Flamenco concert

Press, 6 September 1989, Page 27

Flamenco concert

For the first time in several years the Great Hall at the Arts Centre is the venue for a flamenco programme and for the first time in the history of the Friday lunchtime concert series, a flamenco dancer will accompany the guitarists. Darcy and Miriama Lange are in Christchurch to contribute to a series of flamenco workshops organised by tutors at the Guitar Academy in the Arts Centre. All performers have studied and worked with top European, Spanish and Australian companies and are now based in New Zealand where they say an awareness of the art of flamenco is slowly growing. Flamenco is known as ‘‘a music of voice and body,” incorporating song, clapping and dance to express with great feeling the ways in which human beings respond to the joys and sorrows of existence. It is an art form rich with temperament, most commonly associated with southern Spain, and originally the music of the Islamic Moors. However after 1400 it became associated with many other groups of wanderers escaping the persecution of the Catholic Church, such as the Gypsies and Jews. Flamenco has consequently often been regarded as the music of the non-conformists, a symbol of rebellion in the face of restrictions on the personal freedom of the individual.