“A magnetic concert at the Teatro Colosseo for the Torino Jazz Festival: dance, song and rhythms in an evening that unites the shores of the Atlantic.

At the Teatro Colosseo in Turin, Flamenco Criollo gave life to one of the most anticipated evenings of the TJF. On stage, the project of the Cuban pianist Aruán Ortiz took shape in a performance that brought together musicians and dancers from Morocco, Palestine, Cuba, the United States and Spain. A wave that crossed oceans and traditions, fusing the sounds of flamenco with the energetic rhythms of the Afro-Cuban area.

Born in 2021, Flamenco Criollo is an ambitious project that intertwines music, dance and cultural research. Ortiz, a jazz musician by training and scholar of musical cultures, has created an ensemble that restores the multiple roots of flamenco. The result was a powerful, poetic and engaging journey, made of ‘cantes de ida y vuelta’, those songs that, like the ships between Cadiz and Havana, crossed the ocean carrying with them stories, languages ​​and heartbeats.

The opening of the show was striking in its delicacy and symbolism: a female figure, veiled, draws perfect lines, evoking the waves of the sea. An image created by dancer Niurka Agüero that anticipates the profound and mobile nature of the entire performance. After which, the bailaora María Moreno, in a linear dress far from the usual tourist imagery of flamenco, highlighted the interpretative intensity and the virtuosity of the compás. The poignant duet with the cantaora Samara Montañez — between ‘adelante’ and ‘para bailar’ — captivated the audience in a suspended silence, full of emotion.

Alongside the latter, the Afro-Cuban dancer brought an earthly and ancestral energy to the stage. In a final duet, the two performers merged their roots in a unique synergy, demonstrating that, beyond cultural distances, there is a shared rhythmic humanity. The centrality of the female figures, between singing and dancing, dominated the scene: not simple performers, but custodians of traditions in continuous transformation.

The concert was able to maintain an engaging rhythm, arriving, as the most classic of closures, at an active participation of the audience. Leading it, the Cuban singer Susana Orta López, one of the three voices of the ensemble, who invited the audience to join rhythmically in the final groove. Everyone standing, clapping, like improvised palmeros but totally inside the show.

Flamenco Criollo is a successful example of conscious contamination, which digs into common roots to create something new. A beauty of multiculturalism: a living art, which breathes and unites.”