This year, Flamenco Festival, which has been organising very successful international festivals of flamenco in major cities outside of Spain, celebrated its 10th anniversary. Miguel Marín, the Artistic Director and founder of Flamenco Festival wrote in the anniversary programme: ‘The new decade arrives full of promise as flamenco grows and develops, vibrant and unfalteringly life affirming.’ 

Flamenco Festival 2010 began with a spectacular show called Dressed to Dance at the Guggenheim in New York on 10 February 2010. Making full use of the magnificent architectural space of the Guggenheim, Dressed to Dance was both a flamenco performance and a costume runway show, with performers danicng in over 60 costumes, some of which had been designed by Picasso and Salvador Dalí.

DRESSED TO DANCE from Flamenco Festival on Vimeo.

The first Flamenco Festival was held in 2001 in the USA. In 2003 the first Flamenco Festival was held at Sadler’s Wells in London. In 2005, the Japanese Flamenco Festival was established. In May 2006 Paris was added to the list. Then China in 2007, Brussels in 2008, Buenos Aires in 2009 – each year it has continued to expand, at the same time maintaining the previous locations as significant annual events in the flamenco performance calendars of those cities, with the exception of Paris, where the Flamenco Festival is biennial.  

This year Flamenco Festival’s programmes are seen in Paris, London (13–27 February 2010), New York (10–21 February 2010), Montreal, Boston, Washington DC (8–23 February 2010), Los Angeles, Miami (13–20 February 2010), Bangkok, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo. 

© 2010 Thérèse Wassily Saba