theatre. Information and tickets are available NOW at galatheatre.org!

The company has performed extensively throughout the DC Metro region at venues including the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, Publick Playhouse, Alden Theatre, National Theater, Dance Place, Jack Guidone Theatre, Carter Barron Theater, the Mexican Cultural Institute, and the Ernst Community Cultural Center as well as at numerous local festivals. On Saturday, October 3rd at 10:30 p.m., they will take the stage as headliners during the VelocityDC Festival’s Late Night performance.

We recently caught up with Furia Flamenca’s Artistic Director Estela Velez to discuss Saturday’s performance and get insight on her unique artistic vision and the current state of DC’s dance community.

vDC: Estela, give us some insight into the performance we will see on Saturday.

I tend to present the company as a whole, not as solo performers even through a lot of traditional flamenco identifies in that way. It’s just more exciting to me to get ten people together on stage, moving together at once with the power of flamenco.

Since our focus is more on the group as opposed to solos, Furia Flamenca will be bringing a group performance that is lively, flirtatious, and sexy specifically for VelocityDC Late Night. The piece we’ll be performing is actually a tango and because it is for an adult audience, we are going to spice it up a little bit with sexier and slightly more dramatic moves.

Nothing will be too risqué or extravagant. We really try to stay true to the art form and flamenco doesn’t necessarily need to be altered to be sexy since it is that way by nature, but you can always push boundaries to make it more provocative!

vDC: That an interesting point you’ve raised about artistic conventions. Furia Flamenca’s style has been described as “traditional with a modern touch” and know that you tend to build upon your dancers’ varied backgrounds. How do you manage that and what are the dancers’ competencies within the company?

Some of them come to me without dance experience and I teach them flamenco and that’s their only exposure to dance. But more than half of them have experience in either modern, jazz, or tap.

It fits perfectly within flamenco because it’s an individualistic dance and even when you are performing as a company, one of the most beautiful things to see is that everyone can be choreographically synced without losing individual expression.

In Furia Flamenca, however, we stay uniform and synchronized but everyone has their own individual flavor. For the audience, it’s a unique to experience to see ten dancers all moving, each with their own individual style. It’s so exciting and varied that when you are watching, it’s like – who do I look at? What do I focus on? There is so much to absorb and I find it all to be so much more exciting.

With my dancers instead of trying to make them all look alike, I see their personalities and style and fit all of that within the choreography to allow them an individual sense of expression. My hope is that when they go out and perform the dance as a soloist, instead of the audience seeing my influence, they see the dancer standing on their own. I really try to enhance them in that way.

Also, I always learn from them! I look around when we are rehearsing and when the dancers do something unique, I am like, “Wow! I like how you’re doing it. Look at him (or her)! Maybe we can do that!” It’s a real give and take. I’ve done a lot of dance forms in my life, but I’ve certainly not done everything that’s out there.

vDC: You’ve been in DC since 1998 and founded Furia Flamenca in 2003. In the ten years that you’ve been here, how has the dance community in DC changed? What’s exciting to you now?

Wow! We can talk about that forever! What I find exciting that’s going on now in DC is all of these initiatives to bring dance to the forefront.

When I first came to DC, dance was prominently covered in the media, especially the newspaper. Dance was out there in front of everybody. I noticed that after my first three or four years, however, times changes and I really don’t know what happened. I found that you no longer saw the same coverage and that the media didn’t seem to be involved as much.

It used to be that every weekend at least one or two reviews would come out in the Post and you saw the active involvement of media in the productions that were taking place from both the very professional companies to the emerging companies. It was right across the board. In the past few years, though, all of that has disappeared and is something that you don’t see as much.

It’s been disappointing from an artist’s perspective. You know, we are working and trying so hard to bring this to the public and it seems like the word does not really get out there. We really try to get the word out on our own but that can be difficult when dance is not being supported the way it should be by the wider community. So, it’s exciting to see all of these new initiatives to bring dance back to the forefront of what’s happening in this area.

