Bi Flamenko International Flamenco Festival
Concept and beginnings
Bi Flamenko arose from discussions between Bogdan Benigar, programme head director for jazz and world music at Cankarjev dom, Cultural and Congress Centre, and Ernestina van de Noort, director of Flamenco Biënnale Nederland, which started in 2006. The aim of both festivals is to present another side to a genre of music and performance that perhaps suffers more than most from cultural assumptions and preconceptions. While both festivals do devote a small portion of their programmes to more traditional flamenco artists and patterns, they share an artistic vision of flamenco as a contemporary and future art form, and as a platform for connecting different styles of music and theatre. As flamenco already has theatre built into itself, this has led to exciting cross-genre productions.
Programme
In line with this vision, and despite its relatively small scale, Bi Flamenko has ranged widely across a number of crossover projects in its two editions so far, although 2020's biggest draw for flamenco fans of whatever persuasion was an appearance by Rafael Riqueni, one of the art form's greatest ever guitar players, although even here we are talking about an artist who has melded traditional flamenco aesthetics with other musical forms.
Other highlights of the 2020 edition, with perhaps a heavier nod to the contemporary contexts in which flamenco can operate, included Los Voluble and their Flamenco is Not a Crime project, which usesd live DJ mixing to interrogate what flamenco can say about various electronic music genres (and vice versa), rising star Vanesa Aibar, who uses flamenco as a basis for modern and Spanish classical dance, ¡Kick-Pluck-Planta-Tacón-Tap-Clap-Clack!, a collaboration between dancer Eduardo Guerrero and Dutch percussion group Slagwerk Den Haag, and Nairuz, a project led by Bosnian guitarist Mirza Redžepagić, who brings flamenco face-to-face with devotional Turkish Sufi music.
The 2018 edition revelled in the mix of traditional flamenco and avant-garde in the form of choreographer and dancer Rocío Molina (Fallen from Heaven), dancer Ana Morales's Bagatelles project, which featured electronics and interactive installations, pianist Alfonso Aroca's jazz-flamenco conversations, Qasida, an encounter between young composer and singer Rosario "La Tremendita" and Iranian classical musician Mohammad Motamedi and, perhaps most startlingly, Firebird, the debut collaboration between Slovenian flamenco dancer/performance artist Ana Pandur Predin and Giani Poposki of Slovenian death metal/industrial band Noctiferia.
In keeping with the open, dialogic nature of flamenco, many of the performances in both editions of the festival have featured post-show artists' talks. Workshops and films are also an integral part of the festival.
See also
External links
Festival websites
- Bi Flamenko, with 2020 programme
- Flamenco Biënnale Nederland
- Flamenco Biënnale Nederland Facebook page
- 2018 programme via Acción Cultural Española, the Spanish overseas cultural promotion organisation
Reviews
- Review of Bi Flamenko 2020, Delo, February 2020 in Slovenian
- Review of Fallen from Heaven, Guardian, Sadler's Wells, London
Performances