New York City Center

Compañía Manuel Liñan

¡VIVA!

“Liñán’s gift is transcendental. He awakens rhythms, images, wildest possibilities of dance, and banishes the predictabilities of sitting in a theatre watching carefully staged flamenco”– The Financial Times, UK

“Manuel Liñán is the kind of creator who will make new fans for the genre, with his unique brand of fearless, innovative flamenco”– The Upcoming, UK

“This is the kind of flamenco everyone should see” — The Arts Desk (UK)

A generous and seductive performer of dizzying power, Manuel Liñán has long been praised for the showmanship and sincerity with which he breaks the rules of flamenco. ¡VIVA! features male dancers clad in traditionally female costumes, exposing the many identity expressions alive within every human body.

¡VIVA! is a song to the freedom of movement, where the feminine is embraced from the masculine body as its own; where gender roles, in a codified world like flamenco, are broken with joy and enjoyment – creating new terrains that, although unexplored, are not distant.

Liñán creates a transformation in ¡VIVA! that constructs a body that we long for in order to enhance our way of expressing ourselves. A transformation that does not always imply a way of masking oneself, but rather a bareness; a revelation.

In a celebratory key, Liñán proposes the plurality of flamenco dance, through both its different forms and their singularity. And he does it with six bailaores-bailarines accompanied by live musicians, who will be in charge of exploring and diving into this fascinating universe of the feminine, as seen from the masculine; thus exposing these two identities, which are part of our own nature.

¡VIVA! is made possible with generous support provided by Spain Tourist Office in New York and Acción Cultural Española, AC/E.

Compañía Manuel Liñan

Winner of the 2017 National Dance Award, Manuel Liñan was born in Granada and studied with the legendary Manolete and Mario Maya. Manuel not only shines as a dancer but also as a choreographer and a director. He has been invited on numerous occasions to choreograph shows by companies such as the National Ballet of Spain, Rafaela Carrasco, Teresa Nieto and the New Spanish Ballet.