Pasión y Arte and Intercultural Journeys present 'My Voice, Our Voice/Mi Voz, Nuestra Voz'

Pasión y Arte uses music and movement to advance IJ’s powerful mission: promoting peace and understanding through performance, fostering multicultural connections and community engagement. Fittingly, My Voice, Our Voice/Mi Voz, Nuestra Voz is the product of joint efforts across styles, genres, perspectives, and media.

Group effort

Elba Hevia y Vaca, the founder of Pasión y Arte, choreographed and directed the performance in collaboration with the performers. These included dancers Sara Candela, Jeanne d’Arc Casas, and Annie Wilson; singer/dancer Barbara Martinez; costume designer Patricia Claire Dominguez; musician/composer Andreas Arnold; and musicians Adam Malouf and Jeremy Smith.

The space reflected this spirit of cooperation. The artists performed in the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral's sanctuary on a portable dance floor provided by BalletX.

Pasión y Arte is a modern, feminist flamenco company that explores women’s expression and autonomy. The Spanish folkloric art of percussive dance, music, and cante (song), as shown in this performance, demonstrates the power and appeal of their approach.

The program consisted of dances and musical interludes in various styles: a capella, instrumental, traditional, and experimental.

A quote from Virginia Woolf included in the program notes set the evening's tone: “The history of most women is hidden either by silence or by flourishes and ornaments that amount to silence.” My Voice, Our Voice/Mi Voz, Nuestra Voz counters this precedent by speaking through movement and song. The piece transforms ornaments and flourishes associated with femininity as well as flamenco — such as ruffled skirts and hand gestures — into vehicles for exploring oppression and empowerment.

Wrestling with representation

The show began with Candela and Casas performing percussive handclaps and syncopated footwork, their steps echoing dramatically in the church sanctuary. Next came music performed by Arnold, Malouf, and Smith on guitar, cello, and percussion. Then Candela performed bulerías, a song form of flamenco. As she danced and sang Spanish lyrics, Candela combined music and movement into a story-song full of dramatic backbends, swaying hips, and arm flourishes suggestive of bullfighting.

Subsequent parts of My Voice, Our Voice/Mi Voz, Nuestra Voz diverged from traditional flamenco, such as when Wilson and Hevia y Vaca performed with shawls in a section riffing on flamenco’s baile del mantón. Its movement drew on Wilson’s background as a postmodern dancer/choreographer. The dancers seemed to wrestle with their shawls, then transform them into different objects — such as a puppet and a matador’s cape — raising questions about power and control.

Later, Wilson and Hevia y Vaca danced a postmodern bata de cola that made evocative use of their long, ruffled skirts. Held overhead, the skirts became saintly halos, but their pink and red folds resembled genitalia when held in front of the body. Pulled over crouched bodies, the skirts seemed to entrap their wearers. They became a different kind of trap when the dancers kneeled and bunched the skirts in their hands, using them to mime scrubbing the floor.

The performance then circled back to flamenco with Casas’s traditional bata de cola and a song showcasing Arnold’s masterful guitar playing and the soulful range of Martinez’s voice. Casas spun in her long, ruffled skirt, dominating the garment that overpowered Wilson and Hevia y Vaca. The skirt’s train trailed behind Casas until she kicked it up behind her as she turned.

"Oppression and empowerment"

I was struck by the dancers’ remarkable control of flamenco movements, particularly Casas’s manipulation of the skirt and Candela’s hip sways, which isolate her lower body in a way that’s much harder than it appears. Hevia y Vaca performed less flamenco footwork but had the most commanding stage presence.

The dance’s experimental sections were less rousing but more stirring, providing context for and commentary on the interplay between medium and message, flamenco culture and sexist culture.

The performance concluded with the performers forming a circle onstage, each taking a turn to dance in their own way while the others kept the beat with their hands and feet. The collaborative nature of My Voice, Our Voice/Mi Voz, Nuestra Voz undermined expectations of distinctions between contemporary and traditional, musician and dancer, creator and performer, oppression and empowerment.

After this show, I felt inspired to take a flamenco class. It was a stirring end to IJ’s season, one that left me eager for more from both Pasión y Arte and Intercultural Journeys.