Ritmo Flamenco Heats Up UofG Centre Courtyard

Ritmo Flamenco will be performing in Guelph this week as Guelph Dance and Central Student Association (CSA) partner to present another CSA Nooner at University of Guelph, Centre Courtyard. Join us for this beautiful celebration of dance on Friday, March 22, 12pm. Free.

Angelica Scanurra, dancer and choreographer, talks here about the fine art of bringing flamenco and contemporary dance together.

Angelica: My mother (Valerie’s) most recent work entitled A Paso Lento was created for Ritmo Flamenco’s most recent production Vida Flamenca that was held at the Al Green Theatre in April 2012, and my most recent work Sombras de Locura (Shadows of Madness) was created for Dance Ontario’s DanceWeekend 2013 in honour of the 100^th anniversary of Stravinsky’s work Rite of Spring. Both works are very different; you can see tradition, structure and wisdom rooted in Valerie’s piece. It is exactly the type of dancing you will see in a tablao in Spain—namely Madrid, right now. The flamenco guitar by Roger Scannura is also an intrinsic part of flamenco that shows the synchronicity of music and dance.  Roger is able to accompany the dance in a way that inspires us to go beyond our boundaries in both technique and expression. Traditional flamenco was always performed in intimate settings and sometimes just listening to Roger’s masterful playing of flamenco solos is deep and soulful for any audience of any theatre setting.

The goal for my piece was to do something that I was sure had never been done before.  Rite of Spring was always a very inspiring piece of music to me. It’s anti-Flamenco in a sense, because the time signature changes every 5 bars, if you’re lucky. I knew that the power of Flamenco mixed with the strong dynamics of Rite of Spring would concoct something that spanned the whole spectrum of emotions, for the dancer and viewer alike. Most Flamenco companies in Spain right now are becoming more contemporary, abandoning traditional attire and music to create a movement vocabulary that welcomes diversity and experimentation.

At the end of the day, the thing that makes me the happiest is the fact that I get to perform my works and have them be seen. I also love the idea of getting more acquainted with my creation through repetition. The dancers that I worked with are Sachi O’Hoski and Laura Lelievre. Both of them have strong contemporary technique as well as flamenco, which allowed me the freedom to use them as muses and mirrors, as they were representing my alter egos. The pieces are so layered that I discovered something new every time I rehearsed and performed this piece. I feel that it was therapeutic in its invigoration and that no other previous dance piece I performed has ever made me feel this way.  We wanted to use wide, flowing dresses that resembled both traditional and a contemporary “Martha Graham” influence. I am actually a huge of fan of Martha Graham in her ability to delve into the darker side of humanity in such a display of strength and fragility that totally reveals the frailty of existence. I hope to continue along this path of discovery through my dance pieces and look forward to my next creation!

Dance is the thing for me where I feel completely in control and out of control all at once. It helps me to express myself more effectively. One of the greatest joys in my life is evoking a thought, feeling, question or emotion in my audience; whether they were enlightened by a subconscious message that was woven into the choreography or if I simply enabled them to abandon day-to-day life for an hour.

All information regarding upcoming events, classes and performances by Anjelica Scannura, Valerie Scannura and Ritmo Flamenco can be found at www.anjelicascannura.com and www.ritmoflamenco.ca

You can find up-to-date info about them through their Facebook pages by searching Anjelica Scannura or Ritmo Flamenco.