Paco Pena - Flamenco sin Fronteras (Hong Kong 2012)

      


14 May 2012（Mon）晚上，我第一次現場觀賞Flamenco，估不到竟然是Paco Pena，哈哈～這套名為＜無疆界佛闌明高＞的音樂表演，是將西班牙Flamenco與Latin America，特別是Venezuela，結合起來，非常精采。

說實話，雖然知道Paco Pena是一位殿當級的Flamenco藝術家，但是，由於當時我實在對Flamenco的認識很有限，其實整晚都沒有特別留意Paco Pena精湛的彈奏技考。反而我對Ramon Martinez奪目耀眼的舞技，以及他跳舞時汗花四濺的情景，印象特別深刻。

看畢這場表演，最大的感受是﹕ 不要再玩Flamenco，因為她實在太奧妙了，我根本不能理解當中的細節技考，尤其是對於一個只有皮毛音樂底子的初哥來說。雖然理性叫我算罷，但是感性又叫我不要放棄，盡管那是一條漫長的路（或是一條沒完沒了的路）。最後，感性戰勝理性，我還是選擇繼續去玩Flamenco。

20 Nov 2014

Arthur C.

World Music Weekend: Pansori meets Flamenco

(World Music | Korea / Spain)

INTRODUCTION

Featuring the combined forces of Jeong Ga Ak Hoe and musicians from Las Migas, two distinctive musical traditions meet in this unique fusion concert at the climax of the festival’s World Music Weekend.

The vocal and percussion power of Korean Pansori and the raw energy of Flamenco both express life’s most profound emotions. Guided by a passion for their own respective cultural heritage, these gifted performers come together to create new multicultural experiences, combining two of the most deeply rooted forms of national and international music. Innovative, rich and exhilarating, East meets West, listen and be amazed!


https://www.hk.artsfestival.org/en/programmes/pansori-meets-flamenco.html

Carmen by Compañía Antonio Gades (Spain)

An excellent Flamenco performance in 2015.  Make sure you won't miss it !

Venue	Date & Time		Price
Grand Theatre, Hong Kong Cultural Centre	02.01.2015(Fri)-03.01.2015(Sat) 04.01.2015(Sun)	20:15 15:00	$520, $400, $280, $180

Inspired in the work by Prosper Merimée Story, Choreography and Lighting Antonio Gades and Carlos Saura.

‘With Gades’s choreography center stage, Carmen holds up as a classic, universal in its appeal, timeless in its art’. – Washington Post

About Carmen

The theatre version of Carmen was conceived roughly at the same time as the shooting of Carlos Saura’s film.  The film’s success, which took even Gades and Saura by surprise, encouraged Antonio Gades to produce a version for the theatre that turned out to be another masterpiece in the line of Bodas de Sangre and Suite Flamenca.  The premiere in Paris in 1983 was a considerable popular and critical success, revealing Antonio Gades to be not only one of the most important dancers in the world but also one of the greatest choreographers.

Antonio Gades’ reasons for creating this work can be summed up in the ideas that he explained in a press conferences.  In his view “Carmen is neither a frivolous woman nor a man-eater.  She’s just an honest woman who when she loves says she loves and when she doesn’t love and says she doesn’t.  In other words, a free woman.  I don’t think this makes her a maneater.

Carmen also doesn’t treat her feelings as private property.  When she loved she said so and she did the same when she stopped loving.  She also had such an exalted idea of freedom that she preferred to die rather than lose it.  She’s always been treated frivolously and as a maneater.  But Carmen has something essential which is a far cry from all this - her concept of class and her nobility.


Referring to the success of Carmen all over the world, Antonio mentioned the French critics who said that “Merimée brought Carmen to France but we’ve taken her back to Spain.”  Carmen has almost always been treated in a superficial and frivolous way but she is much deeper than that.  He said that Carmen was misunderstood because when Mérimée wrote the work in 1837 she scandalised puritans and those who could not see that she stood for genuine female emancipation.  Don José, on the other hand, is a fugitive from his class, a bourgeois ‘slumming it’ who will not be faithful to her.  He does think of the loved one as private property.

“I did Carmen because I didn’t like the stereotyped false image of her.  She’s a woman who when she loves gives herself wholly and who never forgets what class she is even in the most exalted company.”

Programme Length
Running time of each performance is about 1 hour 30 minutes without intermission.