The opening scene of Malucos Flamenco, a flamenco piece by Carlos Chamorro and the Malucos company, reveals two odd-looking clowns. The visual aspects of these characters place them in contrast to traditional flamenco imagery: their faces are completely painted in white apart from big red noses, and they are only partially dressed with a variation of a classical tutu skirt. This circus-like imagery creates an aesthetic conflict between the visual language and the expectations deriving from the show’s title, thus challenging the spectator’s reception process. These images exemplify a new stylistic tendency in contemporary flamenco, which utilises an artistic strategy termed in this chapter as ‘fusion.’ This tendency has evolved since the early 1990s, and is evident in the work of additional contemporary flamenco choreographers. Despite the differences between these artists, their works nonetheless manifest a relating set of fundamental features, most notably the integration of different styles of movement syntax and musical composition. Moreover, this hybridity functions as part of an innovative visual language, which emphasises the role of stage design in the construction of meaning. This feature contrasts with the fundamental characteristic of flamenco as an art form in which the dancing body transmits emotions, values and meanings in a scenografically abstract or empty space. The submitted chapter will demonstrate how choreographers that realise this type of artistic practice break away from traditional flamenco imagery by adopting contemporary strategies, such as: multi-media and video-art based performances, multidisciplinary compositions, intertextuality and references to visual imagery from cinema and the arts, and images of gender ambiguity. This innovative visual language will be presented as reflecting a cultural-artistic discourse, which simultaneously reacts to the traditional role of flamenco as Spain’s national dance, while constructing a new and relevant paradigm for this dance in contemporary Spain.

Abstract

This chapter discusses “Three Suggestions for Dealing with Time” (2016–2020), a folklore-inspired contemporary dance trilogy created by Mor Shani for Inbal Dance Theater. Inbal was established in 1949 by Sara Levi-Tanai as a means to express the Yemenite cultural heritage through Western theatrical and choreographic forms. Although innovative in its integration of diverse cultural and artistic influences, Inbal was labeled as being representative of Yemenite ethnicity, expressing Mizrachi exoticism that did not conform to the collective image of “Israeliness” that promoted a new Hebrew-Ashkenazi-Zionist-secular-Sabra identity or body. Consequently, the company was marginalized in the Israeli dance field, and its controversial position highlighted the ongoing artistic and social tension between Yemenite and Israeli, ethnic and national, and exotic and innovative, art and folklore. Considering Inbal’s complex history, Shani’s dance trilogy unfolds as a choreographic practice of contemporizing the Yemenite ethnicity that has defined the company from its beginning. Through it, Shani explicitly comments on Inbal’s cultural-artistic identity and marginal position throughout the years while affirming Levi-Tanai’s legacy as a source of the company’s contemporaneity. Moreover, by expanding Levi-Tanai’s unique stylistic integration, Shani resonates with her agenda of cultural pluralism, thus realizing Inbal’s potential as a third space through which the “Inbalite” language is updated and included in the choreographic present.

From its inception as a type of folk art, flamenco has evolved as a gender-coded dance, displaying masculine and feminine bodies that reflected traditional gender roles and hierarchy in gypsy-Spanish society. The evolution of flamenco into a theatre art towards the beginning of the 20^th century enhanced the importance attributed to the aesthetic features of the body and its movements. Female dancers represented an ideal of feminine glamour, and male performers succeeded in adjusting the concept of beauty to their own bodies, thus becoming the epitome of masculine strength. Commenting on the central role that beauty still plays with respect to gender representations in contemporary flamenco, dancer and choreographer, Belén Maya, says that ‘We have to renounce beauty. You don’t have to be beautiful all the time.’ Maya’s approach reflects a withdrawal from existing images of masculinity and femininity, which is evident in the work of additional avant-garde artists, such as Israel Galván, Andrés Marín, Juan Carlos Lérida and Rocío Molina. This group of artists undermines the notion of aestheticism as a defining feature of the male/female body in flamenco by constructing a different type of flamenco body. In this chapter I will examine how these artists challenge traditional gender imagery by incorporating artistic strategies from contemporary European dance, namely the appropriation of an ‘anti-aesthetic’ aestheticism and the implementation of Brechtian techniques, directed at theatricalising traditional gender images in flamenco and framing them as social performances. I will show that although the dancing bodies of these artists are technically proficient, they are perceived as strange, provocative, and from a traditional point of view – even ugly at times. These subversive bodies will be discussed as part of a cultural-artistic discourse aimed at exposing – and resisting – the aesthetic and social inscriptions of traditional flamenco on the masculine/feminine dancing body.

The opening scene of Malucos Flamenco (2002), a flamenco piece by Carlos Chamorro and the Malucos company, reveals two odd-looking clowns. The visual aspects of these characters place them in contrast to traditional flamenco imagery: their faces are completely painted in white apart from big red noses, and they are only partially dressed with a variation of a classical tutu skirt. This circus-like imagery creates an aesthetic conflict between the visual language and the expectations deriving from the show's title, thus challenging the spectator’s reception process. The images presented in Malucos’ work exemplify a new stylistic tendency in contemporary flamenco, which is termed in this chapter as flamenco-fusion. This tendency has evolved since the early 1990s, and is identified with the work of additional flamenco choreographers. Despite the differences between these artists, their works nonetheless manifest a relating set of fundamental features, most notably the integration of different styles of movement syntax and musical composition. Moreover, this hybridity functions as part of an innovative visual language, which emphasizes the role of stage design in the construction of meaning. This feature contrasts the fundamental characteristic of flamenco as an art form in which the dancing body transmits emotions, values and meanings in a scenografically ‘abstract’ or empty space. The submitted chapter will demonstrate how choreographers that realize this particular style break away from traditional flamenco imagery by adopting contemporary artistic strategies, such as: multi-media and video-art based performances, multidisciplinary compositions, intertextuality and references to visual imagery from cinema and the arts, and images of gender ambiguity. This innovative visual language reflects a cultural-artistic discourse, which simultaneously reacts to the traditional role of flamenco as Spain’s national dance, while placing flamenco-fusion as a new and relevant paradigm for this dance in contemporary Spain.