Israel Galván
La Edad de Oro
Pioneer of flamenco rebellion returns
‘An orgasm of atmosphere,’ was how NRC described the Dutch premiere of La Edad de Oro, now a classic in Israel Galván’s repertoire. Together with fellow ringleader Andrés Marín, he stands as the greatest iconoclast among the current generation of flamenco dancers. In a return to its roots, the 2025 Flamenco Biennale opens at the Muziekgebouw with the very work that brought its first edition there to a close in 2006.
Driven by a tradition he feels in every fibre of his being, Galván searches and delves into the marrow of flamenco rhythms, bringing the dance to its essence. With crystal-clear sketches, brushstrokes of song, dance, and guitar – simultaneously classic and radical – he writes his innovative dance language and creates his own Golden Age. Israel Galván leaves no one unimpressed.
‘For me, it’s about surrendering to the silence, with the memory of the guitar and the singing. The dancer’s body is a symphony of movements and a musical instrument. ‘Edad de Oro’ is my personal dance laboratory.’ – Israel Galván
Introduction - Meet the Artist
19:15 Introduction: ‘Creation in action’ by Pedro Ordóñez (in English)
22:15 Meet the Artist led by Pedro Ordóñez & Carlos van Tongeren
In this introduction, Pedro Ordóñez discusses three versions of Edad de Oro that Israel Galván has performed over the past 20 years, in which three stylistic phases of his performative approach to flamenco dance can be discerned. There is no other argument than the dance itself—this is the challenge posed by Israel Galván’s choreographic work. Galván transforms the traditional flamenco trio—song, guitar, and dance—into a laboratory of ideas, developing a creative process in which each performance becomes a constellation of fragments from the past, present, and future. Ordóñez will explore how Israel Galván reveals structures of flamenco dance montage that differ greatly from the models developed in dance academies, and how these give rise to new choreographic keys for a form of “creation in action.”
Pedro Ordóñez Eslava is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Granada, specializing in modern flamenco. In 2011, he received the Musicology Prize of the Spanish Society of Musicology for his doctoral thesis, The Musical Creation of Mauricio Sotelo and José María Sánchez-Verdú: Interdisciplinary Convergence at the Beginning of the 21st Century. He served as Director of the Manuel de Falla Chair at the University of Granada from 2017 to 2023 and, since 2019, has led the Flamenco Studies Research Group at the same university, which in 2024 was restructured into the Flamenco Chair.
