Unraveling Rhythms Series  Fall 2005

Performance Dates/Press Reviews/Videos/Photos

Quicktime Movie File originally aired 10/3/2005 on WTTW-TV (Chicago)

CLINARD DANCE THEATRE AND LAS GUITARRAS de ESPANA, featuring SIRI SONTY, and JOINED BY GUEST ARTISTS FROM INDIA, SPAIN AND THE AMERICAS, PRESENT CONCERT SERIES "UNRAVELING RHYTHMS"

A New Work Which Includes and Transcends the Traditions of Flamenco and Indian Music and Dance, and Incorporates Moving Visual Art

CHICAGO, IL  (May 28, 2005)--- Take one part Flamenco, add Classical Indian dance, with music by a famous Flamenco music ensemble, combine with unique visual art, and what do you get? Years of work, study, travel, collaboration, observation, and expression which culminate in the premiere of this groundbreaking hybrid of personal cultures, entitled UNRAVELING RHYTHMS.

In 2004, just days after the tragic Tsunami, the innovators of this piece were invited to India to perform a segment of it to audiences in the cities of Hyderabad and Vishakhapatnam; the latter city which had suffered significant damage inspired the last portion of the completed UNRAVELING RHYTHMS, which Chicago area audiences will be able to enjoy at various venues this Fall. The ensemble is also proud to announce that they have been invited to perform this work in Tokyo, Japan in March, 2006 at the prestigious Aoyama Theater.

In a presentation that transcends what audiences have come to expect from traditional dance, Wendy Clinard* partners with Siri Sonty** to present UNRAVELING RHYTHMS, an innovative and creative look at the dance forms, cultures, and distinct personal heritages of these two female Chicago artists.

This unusual collaboration began in 2000, when Sonty decided to investigate the Chicago flamenco dance scene after recognizing a strong familiarity of sounds, movement, music and emotion between Flamenco and Indian dance on a trip to Seville, Spain.  After finding the Clinard Dance Theater ( www.clinardance.org ) Sonty began to experiment with Clinard, putting their forms of dance together, allowing them to contrast and complement each other. Says Clinard, " We interwove the movements of our dance forms, and working within these forms found different turns, jumps, falls, and walks that responded to each other, and gave them a context in the piece. We never actually learned each other's movements, which is why UNRAVELING RHYTHMS is a hybrid of sorts, not a typical fusion piece." Adds Sonty, "I see this work as a dance-visual conversation that exemplifies the universality of the language of movement and the bringing together of cultures."

In 2003, while Clinard and Sonty were busy developing their unusual form of artistic expression, Guitarist Carlo Basile of Las Guitarras de Espana/The Guitars of Spain ***(www.theguitarsofspain.com), a seven piece ensemble which performs Spanish guitar influenced by Latin American and Middle Eastern styles as well as American Jazz, backed by Afro-Cuban percussion forms), which regularly collaborates with Clinard, was commissioned by her to travel to India to study its musical traditions, a trip which resulted in Basile creating a large piece specifically for UNRAVELING RHYTHMS. The ensemble's new CD, Un Respiro por El Mundo (A Breath By The World) /Sweet Pickle Music, has been called "….innovative and delicious" by WBEZ-FM, Chicago Public Radio, and music and dance from this CD will be featured throughout UNRAVELING RHYTHMS.

Drawing on Clinard's background as a visual artist (BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago), and Sonty's affinity for Indian sculpture, a Chicago video artist, Teresa Parkes, has documented a series of line-ink paintings by artist Jeff Abbey Maldonado of UNRAVELING RHYTHMS; the video of these artworks serve as transitions between sections of the work.

UNRAVELING RHYTHMS culminates in 300,000 (the estimated number of lives lost in the 2004 Tsunami according to a report by the United Nations) ink dots amassing, which shatter off of a projected screen onto the dancers, leaving nothing but whiteness behind ---signifying the enormity of the Tsunami losses and the burden carried on by the living.

"With guest artists from Spain, India, and the Americas joining us throughout the concert series, the program will be evolving as we go along, and no two audiences will see quite the same performance," says Basile.

UNRAVELING RHYTHMS: Unraveling boundaries and interweaving traditional, personal, and artistic cultures. A performance for all ages, 90 minutes

Photo by: Joeff Davis

CONCERT SERIES:

SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 4, 8PM EST/ ACORN THEATER, 3 OAKS, MICHIGAN,

www.acorntheater.com  For tickets, call: 269.756.3879

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 8PM/ OLD TOWN SCHOOL OF FOLK MUSIC, 4544 N. LINCOLN, CHICAGO, www.oldtownschool.org 773.728.6000****

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, / WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL AT CHICAGO CULTURAL CEN(Claudia Cassidy Theater) ADDRESS, FREE PREVIEW: "OPEN HOUSE" PEFORMANCE, For time of performance, please log on to: www.cityofchicago.org /World Music, and www.877chicago.com

