Yo, Carmen - María Pagés Compañía
A vibrant ode to womanhood, and a radical reimagining of Bizet’s voluptuous opera heroine - from the brilliant flamenco dancer and choreographer María Pagés.
Visionary and flamboyant, and blending dance, music, poetry and theatre, Yo, Carmen digs deep into the primal emotions of flamenco – and is unforgettably beautiful. The show brings together eight dancers in Pagés’ fluid flamenco choreography. Seven musicians – featuring violin and cello alongside flamenco guitarists and singers – provide a live soundtrack of Bizet’s familiar opera tunes, the popular songs that inspired them, and gripping original flamenco.
A pioneer in contemporary flamenco, iconoclastic Seville-born dancer and choreographer María Pagés has challenged traditionalists with her sensual rethinks of Spanish dance, and her confrontations of hard issues. She found international fame as a guest artist with Michael Flatley’s Riverdance, forming her own dance company in 1990, and going on to win a dazzling collection of international awards.
Yo, Carmen marks her very personal creative journey with the figure of Carmen, whose operatic incarnation she has known since her childhood. In her captivating show, Pagés unwraps Carmen’s myths and stereotypes – to look deep into the essence of the feminine.
About the company
Does María Pagés dance? Planted, just as any other human being, on the earth we tread, she differs from us in that the ground - where her feet start to draw out questions and answers - is not just the essential base that assures that the movement will not be interrupted with each forward movement or withdrawal. With María Pagés, the floor mysteriously acquires a power of levitation, just as one could imagine the ground being able to detach itself from the Earth and dissolve into the air, to follow the roads her arms lead her along. It is known that the genius of Dance lives in María Pagés, we all know this and we proclaim it. But there is more to this woman; she dances and by doing that, she moves everything that surrounds her.
"Neither the sky nor the earth rest unchanged after María Pagés has danced" - José Saramago (Nobel Prize for Literature)
If there is something that defines María Pagés’ multi-faceted creativity, it is her deeply rooted sense of the ethics of culture. She creates because she is convinced that Art – in its essence and the emotion that produces it – is a deep commitment to life and memory, in an organic sense.
Modernity, for this Sevillian artiste - a natural iconoclast that has made Flamenco her own poetic homeland - is Tradition in movement and the dynamics of our languages and ideas. Her creative and aesthetic contribution resides in her serenity, her ability to converse without complex in other languages, opening the door to the acceptance of Flamenco’s mythical hospitality. Making use of the fundamental codes of the Flamenco language and doing research within herself and without, Pagés has proved to be a pioneer in the understanding of Flamenco as an art in evolution, contemporary and alive. Her choreographies have overcome cultural differences, convinced, as she is, that the dialogue between different artistic languages can only favor a better comprehension of the organic truths that are to be found in art and life.