{"id":495274,"date":"2026-10-14T01:52:37","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T01:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/495274\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T01:52:37","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T01:52:37","slug":"six-decades-of-duende-with-theatre-flamenco-of-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/495274\/","title":{"rendered":"Six decades of duende with Theatre Flamenco of San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Beat movement was at the zenith of its influence in the late 1950s when San Francisco embraced flamenco as part of its bohemian cultural patrimony.<\/p>\n

The soul-bearing art form from Andaluc\u00eda offered access to similar destinations as the seminal poetry and novels produced by the Beats. Unfolding in small gatherings centering on cathartic creative acts expressing protean emotion, flamenco performances could strip away life\u2019s quotidian trappings to reveal extraordinary bursts of passion, torment, and beauty. <\/p>\n

In their own way, via drugs, jazz, and ecstatic verse, the Beats were seeking a kind of raw authenticity, or duende, an untranslatable Spanish word immortalized in Garc\u00eda Lorca\u2019s impressionistic 1933 essay about the aesthetic intrinsic to the Gitano-influenced culture of southern Spain.<\/p>\n

Theatre Flamenco of San Francisco was born out of this quest in 1966, and the nation\u2019s oldest flamenco company celebrates its milestone anniversary at Herbst Theatre<\/a> Oct. 17 with \u201cDe Ayer a Hoy\/From Yesterday to Today,\u201d a packed production featuring a stellar cast of dancers and musicians from Spain and the US. Duende is on the bill.<\/p>\n

Organized by incandescent dancer and choreographer Carola Zertuche, who\u2019s led Theatre Flamenco for 20 years, the evening arrives at a moment when flamenco\u2019s hold here is increasingly precarious. <\/p>\n

The most grievous blow came last year with the death of Nina Menendez, a fine flamenco vocalist who founded and ran the Bay Area Flamenco Festival\/Festival Flamenco Gitano.<\/p>\n

After 15 years of presenting the finest Gitano musicians from Spain at venues around San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland, Menendez celebrated the art form\u2019s deep ties to the region with the epic 2019 production \u201cAbanico: 100 Years of Flamenco in the Bay Area\u201d at Cowell Theater in Fort Mason. <\/p>\n

Zertuche and Theatre Flamenco featured prominently in the event, and she notes that, with Menendez\u2019s death, \u201cthe state of the scene is definitely weaker. People have asked \u2018Carola, are you going to do the festival?\u2019 I wish.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s staging \u201cDe Ayer a Hoy\u201d with a small corps of volunteers and a grant from the Zellerbach Family Fund augmented by support from her students. <\/p>\n

The company\u2019s studio on Van Ness Avenue still thrums with performances, classes and workshops, but many of the dancers \u201chave left San Francisco and the Bay Area because it\u2019s hard to keep going,\u201d Carola said. \u201cEven myself, with this production, I\u2019m thinking, \u2018Am I doing the right thing?\u2019 But when I\u2019m doing the rehearsal, yes, yes, yes!\u201d<\/p>\n

As its name suggests, Saturday\u2019s production explores the company\u2019s legacy while continuing Zertuche\u2019s imperative to expand flamenco\u2019s frontier. The program features three newly commissioned works and six reimagined pieces inspired by the company\u2019s vivid legacy.<\/p>\n

Zertuche and M\u00e1laga dancer Adrian Santana have co-created a new duet honoring Adela Clara, the founder of Theatre Flamenco of San Francisco. <\/p>\n

She also commissioned him to rework 1989\u2019s \u201cZapateado\/Farruca\u2019 by Miguel Santos, the company\u2019s artistic director who handed the reins to Zertuche while continuing to dance well into his 90s (he died in 2024 at 99).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like I\u2019m bringing the company into the past,\u201d Zertuche said. \u201cIt\u2019s more how it\u2019s changing. I\u2019m not doing exactly the way they used to do it. I was not in that epoch, but watching the video it\u2019s been so interesting to see how it\u2019s been changing through the years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s extensive video archives, dating back to the early 1970s, figure prominently in the evening via an installation of video monitors. <\/p>\n

Dancers and choreographers who\u2019ve worked closely with Zertuche, including Cristina Hall, Nol Simonse, and Nevarez Encinias are featured prominently, accompanied by powerhouse vocalists Amparo Heredia and Jos\u00e9 \u201cCachito\u201d D\u00edaz, who both hail from illustrious flamenco clans.<\/p>\n

\"ATheatre Flamenco archives. <\/p>\n

In many ways, the Herbst production is an extravagant bloom rooted in the work that takes place at 670 South Van Ness Ave., where the walls of upstairs studio are festooned with dresses and outfits from past productions. <\/p>\n

Zertuche\u2019s regular performances and workshops present flamenco in an intimate setting, with the audience arrayed in a semi-circle, touching distance from the stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything happens here in the studio,\u201d said Zertuche, who was born and raised the northern Mexico city of Torre\u00f3n and trained in Mexico City. \u201cCristina came last week and I\u2019m showing the beginning of a piece and we start to connect all the numbers. Sometimes we enjoy the rehearsal more than the performance. The process of creation.<\/p>\n

The relationship with Cristina Hall has been an important thread running through Zertuche\u2019s tenure as Theatre Flamenco\u2019s artistic director. <\/p>\n

Hall was a standout teenage dancer with the Virginia Iglesias Flamenco Dance Company in the early aughts, when they met at the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival and Zertuche suggested they work together. They first presented work together at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts with Melissa Cruz.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd, ever since then, it has been really creative,\u201d Zertuche said. \u201cWe understand each other really well. Anything I ask her, she\u2019s not afraid. We did the milonga barefoot around 2010. Why wear the shoes if we\u2019re not doing footwork? Okay, let\u2019s dance barefoot. Sometimes we think flamenco has to be one way. But it doesn\u2019t. We always respect flamenco. The singing is the most important. But every show we\u2019ve done is totally different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get tickets here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"ACarola Zertuche. Photo by Fred Aube.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Beat movement was at the zenith of its influence in the late 1950s when San Francisco embraced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[1472,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-495274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-dance","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}