FRIDAY (8PM), SATURDAY (8PM), SUNDAY (3PM), SEPTEMBER 23, 24, 25,/ MUSIC INSTITUTE OF EVANSTON, Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 CHICAGO AVENUE, EVANSTON, www.musicinst.org, 847.905.1500****For ticket info, see below

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29th, 2005, 7PM

JAMES LUMBER CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS at the COLLEGE OF LAKE COUNTY, Studio Theater,

19351 W. WASHINGTON ST., GRAYSLAKE, IL For tickets: 847-543-2300

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 9PM/ HOTHOUSE CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL PERFORMING ARTS, 31 E. BALBO, CHICAGO, For tickets: www.hothouse.net

FRIDAY, SATURDAY, and SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7, 8, 9, Each performance at 8PM/ LINKS HALL, 3435 N. SHEFFIELD, CHICAGO, www.linkshall.org, 773.281.0824; ****For ticket info, see below

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28: PRAIRIE CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 8PM/, 201 SCHAUMBURG COURT, SCHAUMBURG, wwww.prairiecenter.org, 847.895.3600; ****For ticket info, see below

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 7PM/ MORGAN PARK ACADEMY, 2153 W. 111th STREET, CHICAGO, www.worldfolkmusiccompany.com 773.779.7059; ****For ticket info, see below

****Ticket Prices: $20-$30; tickets at starred venues will be available online at www.ticketweb.com or call 1.866.468.3401 beginning June 1, 2005.  For tickets to all other venues, please call the number listed for that venue or log onto their web site as directed.

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ALL VENUES, TIMES, AND TICKET INFO ALSO AVAILABLE AT www.theguitarsofspain.com

BIOS/PHOTOS/VIDEO/CDs/INTERVIEWS /AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST: please contact Judy O'Brien at 847.328.5880 or at obrienpub@aol.com

B/W Photo credit: John Onate

*One of Chicago's best-known and respected contemporary Flamenco performers, and Artistic Director of Clinard Dance Theater, Wendy Clinard has over a decade of study and performance as a Flamenco dancer. She has studied and performed with many well respected masters of Spanish dance: in Spain, at the Amor de Dios Academy and in Sevilla with Torombo, Juana Amaya, Hiniesta Cortez, and in Chicago with master teacher Edo and many visiting artists

**Sonty is a Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam Classical Indian dancer who has given over 300 performances, including four nationwide performance tours in the U.S. and in India, has performed for academic, cultural, and religious organizations for over 20 years, the 1994 Parliament of World Religions among them, and has had the honor of performing for the Dalai Lama of Tibet and Sri Chinmoy of India. She is currently an MD-PhD student at Northwestern University Medical School. 

****Audiences at "Unraveling Rhythms" will be treated to selections from the new CD by Las Guitarras de Espana throughout the performance. Las Guitarras de Espana, founded by guitarist, producer, and composer Carlo Basile in 1998,performs "Spanish guitar influenced world music and dance." The ensemble is also influenced by Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Indian styles as well as  American Jazz. The fusion of these styles backed by Afro-Cuban percussion forms completes the unique combination of sounds and grooves that is Las Guitarras de Espana. Carlo Basile has a Master's Degree in Classical Guitar performance and pedagogy from Northeastern Illinois University. He studied Classical guitar with Anne Waller at Northwestern University for seven years and continues to study flamenco guitar in Cordoba and Sevilla Spain with various teachers including Luis Ruiz ("Calderito"). Carlo has traveled to many countries to perform, lecture or collaborate with local musicians  Carlo also plays guitar for the Music for Medicine Program at Edward Hospital in Naperville, Il.

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Recent Interviews and Reviews:

DANCE

Beat that breaks down barriers

Clinard mixes Indian, flamenco

By Lucia Mauro

Special to the Chicago Tribune

Published September 9, 2005

There are no global barriers at the Clinard Dance Theatre studio in Pilsen.

Founder Wendy Clinard, whose company specializes in contemporary flamenco dance, rehearses a duet with classical Indian dancer Siri Sonty. Flamenco guitarists, percussionists, a sitar player, other musicians and vocalists crowd around the studio's narrow perimeter. The dancers' sultry curls of the wrist, complex foot stomps, and swirling saris and shawls merge into a vigorous statement of cultural unity.

They are preparing for a multimedia concert series, "Unraveling Rhythms," which kicks off Saturday at the Old Town School of Folk Music and continues in venues throughout Chicago.

Though Sonty teamed up (in 2003) with Clinard to create work that highlighted the similarities between their dance forms, "Unraveling Rhythms," is not a typical fusion affair. Instead, the two execute their own dances together, responding to each other's body language.

Sonty, 28, a professional Indian dancer and medical student at Northwestern University, says, "I see this work as a dance-visual conversation that exemplifies the universality of the language of movement. In dance and music, as with politics, it makes sense to increase the dialogue."

