Teacher: Maria Osende
Video: Deniz Oguzer
(Source: youtube.com)
“With the Maria Osende Flamenco Co. art illuminates and ennobles a dark world….Maria Osende is spellbinding as she takes flamenco dance to a high art form.”
‘Every song is the remains of love’
“Flamenco show at Cohn astounds”
The printed program for the astonishing display of flamenco dancing and singing called “De Espana Con Amor” in the Cohn on Friday night contained a defining quote from Joaquin Ruiz about the art:
“Flamenco, like jazz, is always spontaneous, in the moment … never the same.”
By Stephen Pedersen
The Chronicle Herald
(Source: thechronicleherald.ca)
Flamenco artist touts new venue
Seahorse to offer performances, festive fare every month
“The Seahorse Tavern is the closest Halifax has to a flamenco nightclub,” says Maria Osende.
“With a flourishing flamenco community in Halifax Regional Municipality, Osende, who is also a dance teacher, thinks it’s time for a new flamenco venture — a celebration of up-and-coming talent….”
By Andrea Nemetz
The Chronicle Herald
(Source: thechronicleherald.ca)
Flamenco Star Gets Real In HRM
Miguel Tellez says taking part in De Espana Con Amor (From Spain With Love) is like being part of a reality TV show.
Maybe that’s because they day he arrived in Halifax after a 13-hour flight, the Spanish Flamenco dance star was greeted with cameras in his face, speculates Halifax’s Anthony Black, who is directing the dance-theatre piece that premieres Friday Oct. 28 at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium.
He was one of the people wielding a camera.
De Espana Con Amor is the brainchild of Flamenco dancer Maria Osende of Dartmouth, a native of Madrid and former member of the National Ballet of Spain.
By Andrea Nemetz
The Chronicle Herald
(Source: thechronicleherald.ca)
Hottest Ticket In Town
“The pounding feet of Maria Osende’s flamenco dancers were certainly earthy in Osende’s fifth annual Valentine Flamenco Saturday night….”
By Stephen Pedersen
The Chronicle Herald
“The weather outside may be cool, but …eight members of the Maria Osende Flamenco Company are blazing across the small stage. Torsos twist and turn furiously under the hot lights, the dark silhouettes swaying to burning rhythms of traditional Spanish song as the evening’s event reaches its climax”
Lifestyle Magazine
Fiery Flamenco Served
“Osende outstanding in third-annual Valentine’s show
Maria Osende is spellbinding as she takes flamenco dance to a high art form.
For the third year in a row her company wowed a Valentine’s night audience enjoying wine and tapas at the Flamenco Valentine. The entire show of musicians, dancers and singers evokes a night in Spain when everything is wrong but life is rich.
Without losing any of the passion or power in flamenco’s folk roots, Osende uses her entire body as a kinetic sculpture to rapidly and profoundly express emotion, story and images.”
By Elissa Barnard
The Chronicle Herald
“Breathtaking range of music and dance …”
Flamenco show warm as a Valentine
By ANDREA NEMETZ Entertainment Reporter | Dance Review
Review Sublime by Andrea Nemetz, The Halifax Chronicle Herald
Sublime is the title of this year’s production of the Maria Osende Flamenco Company.
And the world premiere show, which wraps up a three-night run at Alderney Landing Theatre in Dartmouth, was indeed sublime, inspiring an enthusiastic Valentine’s Day audience to a standing ovation.
The night opened with Listen, a piece set to Steve Reich’s minimalist music, over-layered with Money playing live, and would have been at home in a modern dance performance. It then journeyed through classical dance with balletic Dream, set to the aria Casta Diva from the opera Norma. It ended in a seguiriya, a traditional form of flamenco featuring the entire company in a piece pulsing with despair.
Perhaps most sublime of all, in the evening of many moods, were two impassioned solos by the Madrid-born Osende, who danced with the National Ballet of Spain and the Berlin Opera Ballet in Germany before focusing on flamenco.
Delight, a Taranta-style flamenco number accompanied by the extremely talented Vega, immediately followed the memorable blues-meets-flamenco-work Feel.
Feel began with the spotlight on Smith, and a gorgeous arrangement of the 1920s classic Love Me or Leave Me, sung in her clear voice dripping with longing, augmented by sweet notes from Money. Eventually Osende appeared in the background in an elegant red dress, arms mesmerizing as they traced slow, beautiful arcs above her head.
The music subtly shifted to Spanish-inflected, with Smith joining Rojo and singing a traditional song, while Osende slowly twirled her skirt and arched her back, displaying impressive control and flexibility and at times looking like a Henry Moore sculpture.
Then Vega took over for a solo accompaniment, and the music became more melancholy, while his precise, crisp playing echoed the precision of Osende’s feet and arm movements. The multiple layers of the long skirt flowed in Osende’s expert hands, over her head, around her slim frame and above her ever-stomping feet as she twirled and posed.
Spain, which opened the second act, was a jaw-dropping tour de force with Osende clad in a bolero jacket, white shirt and tuxedo pants, powerful and passionate. Accompanied by Vega, Rojo, and Dahms and MacMillan, clapping and beating the square wooden stools on which they sat, Osende simply commanded the stage, as she demonstrated rhythmic foot and hand movements of such speed and complexity they defy description.
Among the most pleasing moments — for their sheer innovation and beauty — were the modern-dance-inspired Listen, performed in short black dresses by Osende and 17-year-old Nardi, the youngest Canadian dancer to study flamenco in Spain, and the lyrical Dream, danced in exquisite long white dresses with extended ruffled trains by Nardi and Power.Osende choreographed the 1 3/4-hour show, all new work with the exception of the theatrical Raices, the concluding seguiriya, described in the program as “tragedy, desolation, death and persecution, and the public expression of deep emotions,” an intense and bold number.
“When you see the words “dance” and “Halifax” together in the same sentence, you probably picture high-stepping Irish jiggers or kilted lasses leaping over crossed swords. What you don’t expect to come out of the Maritimes dance scene is some of the hottest, freshest flamenco this side of the Straight of Gibraltar.”
The Ottawa Citizen
POWER AND GRACE – Meet Flamenco Pioneer Maria Osende
“Arm twirl, feet stomp and a sudden crack of the drum drives a performance of athleticism, passion and poise. Flamenco dance is providing Nova Scotians with an alternative style of exercise that’s both energetic and cultural.”
Optimyz Magazine
An interview with Maria Osende and Francesca Nardi on Maria Osende Flamenco Company’s 2011 premiere “Flamenco Valentine” by Andrea Nemetz from the Halifax Chronicle Herald.
“…The swirling skirts of Osende and her dancers anchored their gracefully flourishing arms, wrists
and fingers, which wound up toward the ceiling like fairy-tale beanstalks in time-lapse photography.”
The Chronicle Herald
“Maria Osende has big, dramatic eyes and dark hair that hangs down her back in waves when she’s at rest, which isn’t very often. Whether counting out a beat, demonstrating a spin or singing along with the music blaring from the studio stereo, she is a flamenco cliche—all strength and fire…”
By Jessica Linzey
The Coast
(Source: thecoast.ca)
Bringing The Heat
“Traditional Spanish music and dance light up Halifax.
Eight members of the Maria Osende Flamenco Company are blazing across the small stage. Torsos twist and turn furiously under the hot lights, the dark silhouettes swaying to burning rhythms of traditional Spanish song as the evening’s event reaches its climax….”
By Stephen Clare
Lifestyle Magazine