Rebecca Marsh
Equinox Staff
Flamenco dancer and choreographer Niurca Marquez and flamenco guitarist José Luis Rodriguez came to Keene State College on Monday, March 4, to educate the community about the art of flamenco dancing and its culture.
Patricia Pedroza, assistant professor of women and gender studies, coordinated the event and has been planning it since last fall. Pedroza met Marquez at a conference and she, “liked [Marquez] so much how she explained the history of flamenco dance and I wanted to bring her [to KSC],” Pedroza said.
Pedroza grew up in Mexico, and her grandfather’s love of flamenco influenced her interest in the dance and music. She said she was always around flamenco music and has a strong connection to the culture.
Kelsey Gutzman / Equinox Staff
Flamenco dancer and choreographer Niurca Marquez performs in the Mabel Brown Room and educates the community about the art and culture of the flamenco dance. Marquez was accompanied by guitarist José Roderiguez.
“I don’t like the U.S.’s stereotype about tango and flamenco, stereotypes where you see a dancer with a red flower say, ‘Olé, olé, olé!’,” Pedroza said. According to Pedroza, she wants people to approach stereotypes of flamenco dancing differently. “In her [Marquez’s] lecture she explained that and that is what I wanted to transmit to students,” Pedroza said. She wanted to teach, “American Studies in terms of teaching interdisciplinary issues that have no single definition or no single approach.”
Pedroza planned a two-day event where Marquez would present a lecture on the history and culture of flamenco, lessons on the dancing and music would be given, and a performance by Marquez and Rodriguez would take place at KSC. Marquez has been dancing since she was seven-years-old and has been dancing professionally since the age of 17.
She said that she likes, “the uncertainty of the stage. Anything can happen.” Marquez practices for about 16 hours a week or more and creates her own choreography. “I think more than anything, it was the sense that within flamenco I had more liberty to be myself and to be able to express a much wider and broader array of emotions and sensations and to tell stories that were much more layered than other dance forms,” Marquez said.
According to Marquez, flamenco is not as old as some other art forms and adapts to changes well. “It’s dance form in its make up, but it’s very much open to contemporary expressions of the here and now,” Marquez said. Marquez expressed a few goals that she wanted to present to the audience.
“Our goal as a artistic team is awareness, it’s to let people know that flamenco has continued to evolve beyond what it was in the 1980s,” Marquez said, “Flamenco is much bigger than what presenters have shown to audiences.”
Her stage-mate, Rodriguez, has been playing the guitar ever since he was around six-years-old. “It’s natural for me,” Rodriguez said. Rodriguez said the music and learning how to play the guitar came easy for him. According to Rodriguez, his father was an amateur guitarist and helped Rodriguez become a part of the flamenco music and culture. “I listened to flamenco all my childhood,” Rodriguez said. It’s [flamenco] my root, it’s my origin.”
Rodriguez said he spends anywhere between five and nine hours of practice a day on the guitar. He said that he loves to perform because, “each day is different.”
According to Rodriguez, one of his goals as an artist is to connect with the audience. “I think as an artist on the stage, we have the possibility to transform the space and to communicate something,” Rodriguez said. Marquez and Rodriguez have been a team since 2007 and perform at least once a month. Seniors Cutler Rines and Mary Vogt both enjoyed the performance. “I expected to see fast-paced movement. Although I didn’t see what I expected I thought it was beautiful as it was made,” Rines said.
Vogt said she, “thought it [the performance] was very well-done. I really enjoyed the storytelling aspect of the dance. It gave it depth. I love how the guitarist and dancer worked together.”
Rines also said, “She [Marquez] had beautiful isolation with her torso and her wrists. Her facial expressions add a certain quality to it.” Pedroza said, “There is not a single way to approach flamenco dance.”
According to Pedroza, “the benefit to students is that they have the opportunity to hear history,” because flamenco dancing is a mix of different cultures. “I think we [artists] have a role in society, and the role is to connect the people with themselves, with the soul, with emotions,” Rodriguez said.
According to Marquez, no matter how much flamenco is changed, the history will still be in the dance, music and culture.
“It’s [flamenco] an opportunity, it’s a moment to open up, in some ways to part a veil or open a door, where past and present can speak freely because it is a dance form that is history.”
This event was co-sponsored by a Pepsi Grant Scholarship, Feminist Collective and Diversity Commission along with other organizations.
Rebecca Marsh can be contacted at
rmarsh@keene-equinox.com