Flamenco and Indian dance, in fact, evolved through the influences of many cultures, such as the Gypsies and Moors, that migrated across Europe and Southeast Asia.

And "Unraveling Rhythms" has continued to evolve, particularly after Sonty and Clinard performed in India after last year's tsunami, when they witnessed the devastation firsthand. Their piece titled "Departure" has been transformed into what Clinard, 34, calls "a meditation and call for acceptance of things beyond our control--it's not a memorial."

The performers also interact with a series of video-projected hieroglyphic-like sketches by local artist Jeff Abbey Maldonado. The visuals culminate in 300,000 ink dots (referring to the estimated lives lost during the tsunami), which jump off the screen and onto the dancers, then vanish.

The visuals are key to Clinard, who was first drawn to flamenco while studying at the School of the Art Institute.

"How do we deal in general with the volume of death coming at us?" says Clinard. "These dots are like an entry point for the audience--an entry to that void. Confronting the tragedy, I believe, can be very freeing. It allows you to let go and accept your fate."

The dancers work closely with the Chicago-based world-music ensemble Las Guitarras de Espana, headed by composer-guitarist Carlo Basile. The group, with classical flamenco guitar as its base, is influenced by Latin American, Afro-Cuban, Middle Eastern, Indian and American jazz music.

Basile, 40, and his fellow musicians travel around the world to absorb related rhythms and mold them into a unique hybrid sound. Las Guitarras composed original music for the concert, featured on a CD titled "Un Respiro por El Mundo" on Sweet Pickle Music.

Artists from "Unraveling Rhythms" want to keep breaking boundaries and promoting unity. They will donate a substantial portion of the proceeds from the Sept. 23-25 performances at the Music Institute of Chicago in Evanston to the American Red Cross for its Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. For more information, visit www.theguitarsofspain.com.

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The `Unraveling Rhythms' lineup

The schedule for "Unraveling Rhythms" is as follows; tickets are $20-$30.

8 p.m. Sept. 10 at Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln Ave. 773-728-6000.

8 p.m. Sept. 23 and 24; 3 p.m. Sept. 25 at Music Institute of Chicago, Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston. 847-905-1500.

9 p.m. Sept. 30 at HotHouse Center for International Performing Arts, 31 E. Balbo Drive. 312-362-9707.

8 p.m. Oct. 7-9 at Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield Ave. 773-281-0824.

7 p.m. Oct. 29 Morgan Park Academy, 2153 W. 111th St. 773-779-7059.

-- L.M.

Critics Choice in The Chicago Reader 9/9/2005

UNRAVELING RHYTHMS Wendy Clinard is a flamenco dancer with a difference. In 2001 she created a piece for puppets and dancers about the nature of water, Shifting Landscapes . Now she looks at the intersection of flamenco and bharata natyam in Unraveling Rhythms , which she performs with classical Indian dancer Siri Sonty and modern dancer Orazio Giurdanella. Together Clinard and Sonty--dressed in traditional costumes, which include scarves and skirts for both--show there's a natural crossover between the two forms, in the stamping feet, intricate hand movements, low lunges, and general groundedness. But where the barefoot Indian dancer is covered with sequins, jewelry, and bells, the flamenco artist's costume is stripped down--except for her heeled shoes, which give her an almost masculine intensity. Circling or confronting each other, the two women seem to knit together their rhythms rather than unravel them. Las Guitarras de España accompany the piece, providing a blend of Spanish and Indian music, then perform songs from their new CD for the second half of this 90-minute program, accompanied by Clinard's traditional flamenco dancing. The show has its first Chicago-area performance this weekend and continues at various venues through October 29 (see listing ). Sat 9/10, 8 PM. Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, 773-728-6000. $16-$20. --Laura Molzahn

UNRAVELING RHYTHMS See Critic's Choice . Sat 9/10, 8 PM.  Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, 773-728-6000.  $16-$20. The other dates in September are 9/22 at the Chicago Cultural Center as part of the World Music Festival (free), 9/23-9/25 at the Music Institute of Evanston (part of the proceeds benefit hurricane Katrina relief efforts), 9/29 at the College of Lake County, and 9/30 at HotHouse.

Time Out Chicago 9/9/2005

Culture clash

Spain meets India in a new work by Clinard Dance Theatre

By Julia Mayer

ON THE FRINGE Wendy Clinard and Siri Sonty in "Unraveling Rhythms".

A year ago, flamenco performer and choreographer Wendy Clinard was in the process of developing a new dance, exploring the connections between flamenco and classical Indian dance. Now completed, Unraveling Rhythms is being presented by the Clinard Dance Theatre over the next six weeks at an impressive array of music and dance venues in the city and suburbs. It's almost as if the troupe is going on tour without ever leaving town, and it commences Saturday 10 at the Old Town School of Folk Music.

Clinard, Kuchipudi dancer Siri Sonty and several musicians made a trip to India last December to perform, network and soak up the culture. They were in Hyderabad just days after the tsunami struck. In trying to make sense of the tragedy they witnessed, Clinard and her collaborators struggled with questions that continued to haunt them when they returned to Chicago: What do we do with the volume of loss that comes at us all the time? How do we digest it? In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the skills needed to process disaster seem especially necessary. Clinard and Sonty began to see the rigor and form of their respective dance traditions as a metaphor for the way we order our lives and keep our emotions from engulfing us.

The pairing of these two dance forms is not arbitrary: Flamenco's roots can be found in the dances of India. Flamenco is the music and dance of Gypsies, whose centuries-long westward migration ended in Spain (among other European countries) but began in India. There are some obvious characteristics that the two forms share: fluid, supple arm gestures; intricate, precise positions and flourishes of the fingers and hands; deep, quick pliés (knee bends); and rapid, insistent, percussive feet.

Sonty dances in bare feet, but on her ankles she wears thick leather anklets adorned with dozens of small, strident brass bells. Clinard wears hard-heeled shoes, which she drives into the floor with precision and urgency. The footwork makes the dancer an integrated and indispensable part of the musical experience. In fact, Clinard collaborates regularly with Las Guitarras de Espana, a Spanish guitar–influenced world-music ensemble with seven core members and a constantly rotating roster of local and international guest artists.

There are plenty of differences in the two forms, too. In Kuchipudi (named for a village in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh), the dancer's face is completely engaged and choreographed: her eyes, lips, the tilt of her head. There is something virginal about Sonty's persona: coy, submissive, inviting. Clinard's flamenco persona is just the opposite. She's all passion, longing and regret.

Originally, Unraveling Rhythms was going to have three sections, the first two showing the "pure" dance forms, and a third in which both dancers and all the musicians collaborate. After their trip to India, Clinard and Sonty invited Venezuelan modern dancer Orazio Guirdanella to join them in a fourth section that aspires towards a common, universal expression.

They also enlisted the talents of visual artist Jeff Abbey Maldonado and video artist Teresa Parkes to provide a series of visual "bridges" between sections of the dance. Parkes videotaped Maldonado at work. His paintings start out figurative, clearly representing the bodies of dancers, and gradually become more abstract. He abandons the constraints of form just as the dancers do. In the final section, Maldonado's markings are merely dots, which according to careful program notes, are symbolic of the thousands of lives lost in the tsunami. In light of recent events, those dots, no doubt, will take on a new significance.

Catch Unraveling Rhythms Saturday 10 at the Old Town School of Folk Music. www.clinardance.org or www.theguitarsofspain.com .

Photo by Joeff Davis

'Unraveling Rhythms' combines musical cultures

BY BARBARA VITELLO

Daily Herald Staff Writer

Posted Thursday, September 22, 2005

Combine flamenco music with Indian dance and what do you get?

"Unraveling Rhythms," a fine arts showcase in the world beat tradition combining disparate styles to create a hybrid that revels in the best of both cultural worlds.

"Unraveling Rhythms" reflects the five-year collaboration between Las Guitarras de Espana (The Guitars of Spain), an ensemble grounded in flamenco that broadened its musical vocabulary to include Afro-Cuban, Latin, jazz, Middle Eastern and Indian music; classical Indian dancer Siri Sonty and Wendy Clinard's Clinard Dance Theatre, a flamenco ensemble that incorporates work by Chicago area visual artists.

The multi-disciplinary ensemble performs at 8 p.m. today and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at the Music Institute of Evanston, Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston. (847) 905-1500.

The group also performs at 7 p.m. Thursday at the James Lumber Center for the Performing Arts, College of Lake County, 19351 W. Washington St., Grayslake. (847) 543-2300.

Tickets range from $20 to $30 and are available at www.theguitarsofspain.com,  at www.ticketweb.com or by phone at (866) 468-3401.

In keeping with the world beat theme, dine on world class Spanish tapas and paellas at Naperville's elegant Meson Sabika, located in a restored 19th century mansion at 1025 Aurora Ave. (630) 983-3000

Or try the Spanish fare at Evanston's cheery Tapas Barcelona, 1615 Chicago Ave. (847) 866-9900.

Like Indian food. Try New Delhi Restaurant of India, a cozy, unpretentious restaurant at 30 S. Meacham Road, Schaumburg. The reasonably priced menu includes vegetarian fare plus lamb, chicken, fish and egg dishes. (847) 895-6900.

Or, try longtime favorite Viceroy of India, which serves up authentic Indian cuisine at 555 Roosevelt Road, Lombard. (630) 627-4411 and at 2520 W. Devon Ave., Chicago. (773) 743-4100.

Disasters affect dance

BYDAVID JAKUBIAK

CONTRIBUTOR

A fusion of two dance styles forged in the period following of one catastrophe will be, regrettably, timely once more when it is performed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The program is called "Unraveling Rhythms." It's the work of two Chicago dancers, Siri Sonty, a longtime student of traditional dance from Southern India, and Wendy Clinard, a flamenco dancer.

