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Toronto's red hot flamenco dance and music ensemble.

Valeria Scannura, choreographer and Artistic Director of Ritmo Flamenco celebrates flamenco as a way of life. Along with her husband flamenco guitarist Roger Scannura, they have created a work culminating from years of living and breathing flamenco through their daily life of teaching, studying and performing. Annual pilgrimages to Jerez, Spain, working with masters and returning to share the knowledge have yielded this wonderful, inspirational work. The beauty of flamenco makes an artist ripen through their experiences and has allowed Valeria to assimilate past ideas with a new integrity and ingenuity that only a mature artist can portray. The juxtaposition of mature understanding is coupled with the unbridled energy of youth in the performance of their eighteen-year-old daughter Anjelica Scannura. An accomplished dancer in all forms of dance, she has been invited to dance in Spanish dance companies in Spain but for now, prefers to tour, perform and choreograph for Ritmo Flamenco. The strength and chemistry of a dance partnership between mother and daughter cannot be denied and gives an intuitive force to their performance. Flamenco thrives to this day through gypsy ‘ gitano’ culture, only performing with their ‘blood’ family and seldom letting outsiders into their tightly knit family structure. Ritmo Flamenco has this same dynamic with the strength of their blood ties lending authenticity to the heart and soul of the entire production.

Roger Scannura, the music director has been performing and composing flamenco for over twenty years. He has self-produced six CD’s to much acclaim and is presently in his fourth year as Director of the flamenco guitar program at York University. His flamenco compositions are designed to interpret Valeria’s ideas to the extent that they can both improvise and stay in tune with each other. Roger finds that living in North America generally makes creating authentic flamenco music difficult because local artists do not have enough flamenco knowledge so it has taken four years to train a singer, fiddle and mandolin player in the complex art of following compas. The result is a fusion of Celtic, klezmer and flamenco, which create the soundscape of the concert.

The company also has a corps of five accomplished dancers, all products of Ritmo Flamenco’s professional training program and they also have continued their studies in Spain. ‘Sangre Flamenca’ promises to be one of Ritmo Flamenco’s most heart-felt and emotional performances and is not to be missed!

Getting there:

For more information contact: Valeria Scannura
Phone: 416-763-0181
Email: info@ritmoflamenco.ca

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