Discipline: Dance and Live Music (guitar)
Genre: Flamenco (Spain)
Technical Requirements: 1) PA to mic guitar 2) Smooth stage surface appropriate for footwork
Length: Ten to Fifteen Minutes
Title: SoleáThe Soleá, also known as Soleáres, is a traditional Flamenco song form (or palo) and is played an unusual 12 beat polyrhythmic meter. The name soleá is derived from the Spanish word for “alone”; the music and dance draw their expression from the ubiquitous human longing for companionship and understanding. Zamani Flamenco’s proposed work will fuse traditional and progressive dance and musical forms to bring the pathos of soleá to contemporary audiences. Our goal is to capture in this piece a universal expression which surpasses class, language, nationality and race. In order to accomplish this, we will craft an accompanied dance which ebbs and flows, sighs and rages—all driven by the meditative pulse of the soleá rhythm and the pounding crescendo of footwork.
Zamani Flamenco is a live music and dance duo comprised of Andy Fitzgerald and Zanbaka. Although both Andy and Zanbaka have been actively involved with flamenco performance for many years, their work in the past has often been undertaken as a member of a larger ensemble. As a duo, their purpose in Zamani Flamenco is to reconnect with the intimate, personal expression for which flamenco as an art form is so well known. Instead of attempting to extend the flamenco form to the widest possible audience, Zamani Flamenco strives rather to introduce listeners to Flamenco at full strength—one small room at a time.
The work sample linked here features a short preliminary version of the dance we have in mind for the Walrus E.P.I.C. project. The full version of the dance will be two to three times this length and will include several dance and music sections not shown here. This sample, as will be the case for the eventual longer work, moves forward at a variable pace—sometimes energetic and explosive, sometimes contemplative and even mournful. While our soleá is not “interpretive” per se, it does suggest the range of emotions concomitant with the feelings of isolation from which the form is inspired.
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