The two were drawn together by dance, and bound by December's South Asian tsunami. They have put together a production, Sonty said, that shows "there are many more elements to a person than the singular elements of our tradition."

The program will be performed this weekend in Evanston and next week in Grayslake, with Las Guitarras de Espana (the Guitars of Spain) providing live musical accompaniment. A portion of the proceeds from the Evanston shows will be donated to the American Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina relief.

The project aims to show the interconnectedness of the human experience as witnessed through the prism of unimaginable disaster.

Sonty has studied traditional Indian dance since 1982. Her first classes were in Chicago, but continued in India after her family moved back to the subcontinent for a few years in the late 1980s. It was because of her interest in dance, she says, that she made a sweep through Seville, Spain, during her honeymoon in 2000.

"I made sure to go to Seville, because I knew that flamenco was very strongly developed and performed there."

She was amazed by what she found. The elements of the dance, the sounds, the rhythms, the footwork, the narrative qualities of the dancer's facial expressions, were all familiar to her.

"So about a year later I did a Google search for flamenco dancers in Chicago."

Finding Clinard's studio on the Internet, she said, she fired off an e-mail, hoping to find a person she could dance with.

Clinard, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was excited to receive Sonty's call.

"I'm a painter-turned-dancer, and flamenco was my first study dance-wise," she said. "I had taken a formal apprenticeship for seven years with a flamenco master and lived in Spain."

But one of Clinard's favorite things, she said, "was locking the studio door and experimenting with movement," which seemed to Clinard to be what Sonty had in mind.

"We didn't know we would have the collaboration and that it would take this form, but I don't have an ensemble and Clinard Dance is really built on collaboration. ... That drive to be curious is very exciting to me."

But when they started working together, Sonty's vision of an academic study of the two forms of dance rapidly evolved.

"It became a lot more interpersonal and far less a formal exploration between flamenco and traditional South Indian dance," Sonty said. "Our working style ended up being more a dance conversation. Our movements became more a transmission between us. I would do an arm movement and she would do an arm movement back. It was very back and forth."

These experiences started to bring shape to the project.

"After we began to put the piece together it started to take on the theme of unraveling, in a way unraveling the traditions," Sonty said. "(We) use the traditions we come from as a foundation, but also using the influences around us to relate to each other through the dance. By, for example, removal of very stylized aspects of our garments, so that visual dissimilarity is no longer present."

But the project truly started to make sense for the dancers last December, when they were in India.

"That was right around the time of the tsunami and that changed the focus," Sonty said. "The morale for performance really dropped. Dance, as a recreational, celebratory thing, seemed inappropriate in a time that warranted more reflection, introspection and reaching out to help."

But they continued to dance, Clinard said, because it was, in a way, what they knew when everything else was so alien to them.

"Being there, to start with, you had already lost your structure -- just being in a country that was so different from your day-to-day here. But then to have the natural disaster there was nothing you could count on, everything was so altered there was big shift and then a real slowing down and a surrendering."

But it wasn't a surrendering to defeat, Clinard said. "You felt alive."

"This is dance not as form, not as tradition, not as structure, but more as reflection, more as meditation, more as us reflecting the context in which we live," Sonty said.

'Unraveling Rhythms'

8 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Music Institute of Chicago, Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston, www.musicinst.org , (847) 905-1500

7 p.m. Sept. 29, College of Lake County,  James Lumber Center for the Performing Arts, 19351 W. Washington St., Grayslake, (847) 543-2300

$20-$30

Show offers unique blend of cultures

By Juliana Johnson

Reflejos Staff Writer

After the past year’s tsunami and more recent hurricane tragedy, and after having witnessed so much devastation, it may be difficult to attend a play or concert. “Unraveling Rhythms,” a performance at locations in Evanston and Schaumburg, artistically incorporates these major world events into the show.

The international tour is considered a hybrid, but while a hybrid is defined as the result of two different elements, this musical show offers much more.

It combines not only visual arts — music and dance — but carries the audience through places like India, Spain and Latin America.

The “Unraveling Rhythms” show is divided into two parts:  One is the Guitarras de Espana (Guitars of Spain) concert, a Chicago-based group. The other is an artistic show, including music, dance and other visuals.

Guitarras de Espana is a seven-member group, and each person comes from a different culture and background.  The group recently launched its most recent album, “Un Respiro por el Mundo,”  fusing rhythms from the Middle East, Latin America, India and even American jazz. Every performance is complemented by two or three musicians or guest singers.  Each adds a touch of individuality and richness to each concert.

According to Carlo Basile, guitarist and composer for the group, “Music is not stationary; it travels from one place to another.  You cannot predict music’s DNA. Guitarras de Espana combines sounds from one place and lyrics from a different place. The two complement each other.”

The second part of the show features the various arts. Music and dance are complemented with visual art. Artist Jeff Maldonado exhibits his work of art that was inspired by the tsunami tragedy.

