Searching, flying and flamenco: Rafaela Carrasco

The nouveau flamenco Company Rafael Carrasco will open the stage for two nights in a row this September for New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival — 10 nights for 10 bucks each! Carrasco is a prolific choreographer and dancer with an appetite for experimentation. An excerpt from an interview in 2004:

I’m the type that flies, I’m the type that doesn’t conform; I get bored right away with what I do… It’s good, but it’s very screwy at times because you never really live in the present; you’re always in the future. It’s a need and when it’s a need it’s fantastic because it comes out of a sincere, honest place. It doesn’t come from pretension or from wishing to search for something; it comes out natural.

Check out the rhythmic duet between Carrasco and Madrid percussionist, Nacho Arimany.

More thoughtful words from Carrasco, on honesty and the universal skirmish between an artform’s originators versus its innovators:

I’m tired of sensationalist shows seeking easy applause; I’m against selling oneself out. I need to be told honesty even if it’s very scant. I don’t ask for a big deal technically; I don’t care if you give me three turns or one or none. What I want is for you to tell me truth and honesty.

It’s also true that there’s a great generation gap between our maestros and us… It’s rather harsh for them to see what we do because they think that flamenco is slipping away, but I don’t think so; I think it’s a time of searching when people are coming out with the freedom to choose to be very flamenco or to bring out another kind of restlessness… You can’t ask the same thing of everyone; they don’t have to have that need, but you have to allow those who do to search.