"Focus Israel Galván" at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris in 2025… It all started from there.
This series presents several shows by the famous Spanish bailaor¹, covering a wide range of different facets of this dancer and choreographer. His staging is part of a quest through a body whose language is flamenco.
Israel Galván is flamenco, and the rhythm that makes it vibrate. In the brochure's introduction, the bailaor declares: "My father is flamenco, my mother is gypsy. They were a flamenco dancing couple, performing in the tablaos. I danced with them when I was still in my mother's womb. The duo became a trio. […]. I was born dancing. When I came into the world, the dance was already there." He was always One with his parents, One with the flamenco ballet company that taught him in his adolescence, One with what the competition juries expected of the winner… until he reached adulthood. A radical break occurred in his way of dancing. He moved away from classical flamenco in search of another dancing-body, another flamenco-body, his own, and another way of inhabiting it. He never stops renewing this body, searching for it, recreating it.
His whole body becomes percussion and compas. Sound is at the forefront, with all the possible variations of rhythm, using different materials on the floor to modify, amplify or reduce the sound of his zapateo, sometimes soft and muffled, sometimes loud and intense, powerful and deep. His feet are his instrument.
In terms of image, he includes the feminine attributes of the flamenco code: fans, flowers in his hair, mantillas (lace veils) and peinetas², as well as masculine codes, with the panoply of a toreador or a soldier, as in Carmen, or a black outfit in La edad de oro.
His choreography is a staging of his flamenco childhood, as he puts it, and then he takes on the feminine and the masculine in turn. His parents are thus on stage in him, and he embodies the One of the trio, to which he nevertheless systematically objects. For Israel Galván deals with this destiny through a constant effort, through a renewed attempt each time, to escape from the imaginary One of the trio in order to find his own body. It's always a manoeuvre to be restarted. In this way, he subverts flamenco with genius, and for our very great pleasure.

^[1] Glossary of Spanish vocabulary specific to flamenco taken from the brochure of the Théâtre de la Ville de Paris: Bailaor means dancer, a term reserved for flamenco dancers. Compas is the rhythmic structure that guides flamenco singing and dancing. Tablao is the wooden floor that amplifies the sound of the dancer's zapateado, considered to be the soul of flamenco and the place dedicated to flamenco singing and dancing. Zapatear/zapateo is the percussive action typical of flamenco in which the dancer uses the heels and toes of his shoes (zapatos) to create a rhythm, transforming his feet into an instrument.

^[2] Peineta is a curved comb that Spanish women put in their headdress to fix it.