The entire performance features highlights from traditional flamenco and Hindu dances. Both differences and similarities become clearer as the dancers share the stage.

The final act shows us how even very diverse arts and cultures can complement each other.

Spending 90 minutes listening to “Unraveling Rhythms,” will likely leave you with a greater respect for diversity. 

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Elizabeth rome/the daily northwestern

Siri Sonty, M.D.-Ph.D. student at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, performs at the “Unraveling Rhythms” show at the Music Institute of Chicago on Sunday afternoon. The show also featured the flamenco ensemble Las Guitarras de España, who played various selections from their newest album.

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Dancers combine Indian, Spanish styles for show

by Kristyn Schiavone

September 26, 2005

Through three different art forms — music, dance and picture — and the fusion of Indian and Spanish cultures, “Unraveling Rhythms” brought influences from all over the world to about 400 audience members.

The show, held this weekend at the Music Institute of Chicago, was a celebration of diversity. It began with music from a variety of instruments and projections of line ink drawings by Chicago artist Jeff Abbey Maldonado. After solo Indian and flamenco dance pieces, dancers Siri Sonty and Wendy Clinard fused their respective styles and showcased modern dancer Orazio Giurdanella. During the second act, the flamenco ensemble Las Guitarras de España played selections from their new album.

Sonty, who has been at Northwestern since 1995 and is currently working on her MD-Ph.D., said collaborating with a flamenco artist made the concert a new experience.

“My focus for a long time has been classical, traditional Indian dance,” Sonty said. “This show is much more dynamic, much more engaged.”

There are seven different styles of classical Indian dance, but they all share three main elements, according to Sonty.

“Interpretation is the various hand movements that mean different things; it’s much like a sign language,” Sonty said. “Then you have the drama, where you take on a character, and the pure dance aspect.”

A few years after watching flamenco for the first time, Sonty began conversations with Clinard about creating pieces to mesh the two styles, which have many technical similarities. For example, both are characterized by distinct hand placement and sharp arm movements. Flamenco dancers tap quick rhythms with their heels to supplement the beat, and Indian dancers wear ankle bracelets made of bells to accent their stomps at different points in the music. In both forms, each piece tells a story.

“We all have cultural traditions of varying kinds, and they should not be a constraint, but a foundation,” Sonty said.

Initial planning and rehearsal for the concert was under way in 2003. Clinard and Sonty were doing workshops in India when the tsunami hit in 2005. According to Amy Defigueiredo, operations associate for Clinard Dance Theater, the trip changed the dancers’ perspective.

“They viewed a great deal of human loss, and they wanted to relate that in the show,” Defigueiredo said.

The ink projections also included a series of 300 black dots, each one representing the loss of 1,000 lives in the tsunami disaster.

Each weekend show drew a crowd of 100 to 150. Chicago resident Richard Romek said he was pleased with the performance.

“We are enjoying the traditional flamenco — that’s what we like,” Romek said.

“Unraveling Rhythms” has performed at two Michigan locations and will move to other venues throughout Chicago. Communication sophomore Audrey Meshulam first saw the show at the world music festival earlier this month.

“The combination of flamenco and Indian in unison is beautiful and fascinating,” Meshulam said. “Its historical relevance brings different groups of people together.”

Reach Kristyn Schiavone at k-schiavone@northwestern.edu

'Unraveling Rhythms' combines musical cultures

BY BARBARA VITELLO

Daily Herald Staff Writer

Posted Thursday, September 22, 2005

Combine flamenco music with Indian dance and what do you get?

"Unraveling Rhythms," a fine arts showcase in the world beat tradition combining disparate styles to create a hybrid that revels in the best of both cultural worlds.

"Unraveling Rhythms" reflects the five-year collaboration between Las Guitarras de Espana (The Guitars of Spain), an ensemble grounded in flamenco that broadened its musical vocabulary to include Afro-Cuban, Latin, jazz, Middle Eastern and Indian music; classical Indian dancer Siri Sonty and Wendy Clinard's Clinard Dance Theatre, a flamenco ensemble that incorporates work by Chicago area visual artists.

The multi-disciplinary ensemble performs at 8 p.m. today and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at the Music Institute of Evanston, Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston. (847) 905-1500.

The group also performs at 7 p.m. Thursday at the James Lumber Center for the Performing Arts, College of Lake County, 19351 W. Washington St., Grayslake. (847) 543-2300.

Tickets range from $20 to $30 and are available at www.theguitarsofspain.com,  at www.ticketweb.com or by phone at (866) 468-3401.

In keeping with the world beat theme, dine on world class Spanish tapas and paellas at Naperville's elegant Meson Sabika, located in a restored 19th century mansion at 1025 Aurora Ave. (630) 983-3000

Or try the Spanish fare at Evanston's cheery Tapas Barcelona, 1615 Chicago Ave. (847) 866-9900.

