Tuesday, March 26

Carmen Linares and María Pagés share the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts


Carmen Linares and Maria Pages

The jury agrees to award the award to the singer from Jaen and the choreographer and dancer from Seville

Michael Lorenci

Singing and dancing have gone hand in hand at the Princess of Asturias Awards for the Arts, which paid off a debt this Thursday with award-winning flamenco for cantaora Carmen Linares and bailaora and choreographer María Pagés. Two legendary figures who have carried the duende around the world and who place his name on the list of winners of an award that is hardly conducive to the recognition of flamenco, recognized as a World Heritage Site. It has been failed since 1981 and in these almost four decades the only flamenco in the list of winners was until today the guitarist Paco de Lucía, who won it in 2004.

Fernando Rodríguez Lafuente proposed the candidacy of these artists with both duende and genius, who have become two of the most important figures in flamenco in recent decades. In both «converges the spirit of several generations that, from the respect for tradition and the depth of the roots of flamenco, have managed to modernize and adapt its essence to the contemporary world, elevating it, even more if possible, to the category of universal art », said the ruling.

Carmen Pacheco Rodríguez (Linares, 1951) receives the award in the midst of a tour celebrating her 40-year career, four decades in which she traveled from the Madrid tablaos of Torres Bermejas and Café de Chinitas to the best theaters in the world. She was the first cantaora to perform at the Lincoln Center in New York, invited by the city’s Philharmonic Orchestra, and has performed at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Sydney Opera House, the Chaillot Theater and the Cité de la Musique in Paris, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Barbican Center in London as well as the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, ​​the Teatro Real in Madrid.

Also Read  IPCC report: Charts detail climate change

A fellow generation of geniuses such as Paco de Lucía, Camarón, Enrique Morente, Pepe Habichuela and José Mercé, Linares is a living legend of flamenco and a benchmark for younger artists such as Estrella Morente or Miguel Poveda. She was a National Music Award in 2001 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Music in 2011.

In her discography, albums such as ‘Cantaora’ (1988), ‘Las Canciones Popular Antiguas’ (1993) -with texts by Federico García Lorca-, ‘Antología de la mujer en el cante’ (1996), ‘Que no he died’ stand out. (2003) -with texts by Juan Ramón Jiménez-, ‘Oasis Abierto’ (2011) and ‘Verso a verso’ (2017).

Tradition and modernity

María Pagés Pedregal (Seville, 1963), has been dancing since she was four years old and is one of the great flamenco choreographers. She began her professional career with the Antonio Gades company and was a prima ballerina in the Mario Maya company, in the Rafael Aguilar Spanish Ballet and in the María Rosa Spanish Ballet.

In 1990 Pagés created his own company with which he has produced numerous shows that have renewed flamenco dance by mixing tradition and modernity. She has had a happy and fruitful relationship with the cinema, with a stellar participation in Carlos Saura’s flamenco trilogy made up of ‘Carmen’, ‘El Amor Brujo’ and ‘Flamenco’.

He has collaborated with artists such as Manolo Sanlúcar or Blanca Li and with the Compañía Nacional de Arte Dramático. He has performed at Radio City Music Hall in New York, the Entertainment Center in Sydney and the Apollo Theater in London. She adds this Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts to the National Dance Award in 2002 and the Gold Medal in 2014,

In May, he plans to premiere his new show entitled ‘De Sheherazade’ at the Liceo de Barcelona and is preparing another new show, ‘Oda a la flor del naranjo’, which he will stage at the Pentecost Festival in Salzburg in June.

Together with her husband, the Moroccan Hispanist El Arbi El Harti, Pagés directs the Fuenlabrada Choreographic Center, inaugurated in 2019. A great defender of flamenco as an art and of its dignity despite the resistance of certain sectors, she claims with her work “an art that is enormously rich man who starts in the most marginal places to move to the big stages ».

Ricardo Martí Fluxá chaired the jury that awarded Linares and Pagés, made up of Claude Bussac, José María Cano, Dionisio González, Antonio Lucas, Joan Matabosch, Carlos Mena, Helena Pimenta, José María Pou Serra, Sandra Rotondo, Benedetta Tagliabue, Carlos Urroz , Tadanori Yamaguchi and Catalina Luca de Tena.


www.hoy.es

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *