María Pagés (born 1963) is a modern Spanish flamenco dancer and choreographer based in Madrid, Spain.
María Jesús Pagés Madrigal was born in Seville, Spain, and began dancing professionally with the Antonio Gades Company. She choreographed for films including Carmen, El Amor Brujo and Flamenco by Carlos Saura, and in 1990 she established the Maria Pagès Company. Her work is described as incorporating the national flamenco style with outside influences.
María Pagés and her company have toured internationally, appearing in the United States at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City and The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., among other venues. In 1995 the expanded version of the Riverdance show included performance by the company to music of Irish style composed by Bill Whelan. In 2000 she provided choreography for the Hispanic Heritage Awards. Pagés serves on the Board of the Cultural Council in Madrid.
Flamenco is a genre of Spanish music, song, and dance from Andalusia, in southern Spain, that includes cante (singing), toque (guitar playing), baile (dance) and palmas (handclaps). First mentioned in literature in 1774, the genre grew out of Andalusian and Romani music and dance styles. In recent years flamenco has become popular all over the world and is taught in many countries: in Japan there are more academies than there are in Spain. On November 16, 2010 UNESCO declared flamenco one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Flamenco performance has evolved during the history of this musical genre. In the beginning (the 18th century at the latest), songs were sung without any guitar accompaniment; during the 19th century, the guitar was used to accompany songs, and since the second half of the 19th century, the solo guitar is played in flamenco concerts. From flamenco's beginning in the 18th century most performers have been professionals. For most of the genuine life of flamenco, a folk art that has remarkably conserved an extraordinary level of conservatism within the caucus of European folk music, with its unmistakable rhythmic patterns and tones that mark its varied forms, or 'palos', flamenco has actually been the concern, like speech itself, of non-professionals in the country
Source: Wikipedia
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