Like Indian food. Try New Delhi Restaurant of India, a cozy, unpretentious restaurant at 30 S. Meacham Road, Schaumburg. The reasonably priced menu includes vegetarian fare plus lamb, chicken, fish and egg dishes. (847) 895-6900.

Or, try longtime favorite Viceroy of India, which serves up authentic Indian cuisine at 555 Roosevelt Road, Lombard. (630) 627-4411 and at 2520 W. Devon Ave., Chicago. (773) 743-4100.

Disasters affect dance

BYDAVID JAKUBIAK

CONTRIBUTOR

A fusion of two dance styles forged in the period following of one catastrophe will be, regrettably, timely once more when it is performed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The program is called "Unraveling Rhythms." It's the work of two Chicago dancers, Siri Sonty, a longtime student of traditional dance from Southern India, and Wendy Clinard, a flamenco dancer.

The two were drawn together by dance, and bound by December's South Asian tsunami. They have put together a production, Sonty said, that shows "there are many more elements to a person than the singular elements of our tradition."

The program will be performed this weekend in Evanston and next week in Grayslake, with Las Guitarras de Espana (the Guitars of Spain) providing live musical accompaniment. A portion of the proceeds from the Evanston shows will be donated to the American Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina relief.

The project aims to show the interconnectedness of the human experience as witnessed through the prism of unimaginable disaster.

Sonty has studied traditional Indian dance since 1982. Her first classes were in Chicago, but continued in India after her family moved back to the subcontinent for a few years in the late 1980s. It was because of her interest in dance, she says, that she made a sweep through Seville, Spain, during her honeymoon in 2000.

"I made sure to go to Seville, because I knew that flamenco was very strongly developed and performed there."

She was amazed by what she found. The elements of the dance, the sounds, the rhythms, the footwork, the narrative qualities of the dancer's facial expressions, were all familiar to her.

"So about a year later I did a Google search for flamenco dancers in Chicago."

Finding Clinard's studio on the Internet, she said, she fired off an e-mail, hoping to find a person she could dance with.

Clinard, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was excited to receive Sonty's call.

"I'm a painter-turned-dancer, and flamenco was my first study dance-wise," she said. "I had taken a formal apprenticeship for seven years with a flamenco master and lived in Spain."

But one of Clinard's favorite things, she said, "was locking the studio door and experimenting with movement," which seemed to Clinard to be what Sonty had in mind.

"We didn't know we would have the collaboration and that it would take this form, but I don't have an ensemble and Clinard Dance is really built on collaboration. ... That drive to be curious is very exciting to me."

But when they started working together, Sonty's vision of an academic study of the two forms of dance rapidly evolved.

"It became a lot more interpersonal and far less a formal exploration between flamenco and traditional South Indian dance," Sonty said. "Our working style ended up being more a dance conversation. Our movements became more a transmission between us. I would do an arm movement and she would do an arm movement back. It was very back and forth."

These experiences started to bring shape to the project.

"After we began to put the piece together it started to take on the theme of unraveling, in a way unraveling the traditions," Sonty said. "(We) use the traditions we come from as a foundation, but also using the influences around us to relate to each other through the dance. By, for example, removal of very stylized aspects of our garments, so that visual dissimilarity is no longer present."

But the project truly started to make sense for the dancers last December, when they were in India.

"That was right around the time of the tsunami and that changed the focus," Sonty said. "The morale for performance really dropped. Dance, as a recreational, celebratory thing, seemed inappropriate in a time that warranted more reflection, introspection and reaching out to help."

But they continued to dance, Clinard said, because it was, in a way, what they knew when everything else was so alien to them.

"Being there, to start with, you had already lost your structure -- just being in a country that was so different from your day-to-day here. But then to have the natural disaster there was nothing you could count on, everything was so altered there was big shift and then a real slowing down and a surrendering."

But it wasn't a surrendering to defeat, Clinard said. "You felt alive."

"This is dance not as form, not as tradition, not as structure, but more as reflection, more as meditation, more as us reflecting the context in which we live," Sonty said.

'Unraveling Rhythms'

8 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Music Institute of Chicago, Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston, www.musicinst.org , (847) 905-1500

7 p.m. Sept. 29, College of Lake County,  James Lumber Center for the Performing Arts, 19351 W. Washington St., Grayslake, (847) 543-2300

$20-$30

Show offers unique blend of cultures

By Juliana Johnson

Reflejos Staff Writer

After the past year’s tsunami and more recent hurricane tragedy, and after having witnessed so much devastation, it may be difficult to attend a play or concert. “Unraveling Rhythms,” a performance at locations in Evanston and Schaumburg, artistically incorporates these major world events into the show.

The international tour is considered a hybrid, but while a hybrid is defined as the result of two different elements, this musical show offers much more.

It combines not only visual arts — music and dance — but carries the audience through places like India, Spain and Latin America.

