Sitting in an interview room at the Bunkamura cultural complex in Tokyo¡¯s Shibuya district, Mar¨ªa Pag¨¦s leans forward, smiles and tells me: ¡°Flamenco is my language. It was always around me in the cafes and bars, and on the driver¡¯s radio if you got a taxi. All the girls dressed up in pretty flamenco dresses for the local festivals. As I am Spanish I speak Spanish; and I dance flamenco because I was born in Seville.¡±
The 49-year-old doesn¡¯t just ¡°speak¡± flamenco, she pretty well rules it. Pag¨¦s has been called the ¡°Queen of Flamenco,¡± and watching her perform it¡¯s easy to understand why. Pag¨¦s spoke to The Japan Times while on a press tour here in January for her latest work, ¡°Utopia,¡± which will tour Tokyo, Iwate and Hyogo prefectures from this weekend.
The show should be well-received, because, according to the Japan Flamenco Association, there are around 650 flamenco academies across the country. Perhaps the dance is a language that the Japanese have no trouble understanding.
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