Paula Comitre - Bien vale un imperio

Show by Seville-born flamenco dancer Paula Comitre, premiering at the Centro Danza Matadero a flamenco proposal with three guitars, inspired by Pastora Imperio and the second piece of a trilogy on key women of Spanish dance.

Bien vale un imperio is the second instalment of the Trilogía de la Edad de Plata Femenina, a project through which Paula Comitre, a Seville-born flamenco dancer, builds a three-part stage work around three women who were decisive for the consolidation of flamenco and Spanish dance in the early twentieth century. Following Après vous, Madame, dedicated to Antonia Mercé « La Argentina », this new creation turns its gaze to Pastora Imperio. The trilogy will close with a third piece on another dancer of the same era.

The music is performed by three guitars with distinct profiles: classical, flamenco and experimental. Through them, the proposal seeks to widen flamenco towards new textures, combining the popular, the intimate and the avant-garde, and presents the past as living material for thinking about the present. The visual world is defined by the costume and stage design of the visual artists Fuentesal Arenillas, whose sculptural practice is understood as a process of transformation linked to the body and the stage.

Before this work, Paula Comitre presented Cámara Abierta as a solo performer, with which she won the Premio Artista Revelación at the Jerez Festival, and she then received the Giraldillo Revelación at the Seville Flamenco Biennale. She also holds a scholarship from the Academia de Beaux Arts de París, which allowed her to reside at the Cité Internationale des Arts, where she set up Après vous, Madame. The Centro Danza Matadero mainly hosts dance performances, although it also programmes concerts.