Compañía Rocío Molina (Spain) – SOLD OUT

Co-presented with SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and Vancouver International Flamenco Festival

 

Fallen from Heaven (Caída del Cielo)

September 27-30, 2023 | 8pm 
Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre,
Goldcorp Centre for the Arts 

Canadian Premiere
Running time: 90 minutes
(no intermission)

We regret to inform you that Friday evening’s performance of Compañía Rocío Molina has been cancelled
due to labour action at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts.

 

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The enfant terrible of Flamenco, Rocío Molina brings her masterwork Fallen from Heaven (Caída del Cielo) to Vancouver. Channeling multiple incarnations – fetishistic matador, bloodied avenging angel – Molina crushes expectations, reinventing classical form with anarchic punk energy and polymorphous perversity. DanceHouse is very proud to launch the new season with this extraordinary work.

Since bursting onto the international stage, Molina has revolutionized Flamenco and galvanized audiences. A fearless performer, she conjures images that recall both the natural world and the ruffled beauty of the human body.

In Fallen from Heaven, Molina’s mastery of contrast is on full display. Accompanied by four male musicians, she moves in thunder and stillness. Powered by avant-garde theatricality, peerless technique, and a gonzo sense of humour, Molina summons the deepest stuff of life — blood and earth, ferocity and fragility — demanding audiences bear witness to her acts of radical creation.

 

A production by: DANZA MOLINA S.L. / CHAILLOT NATIONAL THEATRE (PARIS)

In collaboration with the INAEM | Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música.

“Flamenco has always proposed a fierce and proud femininity, but as embodied by Molina in Fallen from Heaven (Caída del Cielo), it becomes a feminist scream, an elemental cri de coeur…It stops you dead, as the best art should.” — The Guardian

“Ms. Molina is one of the greatest flamenco dancers I have seen, but to say that is not enough.” – The New York Times

“A body that celebrates being a woman, a body which is immersed in the tragic sense of the celebration...”

Vancouver International Flamenco Festival

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Presentation Supporter

The Simons Foundation Canada 

This presentation was originally scheduled to be presented in Vancouver in April 2020.

Rocío Molina. A black and white photos of a woman withtightly pulled back black hair stands in front of a white stucco wall. She is wearing a half length sleeve black crop top and black tights.
Rocío Molina © Simone Fratini.

Rocío Molina

Rocío Molina, a versatile dancer, is one of the Spanish artists with greater international repercussion. She was born in Malaga in 1984. She started to dance at the early age of three years old. At seven, she was outlining her first choreographies. At 17, she graduated with honours at the Royal Dance Conservatory in Madrid and became part of the cast of professionals companies with international tours.

At 22, she premiered Entre paredes (Among the Walls), her first work, which was followed by many more self-creations, all of them with a thing in common, a curious and transgressor look at a flamenco style escaping from the well-trodden paths: El Eterno Retorno (2006), Turquesa como el limón (2006), Almario (2007), Por el decir de la gente (2007), Oro viejo (2008), Cuando las piedras vuelen (2009), Vinática (2010), Danzaora y vinática (2011), Afectos (2012) and Bosque Ardora (2014), Caída del Cielo (2016) and Grito Pelao (2018), Inicio (Uno) (2020), Al fondo Riela (Lo otro del Uno) (2020) and Vuelta a Uno (2021), the last three productions being part of Trilogía sobre la guitarra.

Molina has been working with the leading figures of flamenco such as María Pagés, Miguel Poveda, Antonio Canales, Israel Galván, and of the contemporary arts such as Carlos Marquerie, Mateo Feijóo or Jean Paul Goude.

She has been an associate of the Chaillot National Theater in Paris since 2014, and has been invited to most prestigious theatres and festivals around the world – from Avignon to the Barbican Centre in London, to the City Center in New York, the Esplanade in Singapore, Tanz Im August in Berlin and the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow.

She has received many awards, including the Spanish National Award for Dance, Best Dancer Award at the Seville Bienal, the Gold Medal awarded by the Province of Malaga, the Max Award in 2015 and in 2017, the Dance National British Award in 2016, the Venice Biennale 2022 Silver Lion for dance, the Positano Dance Award ‘Léonide Massine’ 2022, and Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts of the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport 2022.

Carlos Marquerie

Carlos Marquerie Rocío is one of the most relevant figures in the Spanish avant-garde of the last few decades. In his youth he trained with the sculptor and marionette artist Francisco Peralta, who he considers his mentor. An author, director, plastic artist and lighting designer, he was branded by El País newspaper “a distance runner who covers the length, breadth and depth of our avant-garde theatre (…) the living maestro of stage lighting within Spanish theatre”. He has worked with artists such as Elena Córdoba, Rodrigo García, Antonio Fernández Lera, Angélica Liddell, Roger Bernat, Israel Galván, Ana Buitrago, Óscar Dasí, Amancio Prada, Jorge Drexler, Silvia Pérez Cruz, José Luis Gómez, Claudia Faci, Itxaso Corral y Àlex Rigola. His lighting work has featured at theatres and festivals such as Deutsche Oper Berlin, Théâtre del Odéon de París, Théâtre National de Bretagne, Festival d´Avignon and Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz. He has worked with Rocío Molina on Cuando las piedras vuelen, Afectos, Bosque Ardora, Caída del cielo, Grito Pelao and Carnación

