Luz Arcas/La Phármaco feat. Perrate
Mariana
While flamenco rebels like Rocío Molina, Israel Galván, and Andrés Marín innovate the genre from within, contemporary choreographer Luz Arcas takes the opposite approach. She brings into her work the influences of flamenco and folklore she grew up with in Andalusia.
In the performance Mariana, Luz Arcas shares the stage with five musicians. They perform ancient flamenco styles as well as ploughing and threshing songs traditionally sung while working the land. Arcas was particularly fascinated by La Mariana, a primitive style sung by nomadic (Roma) goatherds to drive their herds.
In her dance, Arcas gives contemporary expression to age-old customs and symbols, with the expressive, soulful body as the central starting point. “The dance I seek is not a form, but a state of being.”
Especially for the Flamenco Biënnale, Luz Arcas is joined by singer Tomás de Perrate. Mariana will have its world premiere in this formation at the festival at ITA.
Dancer and choreographer Luz Arcas (Málaga, 1983) is one of the leading figures in contemporary dance in Spain. In 2024, she was awarded the National Dance Prize by the Spanish Ministry of Culture for her versatile and distinctive body of work. She is praised for her relentless quest for a new dance language, unafraid to take risks and constantly questioning her roots. With her own company, La Phármaco, she has performed on stages around the world since 2009. Her often multidisciplinary work is marked by its unconventional narrative, inviting audiences into a poetic exploration of transience, death, and memory.
Tomás de Perrate was born in 1964 in the flamenco stronghold of Utrera. He is the son of the renowned singer Perrate de Utrera and grandson of one of flamenco’s greatest vocalists, Manuel Torre (1880–1933). Originally a barber by trade, Perrate only took up the family tradition in 1999, and has since become one of the leading artists in the flamenco scene. His powerful, raw lamento transports listeners to ancestral depths. He effortlessly bridges classical flamenco repertoire and unexplored musical terrains. In Perrate’s voice, tradition and innovation merge naturally.
Inleiding - Meet the Artist
19:00 Introduction by Pedro Ordóñez (in English): Luz Arcas and the radicality of Mariana
22:00 Meet the Artist
Flamenco dancer Luz Arcas (Málaga, 1983) explores the radical, that is, that which belongs to or is related to the root. But the root is anything but clean. Its habitat is dark, murky, and damp. It is surrounded by decomposing debris and entangled in the bowels of the subsoil, where the depths of flamenco (lo jondo) also reside. This dancer's body has strong and mobile roots, and these roots are everywhere. In this introduction (in English), Pedro Ordóñez discusses the creation Mariana, a raw, primitive, and imaginary performance in which Luz Arcas is accompanied by classical flamenco singing to unfold a gestural vocabulary that is also very contemporary.
Pedro Ordóñez Eslava is an associate professor of Musicology at the University of Granada and specializes in modern flamenco. In 2011, he received the Musicology Prize from the Spanish Society of Musicology for his dissertation, entitled "The Musical Creation of Mauricio Sotelo and José María Sánchez-Verdú: Interdisciplinary Convergence at the Beginning of the 21st Century." He was 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 University of Granada, which was transformed into the Chair of Flamenco at the same university in 2024.
