SALT LAKE CITY — Hispanic Heritage Month is wrapping up next week, October 15th. If you’re looking for a way to celebrate this weekend, we’ve got a musical suggestion for you.
How about an intimate concert featuring flamenco music but also incorporating dance and a little bit of jazz thrown in for good measure? It’s all happening this weekend, right here at the Alliance Theater. A performance by two folks from New York City, one of whom has a Utah connection.
Basilio Georges calls it a newer interpretation of a very old form of guitar-driven music. “Flamenco Latino is a New York based flamenco dance and music Company. But we have an original slant on Flamenco because it’s an art form from Spain.”
Aurora Reyes is the other half of Flamenco Latino, “And so tradition is really important to us and we both teach flamenco…singing and dancing and guitar playing. And so then we kind of experiment and fuse.”
Reyes and Basilio have been performing and adding their own bits of flavor to the music for more than four decades now. Reyes’ roots go back to Spain. “Flamenco is not a written down music, it’s learned totally orally, passed down through families..”
Basilio agrees, “So we feel like when we do a concert like this it’s a very innovative, unique approach to flamenco art form.”
They live outside New York City and spend most of their time performing around the Big Apple. But Basilio has a sister who moved to Utah in the 1980s. So he and Aurora love performing in Salt Lake City whenever possible. They’ve also gotten to know some local artists, two of whom will be performing with them this weekend…a dancer, and a jazz guitarist.
Aurora says it allows them to give the audience a sampler plate of different aspects of flamenco. “Little tapas, yes! Take a little here, there with the wine or the beer and you’re set!”
There are a total of three performances, a 3:00 PM matinee on Saturday where children are invited and encouraged to attend and even participate. And then evening performances on Saturday and Sunday at the Alliance Theater, which is on the southwest corner of Trolley Square.
