Carlota santana biography

  • Carlota Santana is an internationally-renowned flamenco and Spanish dance artist and educator.
  • Santana, born in upstate New York, had recently given up a career as a psychiatric social worker when she fell in love with Spanish dance and.
  • His professional career began at the age of 10, as a flamenco dancer in the Dance Academy of Manuela Carpio.

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    Hailed as “The Keeper of Flamenco” by Dance Magazine and honored by the King and Government of Spain with La Cruz de la Orden al Mérito Civil for “all the years of passion, excellence and dedication to the flamenco art,” Carlota Santana is an internationally-renowned flamenco and Spanish dance artist and educator. In 1983, she co-founded Flamenco Vivo with Roberto Lorca; following his death from AIDS in 1987, she was determined to continue their work. In the decades since, she has led Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana’s growth as one of this country’s most successful flamenco companies, with a mission to promote flamenco as a living art form and a vital part of Hispanic heritage.

    Under Santana’s artistic direction, Flamenco Vivo has premiered more than 25 original works, offering commissions to numerous flamenco artists from Spain and the United States; important creations include Bailes de Ida y Vuelta, depicting flamenco’s journey through Latin America; Mano a Mano, a tribute t

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    Carlota Santana, beyond flamenco

    By Estela Zatania

    We conversed with Carlota about her life-long project which clearly continues to be a source of inspiration and fulfillment for this energetic seventy-something grand dame.

    While some investigators are fiercely defending a diversity of chauvinist or ethnocentric views of the genesis of flamenco, one American lady has devoted more than half her life to bringing people together in this art form. The frontier between art and social awareness becomes blurred, and flamenco is the common language for children with disabilities or from underprivileged environments, or racially discriminated groups, the vulnerable underbelly of a society that moves impatiently along with no time for those who can’t keep up. Carlota Santana, founder of “Flamenco Vivo”, and holder of Spain’s Cruz de la Orden del Mérito Civil (“for all the years of passion, excellence and dedication to the flamenco art”) from the King of Spain, sees only opportunities

  • carlota santana biography

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    Sephardic Persian flamenco dancer Leilah Broukhim was born in New York and has been based in Spain since 2000. Leilah graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in Film Studies. She began her flamenco dance formation with respected New York-based professors who gave her the necessary foundation to follow her growth in Spain. In Madrid, she continued her studies at the renowned dance academy Amor dem Dios beneath great masters of flamenco, including Maria Magdalena, Manuel Reyes, Rafaela Carrasco and José Maya, while completing her knowledge of flamenco in Seville with the Farrucos.

     

    Her professional career took off with the two most important flamenco dance companies of the USA: Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana and María Benítez Teatro Flamenco. Leilah has performed in the principal tablaos of Spain, including Casa Patas, El Corral de la Morería, El Café dem Chinitas, Las Carboneras, Tablao Villa Rosa and El Cord