(noticia) Flamenco festival takes a spin around Portland

Multiple venues offer a look at an old dance with new life
By ERIC BARTELS Issue date: Tue, Jul 19, 2005
The Tribune Flamenco, the distinctive, dramatic amalgam of music, song and dance whose roots reached Spain with eighth-century Moorish conquerors, is enjoying a modern resurgence.
Hence the staging this week of the Portland Flamenco Festival, the first full-blown celebration of the art form in the Pacific Northwest.
“It’s indicative of the surge in popularity of flamenco worldwide,” says Laurena Marrone, director of Solo Flamenco, the local nonprofit co-sponsoring the event. “Portland is part of that surge. We’re just on the wave.”
Marrone says the new level of interest in flamenco stems from its incorporation into contemporary music —pop, jazz and hip-hop — in its native Spain.
“There’s a new genre called nuevo Flamenco,” she says. “Several of the most popular groups in Spain right now are these fusion groups.”
Marrone, who is almost certainly the most prominent teacher and one of the most accomplished practitioners of flamenco in Portland, says the aesthetics of the dance also moved into the worlds of fashion and film, carried in part by superstar actress-singer Jennifer Lopez.
“All of those areas of pop culture have been infiltrated,” Marrone says.

(leer +) [vía portlandtribune]