FLAMENCO FESTIVAL closes its 20th edition thrilling 10,000 spectators in the US

New York audiences have been able to witness, thanks to Flamenco Festival, the evolution of contemporary flamenco over the last 20 years.

—Miguel Marín, artistic director of Flamenco Festival

The Gala Flamenca put the finishing touch to Flamenco Festival New York at a sold out New York City Center. María Moreno, who dazzled the audience with her “mantilla“, and Mercedes Ruiz, who offered a recital of “taconeos“, were acclaimed by a devoted audience from the beginning, as were the cantaora María Terremoto and the bailaor Eduardo Guerrero, who filled with passion and energy a show that did not go off the beaten track. They were joined by cantaores Miguel Rosendo and Ismael de la Rosa, as well as guitarists Santiago Lara and Javier Ibáñez, and percussionist Paco Vega.

VIVA!, the other highlight of this year’s Flamenco Festival, was received with standing ovations. The groundbreaking flamenco show with a queer perspective in which the dancer and choreographer Manuel Liñán breaks gender roles and celebrates the freedom to be oneself, beyond conventions and stereotypes.

The show, one of the jewels of Flamenco Festival on its return after the two year delay due to the pandemic, was a sell-out success in the historic theatres of the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami and the New York City Center, in its two performances that both ended with standing ovations, amidst applause, cheers and repeated “bravos”.

Despite the success and good reception, Flamenco Festival closes a stage in New York after 20 editions as a result of the lack of stable institutional support to maintain this important event of great format and impact with flamenco as a protagonist in the world’s epicentre of culture.

The 20th anniversary of the flamenco event has been possible mainly thanks to the extraordinary support of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at NYU in the framework of its 25th Anniversary activities, and of the Instituto Cervantes, on the occasion of the celebration of the World Flamenco Congress.

From next year onwards, Flamenco Festival will focus on organising cycles and tours, and will promote its creative residency programme In Progress, which began in February in Torrox (Málaga) with artists Rocío Márquez and Ana Morales, and that will be extended to the cities of New York and Miami.

This has already been materialised in this 2022 edition, with an artistic encounter  and a musical improvisation between the young Jerez-born cantaora María Terremoto and the iconic saxophonist from The Rolling Stones Tim Ries, a session that has fulfilled one of Terremoto’s personal dreams: to mix her flamenco voice with other styles such as soul, blues or jazz, with the support of Flamenco Festival.

Flamenco Festival’s organisation is satisfied and happy to have been able to celebrate its twentieth anniversary after the two-years delay due to the pandemic, and makes a positive balance of this edition. Most of the shows and cultural events were sold out, with an attendance of more than 10,000 spectators in New York, Miami and Los Angeles, consolidating the impact the festival has had over these two decades.

The director Miguel Marín wanted to thank the audience “for so much love” and highlighted that the mission of the festival “has always been to show the great variety and diversity of styles and proposals that exist in flamenco today”.

This international flamenco platform has brought to the United States artists at the top of their careers such as Sara Baras, Eva Yerbabuena, Estrella Morente, Carmen Linares, Tomatito, María Pagés, Manuela Carrasco, Israel Galván, Carmen Cortés, Rocío Molina, Olga Pericet, Rocío Márquez, Rosalía and Rafaela Carrasco, and masters who are no longer with us, such as Paco de Lucía or Enrique Morente, as well as the artists who have been part of this anniversary edition, such as Miguel Poveda, Manuel Liñán, Mercedes Ruiz, Eduardo Guerrero, María Moreno, María Terremoto or Santiago Lara, among others.

For two decades, Flamenco Festival New York has made possible an intergenerational dialogue between the most exceptional artists of today’s flamenco, showing the diversity of looks, languages and ways of understanding a universal art, with a representation of both the most traditional flamenco and the most innovative and avant-garde proposals.

Be that as it may, Flamenco Festival will continue the mission with which it was born in 2001: to take flamenco around the world, crossing borders and making this universal art known beyond Spain. The organisation of Flamenco Festival would like to thank the American public for their loyalty, edition after edition. Thousands of spectators without whom these twenty years would not have been possible…

Here’s to many more years of Flamenco Festival!