Also, it’s exciting to see that maybe now we are going more towards the atmosphere of a city like New York where arts are inherently part of a city and are prominently displayed. So, I think all of these initiatives like VelocityDC and work of Peter DiMuro [Executive Director of Dance/Metro DC] who is doing a fabulous job; all of these things give you a breath of fresh air and puts a fire under your feet as an artist.

vDC: Where would you like to see DC’s dance community in the next 5 years?

I personally hope to see the same excitement that there was a few years ago come back. I think that at this point there are so many talented local companies that need to be showcased and brought to the public’s attention. We are cosmopolitan area, a truly international city. It would be really nice to see dance (and art in general) gain its former popularity locally and not just focus on importing talent. It is possible to use what there is here to excite and educate the city. You know, we don’t need to go very far. We really only need to look within to bring out beautiful and exciting performances.

vDC: In thinking about that goal, what needs to happen in DC to make it a better place for artists to present their work?

Right now, funding and venue accessibility are huge issues. Bringing a program to a theater is very costly, so increased funding and more collaboration between theaters and local talent would definitely help bring dance back to the forefront. Theaters are generally gun-shy about showcasing local artists during their performance season, so we often do not have the same performance opportunities that outside talent has. Making it a point to present local talent would really help raise awareness in the city.

Also, the dance community is being helped a lot with the public’s enthusiasm for shows like “So You Think You Can Dance”. On that show, they’ve showcased contemporary dance, ballet, ballroom, and jazz – it showcases every single dance form except world dance.

I’ve been waiting for the time when one of these shows makes world dance its focus. It doesn’t necessarily happen because our techniques are very unique to the particular dance form you are interpreting and aren’t fungible across the line or transferrable to other art forms. For example, if you do ballet you can transfer that technique to modern and vice versa, but world dance is quite specific. Our techniques are just not as universal. As much as I’d like to see it, I don’t think it will happen.

vDC: Given the public’s lack of exposure to world dance, how do you think that interest in the field can be encouraged?

Like I said before, DC is a very international community but there is only one dance festival within the city – the Dance DC Festival. Years ago, it focused solely on world dance but in the intervening years the scope has grown to include other types of dance. This is great and there is room for us all, but it would be really nice to see an event devoted to world dance. We are surrounded by embassies and the world truly lives in DC and yet there is no focus on that particular artistic perspective.

Now there is also the Annual World Dance Showcase in Prince George’s County which does a fabulous job and focuses solely on world dance, but we need so much more than that. And again, that’s in Maryland. We need that in DC, Virginia, and around the world. I think that we can and should be at the forefront of world dance here in DC because of our diversity.

There are some initiatives that have begun to address the issue, but it’s a difficult process. In spite of the obstacles, I remain hopeful that we’ll be able to achieve something like this in the near future.

vDC: How do you think an event like VelocityDC helps expand opportunities for our local dance community?

As an artist, there are many opportunities for performance in this town, but to have access to more types of venues is always exciting.  Also, it’s nice to have more opportunities to bring the dance community as a whole together.

You know, the arts tends to be organized by seasons. During this time of the year, activities are geared towards bringing dance to the public following the Dance DC Festival at the end of August in the form of showcases at Dance Place and Joy of Motion. These are events that are similar to VelocityDC, but don’t necessarily happen throughout the year

So I think that being in the heart of DC at Sidney Harman Hall which is an exciting and new place keeps the excitement of the Dance DC Festival going versus letting it dwindle until the next opportunity. It’s a good bridge – you get the Dance DC Festival, then the Metro DC Dance Awards and a month later you have VelocityDC and hopefully a month later you have something else that brings us together again so that the line doesn’t get broken and the excitement continues to build throughout the year. We definitely need more productions like this to keep things going.

Estela Velez and Furia Flamenca will be performing during VelocityDC Late Night on Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 at 10:30 p.m.

Want to see them live at Harman Hall? Don’t miss out – Get your tickets now!