2021! Flamenco’s, here we come! A new year for a new conversation. I am excited to announce my flamenco and intersectionality project that I began in the train wreck of 2020 will no be called “Aire Libre”, and super duper excited to inaugurate it with the first conversation for the year featuring an incredible conversation between Fanny Ara and Dr. K. Meira Goldberg. These two powerhouse flamenco artists talk with me about the body in conflict, desire, aging, failure, sexuality, femininity, love, and the gaze; the one imposed upon us like the male gaze and the one we invert onto ourselves as judgment and harsh critique.
Fanny Ara began her dance studies at age three, studying ballet and Contemporary dance at the Irene Popard School in St. Jean de Luz in the French Basque country. As a child, she studied Spanish classical dance with Catalina Gommes and traveled regularly to Madrid to train with maestros Isabel Quintero and Antonio Najarro. In addition to her dance training, she also studied piano at the Bayonne School of Art for eleven years. After earning a BA in Literature with a specialty in Music from The Bayonne School of Art, she relocated to Spain. A two-year intensive in flamenco studies in both Sevilla and Madrid followed with Juana Amaya, El Torombo, Manolo Soler, and Hiniesta Cortes. In Madrid, Fanny was soon featured in flamenco tablaos and was accepted into the prestigious Academy of Mario Maya.
Over the past decade, Fanny has earned the role of one of the most important performers in the country, and is recognized and celebrated by flamenco enthusiasts around the world. Now residing in the Bay Area, she is a company member of Caminos Flamencos, sharing the theater stage with artists such as Antonio de la Malena, Manuel de la Malena, Juan Ogalla, Domingo Ortega, David Paniagua and Juñares. She has been a regularly featured artist in Flamenco Festivals including Lluvia Flamenca, Tucson Flamenco Festival, and Dallas Flamenco Festival. She has also been an invited artist in international festivals including the Australia Festival de Guitarra and has toured extensively in Canada, Central and South America, the Middle East, Africa , and throughout Europe. Some of her most notable performances include work with the Eva Longoria Foundation, performance at the George V in Paris with the grand pianist Diego Amador and at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles with the world-renown Antonio Carmona in 2013. In April 2014, one of Fanny's dreams came true when she danced accompanied by the incredible pianists Marielle and Katia Labeque at the Davis Symphony Hall, performing one of the most famous West Side Story songs: “America.” Most recently, Fanny was the principal dancer at the Washington Opera’s season of Carmen.
K. Meira Goldberg “La Meira” is a flamenco dancer, choreographer, teacher and scholar. She began her training in her native Los Angeles with Luisa Triana, Roberto Amaral and Carmen Mora, and in the 80s studied by day and performed by night in several of Madrid’s best tablaos (flamenco clubs): Luisillo’s Los Cabales, Manolo Caracol’s Los Canasteros, and as the solo attraction at the Arco de Cuchilleros. She has performed with many of the giants of Flamenco, including Antonio Canales, Tony “El Pelao” y “La Uchi,” Dolores Amaya “La Pescadilla,” Manolo Soler, Diego Carrasco, Juanito Habichuela “El Camborio,” Jose Soto, Enrique Soto, Ramon El Portugues, El Guadiana, El Indio Gitano, El Chato de la Isla, Pepe Montoya “Montoyita,” Ramón Jiménez, Arturo Pavon, Dolores de Cordoba, Tito and Diego Losada, Chuni Amaya, La Repompa de Malaga and Raquel Heredia, Alfredo Lago, and Antonio “de la Malena.”
As a scholar, K. Meira Goldberg holds an M.F.A. in choreography as well as an Ed.D in dance history from Temple University under Brenda Dixon Gottschild. She is currently working on a book entitled “Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco.” Her article “Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco” is in Dance Chronicle 37:1. She is co-curator of the 2013 exhibit “100 Years of Flamenco in New York” at the New York Public Library for the Performing Art at the Lincoln Center, and co-author of the catalog. She is currently co-editing an anthology of new Flamenco scholarship for McFarland, and is translating six chapters from Spanish. She is a member of the Wertheim Study at NYPL. Meira’s doctoral dissertation on Carmen Amaya is a widely used resource within the English-speaking Flamenco community: it references over twenty-five interviews with figures such as Sabicas’s brother Diego Castellón, and Carmen Amaya’s sisters Leo and Antonia. Meira teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and at the Fashion Institute of Technology; she has taught at and guest lectured at NYU, Flamenco Festival International in Albuquerque, Ballet Hispanico, Bryn Mawr, Princeton, Duke, and Smith College.