In an interview with The New York Times in 2000, Martin Santangelo, Artistic Director of Noche Flamenca, said “Good flamenco survives, its heritage is boundless. When I want something new, I go back.”
Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca return to the Pillow this summer for the first time in 23 years, bringing with them the promise of discovering new forms of dance within the rich history of flamenco. In anticipation of their performance at the Pillow from August 14-18 in the Ted Shawn Theatre, we take a dive into the boundless past of flamenco at Jacob’s Pillow, searching in history to discover something new.
The ties between the Pillow and flamenco reach back to before Jacob’s Pillow was even created, when future founder Ted Shawn traveled to Spain for two months in 1923 to study Spanish forms of dance. In Barcelona, Shawn explored the city’s cabarets, where he was taken by “the intensity of the crowd, the weightiness of the zapateo and the guitar,” says Pillow Scholar Paul Scolieri in his book, Ted Shawn: His Life, Writings, and Dances. During this trip, Shawn would learn the complicated rhythms of the farruca, a flamenco dance, and purchase a real Spanish bullfighter costume in Seville, which he later wore in his piece Cuadro Flamenco.
Two decades later, flamenco was brought to the Pillow during the inaugural Festival with the newly constructed theater – what we now call the Ted Shawn Theatre. In 1942, the famed La Argentinita and Pilar Lopez performed the “Dances of Spain,” including “Three Adaluzian School Dances” and a form of flamenco called “Bulerias.”
Shawn would be reminded of these flamenco performances again in 1958, when Ximinez-Vargas Spanish Ballet made their Pillow debut. In his Fifteenth Annual Newsletter covering the 1958 Festival, Shawn describes Ximenez-Vargas as “a company who, keeping all the dynamic excitement one expects from Spanish dancing, was on the highest artistic level of anything I have ever seen since the late, great Argentinita.”
Shawn recounts the performance fondly in his newsletter, including when he joined the company on stage for one of the performances:
“These dances I had learned in Spain in 1923, before any of these children were born… I did get into full make up and costume and appeared on stage as one of the troupe, but I did not expose my “vintage” flamenco dancing to the cruel contrast of the vital youth of these real Spaniards.”
Throughout the remainder of the twentieth century, flamenco would grace the Pillow’s stages in the Festival, including Maria Alba Spanish Dance company and Pilar Rioja, among several others.
Noche Flamenca would bring flamenco to Jacob’s Pillow as it entered the twenty-first century, making their Pillow debut in 2000 in the Doris Duke Theatre with dancers Soledad Barrio, Noe Barroso, Ana Romero, Eva Marin, Bruno Argenta, and Alejandra Ramirez. Maura Keefe, Pillow Scholar-in-Residence, quotes Noche Flamenca’s Artistic Director, Martin Santangelo, in her Pillow Notes for the program:
“Martin Santangelo says: “You don’t need tricks to sell flamenco,” …Rather than being weighed down by tradition, Noche Flamenca is elevated by its understanding of the past.”
Just as Noche Flamenca looks to the past to elevate their dance, we look at how flamenco has appeared in the Pillow’s history to deepen our understanding of this dance in the present.
This Pillow Pick was written by Lucy Kudlinski and published on August 7, 2024.