Pablo Martín Jones

Born in Madrid in 1980, Pablo Martín Jones is the son of a flamenco guitarist and a flamenco dancer, both Americans living in Spain. Surrounded by music from childhood, he was drawn into percussion in his early teens, later exploring many different instruments and styles, although flamenco and spanish folklore remain his main source of inspiration. His approach broadened as he grew musically, and he developed a wider palette of sounds, that includes practically anything, while simulteniously inmersing himself in electronic music. During this time he has performed with many great artists from many different fields, in many different styles and is increasingly in demand as a composer for film, dance and other performing arts. He was the winner of two Latin Grammy Awards for his work in the album ‘Salvavidas de Hielo’ of Jorge Drexler (2018), awarded as ‘Best new song composition’ in the ‘Premios de la Música’ (2011) and nominated in the same category (2009), awarded as ‘Best Composition for Dance’ in the IX Certamen de Coreografía de Danza Española y Flamenco, (2000), and nominated for Best Composition in the Premios Max (2016). As a composer and/or arranger, he’s worked with Rocío Molina, Carmen Linares, Rosario ‘La Tremendita’, Eliseo Parra, Jorge Drexler or Javier Colina, among others.

Kiko Peña

Kiko Peña, Cantaor (singer), great revelation in the art of flamenco singing, was born in Ecija (Seville) in 1995, in a cantaores’ family, son of bullfighter and singer Paco Peña and Esperanza Garcia de Soria.

He began his career at the age of 12 in the flamenco club David Serrano of Ecija where in 2009, Kiko, with his guitarist, Antonio Garcia, captivated the audience by seguiriyas, cantiñas and taranto, and qualified for the semifinals of the X Youth Competition of the Federation of Flamenco Entities of Seville in the Peña de Tomares. There he continued to gain fame thanks to new songs, tonás, fandangos and bulerías. The half a dozen songs he created quickly gave him recognition in flamenco circles, awakening the interest of the aficionados.

On April 7, he participated in the Festival de Marinaleda and ten days later he was recognized in Jerez de la Frontera Festival. He was invited to the XXII Festival de la Campiña, the XX Noche Flamenca Pedro el de la Timotea, the X Festival Flamenco Joven de Andalucía and the closing of the XXIII Jueves Flamencos de Cádiz, where he will share the stage with Miguel Poveda, who will produce Kiko Peña’s first recording, and who will be the opening act in his concerts in Alcorcón and Badalona, among others.

Óscar Lago

Óscar Lago is a guitarist born in Cadiz. At the age of nine he began his guitar studies with maestros Rafael Abujas, Rafael Porras and Andres Martinez. At the age of 16 he began performing in Spain, and later, working in some flamenco tablaos such as Los Tarantos, El Carmen, El Cordobés or El Flamenco de Tokio, where through hard work and perseverance, he became the artist he is today. In his career he has worked with artists such as: Adrian Galia Company, Javier Latorre Company (Rinconete y Cortadillo), Antonio el Pipa Company (De Tablao), Ángeles Gabaldón Company (Inmigración, Taller Flamenco), Miguel Poveda, the pianist Sergio Monroy, Concha Vargas, Rocío Molina, Ramón Martínez, Andrés Peña or Fuensanta la Moneta, and Jesús Carmona, among others. As a soloist he participated in the Bienal de Sevilla, in the cycle “jóvenes flamencos”. He has studied with guitarists such as Chicuelo or Gerardo Núñez. He has taught guitar courses at the Tanzhaus Festival (Düsseldorf), Flamenco del sur (Cinecitta Campus, Rome). His curiosity and interest in music, and his attention to the study of the guitar and the cadence of playing, have led him to the opportunity to compose music for some of the artists already mentioned, such as Adrian Galia, Angeles Gabaldon, Ramon Martinez, Sergio Monroy.

Jose Manuel Ramos, “El Oruco”

Born in Seville, 1987. He received his first lessons from the Sevillan dancer «El Torombo», with whom he later shared the stage in the season of flamenco of the Diputacion and Coliseo Cubierto «El Palenque» of Seville. He added to these studies with artists such as «La Farruca», «La Faraona», Antonio Canales and Juan de Juan. Within his most important works stands out his participation in the show «Los Gnomos del Flamenco» by the company of Antonio Montoya «Farruco Jr», in presentations such as «Galvanicas», «Evocacion» and «Son de Peñas» presented in the XII and XIII Bienal de Arte Flamenco of Seville, as well as is his protagonistic role as a dancer in the show «Flamenco de Raza» of the singer Curro Fernandez in the Cloitre Nazaire of Bézières, in France and Switzerland. In addition to this, he also presented his own work «Diquela» with his company in Ambérès, Belgium and Athens, Greece, as well as participating in the work «Alma Gitana» of the renowned dancer Juana Amaya in Germany. That same year, he participated in «Jovenes+Flamenco», «Peñas de Guardia», and the XV Bienal of Arte Flamenco as a guest artist. 

Currently he is producing his latest work «Ladrón del Tiempo (Thief of Time)», working with artists such as Rosario «La Tremendita», Rocio Molina, Juana Amaya, Concha Vargas and Ines Bacan, as well as continuing to present, along with his company, his spectacles «ECO» and «Oruco», in various venues in Spain and around the world.  In addition to his career as a performer, El Oruco continues to develop his academic project «FormArte Flamenco» alongside the dancer, Karolina Gonzalez «La Negra», promoting the study of the Flamenco art from its technical, rhythmical and choreographical bases, «FormArte Flamenco» has reached several different academies in countries such as Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Greece, Japan and the United States. 

Top image: Compagnia Rocio Molina, Caida del Cielo © Simone Fratini.