This weekend, A'Lante Flamenco will present Snapshots: New World Flamenco, the first installment of what they hope will become an ongoing series. For Snapshots, A'Lante (under the leadership of husband-and-wife creative team Olivia and Isai Chacón) has partnered with two guest artists to showcase what Olivia calls "an outsider's perspective of flamenco."
Those guest artists, Miguel Vargas and Karen Lugo, were both born in the Americas but now live and work in flamenco's ancestral home of Spain. The Chacóns feel a kinship with Vargas and Lugo, because they too are flamenco artists from this side of the Atlantic (Olivia was born in San Antonio and Isai in Mexico). "We've been doing flamenco for decades," Olivia says, "but we think that we see things a little differently than some other artists."
Isai adds, "We also feel that artists from this part of the world have different things to say than, let's say, somebody from Spain."
For Snapshots, A'Lante and its guests will present an updated version of flamenco. "We still sing songs about what was going in the world fifty years ago, a hundred years ago," Olivia says, "but obviously the world changes."
If things go according to plan, Snapshots will become a biennial showcase for innovative New World flamenco artists. "We really want to create an outlet," Olivia says. "We think Austin's a great city to become a showcase for the more creative side of flamenco."
See Snapshots: New World Flamenco June 23 - 26 at the Long Center's Rollins Theatre
