From Orient to Occident is the theme of this year’s Flamenco Festival Zagreb, as passionate rhythms from Andalusia meet with contemplative Sufi music from the East. Now in its fifth edition, the festival was started as a passion project of Saška Sašić and Nina Ćorić. One a dancer and the other a singer, they’ve met trough their love of flamenco and decided to share it with the rest of Zagreb, bringing in some of the world’s best flamenco artists to the city and pushing the genre in new directions.
It still is a passion project of sorts, as both of them perform for the festival, accompanied by the said artists. Hence, the mixture of the west and east this year. Opening on Sunday, September 4th at Zagreb Youth Theater (ZKM), Flamenco festival Zagreb will feature local flamenco talents with Bosnian Sufi artists, who will try to merge two different sentiments, cultures, on stage.
‘Even thought the two don’t seem compatible’, Nina Ćorić says ‘They both transcend their place of origin and speak of higher passions, ones that every human can feel, no matter the language they speak. It will be an interesting thing to experience, as it comes from a place where easter and western cultures have collided for centuries.’
On Monday, September 5th, the stage is set for Flamencoraneo Company’s Metamorphosis, a music and dance performance featuring both flamenco and contemporary dancers. The play explores relations of tradition and modernity and how people balance themselves in them and features Spanish and local dancers and musicians.
The final night, on September 6th, is a more traditional one. In a sense that it will adhere to the spontaneity, directness and interaction flamenco is known for, and that can only be achieved by an open concert on a terrace of a bar. Being held at Mojo Bar, the final night is more of a jam session with all the artists that were on the festival and it comes closest to the roots of the music in its deliverance.
Flamenco festival Zagreb is being held September 4th – 6th. The tickets for the first two nights are 60 kunas (at ZKM), and the closing night is free to attend.
