Halifax dance troupe Flamenco en Rouge returns home with its new multidisciplinary work, Camino. Working in collaboration with local media artist Annik Gaudet, Camino is inspired by the human story of displacement and migration.
Flamenco music represents the story of migration and search for identity and belonging, and Camino explores these themes through music and dance together with Annik’s video art projection and installation. – Martine Durier-Copp
“Flamenco music represents the story of migration and search for identity and belonging, and Camino explores these themes through music and dance together with Annik’s video art projection and installation,” says Martine Durier-Copp, artistic director for Flamenco en Rouge. “These artistic elements will come together to create a completely immersive atmosphere.”
“Through the history of cultural displacement referenced in Camino, I find parallels with the diaspora of deportation in my own Acadian heritage,” adds Gaudet. “In the video, I explore this state of deracination through the severed imagery of the dancers’ figures, appearing like fragmented entities moving through the landscape.”
At the show, a custom-designed pasaje (passage) installation will link the audience to the performers and provide transitional spaces for reflection and connection. The palos (artforms) will include the Bulerías, the Rondeña, the Soleá por bulerías, and the Guajiras, which features Cuban influences referred to as Ida y vuelta (“there and back”, to the New World and back to Spain). Completing the program are the haunting Maldigo, the high-spirited Moorish-inspired Tangos de Graná (Granada), and the dramatic Soleá de Alcalá, where dominant themes speak of solitude and despair, but end with affirmation of life and the will to survive.
Flamenco en Rouge presents Camino at St. Matthew’s Church (1479 Barrington St, Halifax) on March 25, with additional shows in Wolfville (April 29), Shelburne (June 3) and Lunenburg (June 24). Visit flamencoenrouge.com for tickets and information.