The world’s sole festival of contemporary flamenco takes over Savoy Theatre on the 15th-16th of October 2011
Flamingo –The Festival of Contemporary Flamenco offers shows from children’s theatre to performances, a festival club and a film screening. In addition to the theatre stage, performances take also place in the lobby areas and in the Katsomo restaurant within the theatre.
15th of October at 18.00 Compañía Kaari Martin presents Pippi Longstockings
Villa Villekulla’s ladies tea cups tinkle and the teeth of thieves rattle, when the world’s strongest girl goes flamenco!
The show that won the Theatre Music Award 2010 dazzles again with its magnificent and titivated visuality. International performing crew includes the elite of Finland and Spain.
Flamingo Club kicks off after the Pippi performance, starting with a screening of a document called Poligono Sur, which was awarded in Berlin International Film Festival. The film’s French director Dominique Abel will present the work. The club continues with a live gig of Roni Martin and his band consisting of the leading jazz musicians of Finland: Seppo Kantonen in piano and Sanna Salmenkallio in violin. The show includes plenty of surprise acts by the festival’s international guests, in the true spirit of Absolute Flamingo.
Pippi Longstockings Tickets 25/12€ + Flamingo Club (inc. to the festival ticket price)
16th of October at 19.00 Lugo-Chamorro-Collado-Martin:
The Night of The Solos
Presenting the Absolute Flamingo competition’s winner Mexican Karen Lugo and the young newcomer Hungarian Maria Keck
The festival launched a new Absolute Flamingo competition that searched for strong and new outlook on contemporary flamenco. The entries came from over ten countries, which illustrates flamenco’s position as a developing form of contemporary art on its part.
“A lot of good entries came from Spain, but our biggest interest was to see what was possible to be found elsewhere. Karen Lugo’s dancing was so spectacularly phenomenal in terms of technique and expression that she could not have been left unselected. Maria Keck on her part had managed to create musically innovative flamenco on her own grounds. In addition, Maria is a very talented dancer. Absolute Flamingo competition gave birth to absolutely new flamenco”, tell the artistic directors Kaari and Roni Martin.
Karen Lugo is a dancer of young generation with a splendid technique and a strong personality, equipped with some success also in Spain. Lugo has worked extensively with a group of known Spanish choreographer Javier Latorre. Not only has she won Almeria’s flamenco competition but she is also the second foreigner ever to have won in the choreography competition of Madrid, whilst Compañía Kaari Martin was the first with its third prize in 2006. Karen Lugo will headline the festival with a commissioned performance called CAMINOTODOLOCURAEL… which, following the Spanish name game interpretation, could for instance mean the lunacy from start to finish…
Amongst Lugo, The Night of the Solos introduces Martin’s own group’s Spanish dancers Mariana Collado and Carlos Chamorro. Collado, recently awarded by the Almeria’s flamenco competition, presents the commissioned performance styled work Lady’s Circus in the lobby.
Known as the art director of Spain’s most modern flamenco group, Chamorro presents his new solo SpanishTrip, commissioned by Flamingo. Also Kaari and Roni Martin’s The Raven, which premiered as a part of Tervamäki & Martin night in December 2010 will be performed. The audience has an opportunity to meet the artists after the show. The interviewer is the Finnish National Ballet Étoile, Minna Tervamäki.
Lugo-Chamorro-Collado-Martin: The Night of the Solos + artist meeting. Tickets 32/28€
More about the makers
Compañía Kaari Martin is an independent dance group formed in 2002 and is led together by choreographer Kaari Martin and composer Roni Martin. The group’s work has broadened the understanding of flamenco as a form of international contemporary art.
Belonging to the top elite of contemporary flamenco, the group’s work combines the technique of flamenco with freedom of modern dance. The Martins have won acclaim also abroad: their work Tell Me Rain was awarded in Madrid’s choreography competition in 2006 as the first foreign piece during the 15-year-long history of the competition. Pippi Longstockings on its turn was prized with the Theatre Music Award in 2010.
Carlos Chamorro is a lone rider, whose original vision has created completely new and innovative flamenco. Chamorro masters also the techniques of ballet and contemporary dance, and he combines them in his style in an interesting and personal manner. Chamorro founded his own dance group Malucos Danza in 1998 representative of this style. Chamorro has also delivered various demanding pieces of commissioned work, as the Dressed to Dance choreography compilation for the Guggenheim museum of New York. The dancer prized for the best solo choreography in 2008 in Spain has performed also in Spanish National Ballet, in addition to leading his own group.
Mariana Collado has studied, among other places, in Centro Flamenco de Estudios Escénicos of Granada, led by the legendary choreographer Mario Maya. Collado was appointed to Maya’s dance group and has after that performed in many productions and dance groups with various top flamenco names as Belén Maya, Rafaela Carrasco and Manuel Liñan. Currently Mariana works in Madrid as a dancer and pedagogue in the school named by the most original and known choreographer of Spain: Antonio Canales, and she was recently awarded the second prize in Almeria’s flamenco competition. Collado’s personal style is specifically represented in her choreography Lady’s Circus, which was first performed in Barcelona’s Mercat de Flors in 2009.
Pippi is flamenca, ferocious and sensitive
“the combination is mere lush.” (Helsingin Sanomat)
Pippi came, danced and conquered
“simply a staggering artistic hit.” (Kouvolan Sanomat)
“Kaari Martin’s kinetically extremely interesting The Raven shows the skillful and specific
musical precision of its makers.” (Helsingin Sanomat)
“Karen is a fantastic slap against the faces of purists. She is the pure beauty hidden in minimum. She knows, she feels, she remembers everything but does not remind anybody. The volcanic lava springs of her fiery homeland gush out of her. She will have enough power to go around the whole world in search for what she desires. She is Mexican yet still most flamenca in the whole world.”
(Choreographer Javier Latorre)
“...the magnificent Carlos Chamorro...” (The New York Times)
“Power and feelings. Comedy and drama. As in the stormy sea Lady’s circus exceeds the boundaries of dance, sliding into its own inner world.” (José Manuel Benítez, Ballet Nacional de España)
Additional information:
Producer Joonas Antikainen
Tel. +358 44 555 5473
joonas@companiakaarimartin.fi
www.companiakaarimartin.fi
