MOjÁcar flamenco
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
Toque Jondo
Electronic Press Kit
Photo Gallery
The images below can be downloaded for press and publicity use.
Summary
On June 12th and 13th, Mojácar Flamenco will present the premiere of Toque Jondo, a concert of original flamenco dance theater works based on the poetry of Federico García Lorca and the music of Manuel De Falla at the El Portal Theater in North Hollywood. The program, featuring a dozen dancers, three opera singers and a flamenco guitarist live on stage, explores themes of love, loss and transcendence.
Who | What | When | Where | Tickets | Contact
Mojácar Flamenco, a flamenco music and dance company based in South Pasadena, presents
Toque Jondo: an Evening of Flamenco Dance Theater
June 12th and 13th, 8:00 PM at
El Portal Theater, 5269 Lankershim Boulevard
North Hollywood, California 91601
Tickets are $45 and $55 available at elportaltheatre.com/toquejondo.html
Contact
Mojácar Flamenco at
626/403-7489
www.mojacarflamenco.com
stephen@mojacarflamenco.com
For more information, go to mojacarflamenco.com/toque-jondo
About The Show
Toque Jondo blends flamenco, opera and jazz to tell three powerful stories of love, loss and transformation.
Featuring works based on the poetry of Federico García Lorca and the music of Manuel De Falla, Toque Jondo (Touch Deep) explores the pain and transformative joy of deep love. The powerful love between a young couple protecting their infant from the dark forces that surround them; the tragic love of two lovers struggling to reunite before death overtakes them, and the transformative love of two star-crossed couples who find their true love.
The cast of Toque Jondo includes twelve dancers with backgrounds in flamenco, ballet, contemporary and modern dance, three opera singers and a flamenco guitarist. The original score blends flamenco forms with elements of contemporary music and 60's Jazz.
Toque Jondo was created by Mojácar's founding artists, choreographer Katerina Tomás and composer-guitarist Stephen Dick. It took over eight years to bring Toque Jondo to the stage, through three workshop presentations, dozens of rehearsals and hundreds of hours of creative collaboration.
Along the way, Mojácar Flamenco has received tremendous support from wonderful artists, organizations and donors. We are grateful for their support and can't wait to share this profound work of the heart with the community.
Creating Toque Jondo
Stephen and Katerina met in San Francisco when Katerina hired Stephen to create music for Moving Basis, her contemporary dance company. The collaboration worked so well that they were married a year later. They have been creative collaborators ever since.
While they were dating, they discovered a mutual love for Lorca's poetry, particularly his romance (ballad) Romance Sonambulo. Stephen had come to know Lorca through the poetry of William Carlos Williams; Katerina discovered Lorca at San Francisco State University's famous Poetry Workshop. Once they were married, they decided that their first big collaboration would be to create a dance based on Romance Sonambulo.
It took about a year and a half to create Romance Sonambulo, and the premiere was scheduled for November 1989. Unfortunately, the October 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake delayed the premiere until 1990.
Soon thereafter, Stephen and Katerina moved to Los Angeles, where Katerina earned her M.A. in Dance Ethnology at UCLA, focusing on Lorca and Flamenco.
In 1987, Katerina started flamenco dance classes with the famous Spanish artist, Rosa Montoya in San Francisco, eventually fusing the beauty of flamenco with modern dance and ballet. In 1996, Stephen and Katerina were invited to Fundación Valparaíso in Mojácar, Spain, where Stephen was asked to perform. Stephen created a number of new pieces for the concert, including a tribute to Manuel De Falla. Those pieces became the core repertoire for Mojácar Flamenco, a flamenco music and dance company they formed when they returned to Los Angeles.