The “Unraveling Rhythms” show is divided into two parts:  One is the Guitarras de Espana (Guitars of Spain) concert, a Chicago-based group. The other is an artistic show, including music, dance and other visuals.

Guitarras de Espana is a seven-member group, and each person comes from a different culture and background.  The group recently launched its most recent album, “Un Respiro por el Mundo,”  fusing rhythms from the Middle East, Latin America, India and even American jazz. Every performance is complemented by two or three musicians or guest singers.  Each adds a touch of individuality and richness to each concert.

According to Carlo Basile, guitarist and composer for the group, “Music is not stationary; it travels from one place to another.  You cannot predict music’s DNA. Guitarras de Espana combines sounds from one place and lyrics from a different place. The two complement each other.”

The second part of the show features the various arts. Music and dance are complemented with visual art. Artist Jeff Maldonado exhibits his work of art that was inspired by the tsunami tragedy.

The entire performance features highlights from traditional flamenco and Hindu dances. Both differences and similarities become clearer as the dancers share the stage.

The final act shows us how even very diverse arts and cultures can complement each other.

Spending 90 minutes listening to “Unraveling Rhythms,” will likely leave you with a greater respect for diversity. 

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Elizabeth rome/the daily northwestern

Siri Sonty, M.D.-Ph.D. student at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, performs at the “Unraveling Rhythms” show at the Music Institute of Chicago on Sunday afternoon. The show also featured the flamenco ensemble Las Guitarras de España, who played various selections from their newest album.

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Dancers combine Indian, Spanish styles for show

by Kristyn Schiavone

September 26, 2005

Through three different art forms — music, dance and picture — and the fusion of Indian and Spanish cultures, “Unraveling Rhythms” brought influences from all over the world to about 400 audience members.

The show, held this weekend at the Music Institute of Chicago, was a celebration of diversity. It began with music from a variety of instruments and projections of line ink drawings by Chicago artist Jeff Abbey Maldonado. After solo Indian and flamenco dance pieces, dancers Siri Sonty and Wendy Clinard fused their respective styles and showcased modern dancer Orazio Giurdanella. During the second act, the flamenco ensemble Las Guitarras de España played selections from their new album.

Sonty, who has been at Northwestern since 1995 and is currently working on her MD-Ph.D., said collaborating with a flamenco artist made the concert a new experience.

“My focus for a long time has been classical, traditional Indian dance,” Sonty said. “This show is much more dynamic, much more engaged.”

There are seven different styles of classical Indian dance, but they all share three main elements, according to Sonty.

“Interpretation is the various hand movements that mean different things; it’s much like a sign language,” Sonty said. “Then you have the drama, where you take on a character, and the pure dance aspect.”

A few years after watching flamenco for the first time, Sonty began conversations with Clinard about creating pieces to mesh the two styles, which have many technical similarities. For example, both are characterized by distinct hand placement and sharp arm movements. Flamenco dancers tap quick rhythms with their heels to supplement the beat, and Indian dancers wear ankle bracelets made of bells to accent their stomps at different points in the music. In both forms, each piece tells a story.

“We all have cultural traditions of varying kinds, and they should not be a constraint, but a foundation,” Sonty said.

Initial planning and rehearsal for the concert was under way in 2003. Clinard and Sonty were doing workshops in India when the tsunami hit in 2005. According to Amy Defigueiredo, operations associate for Clinard Dance Theater, the trip changed the dancers’ perspective.

“They viewed a great deal of human loss, and they wanted to relate that in the show,” Defigueiredo said.

The ink projections also included a series of 300 black dots, each one representing the loss of 1,000 lives in the tsunami disaster.

Each weekend show drew a crowd of 100 to 150. Chicago resident Richard Romek said he was pleased with the performance.

“We are enjoying the traditional flamenco — that’s what we like,” Romek said.

“Unraveling Rhythms” has performed at two Michigan locations and will move to other venues throughout Chicago. Communication sophomore Audrey Meshulam first saw the show at the world music festival earlier this month.

“The combination of flamenco and Indian in unison is beautiful and fascinating,” Meshulam said. “Its historical relevance brings different groups of people together.”

Reach Kristyn Schiavone at k-schiavone@northwestern.edu

Timbuktu Goes Electric

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By ADAM FISHER

Published: November 20, 2005

'What is your destination?" asks the customs agent at the far end of a San Francisco-to-London flight.

"Timbuktu," I answer. She shoots me a look, as if to say that there is a special wing in the airport jail for smart alecks like me. "It's true!" I lie, pointing to the Malian visa pasted into my passport. The truth is a little harder to explain and, I suspect, would be even more dubious to the post-9/11 international security apparatus. Finally, after a long pause, she waves me through to my connection. It's another nine-hour flight, to Bamako, the capital of Mali.

Yann Latronche/Gamma

The nomadic Tuareg are among the 6,000 Malians at the Festival au Desert in Essakene.

Victoria Upton

A the Festival au Desert, a three-day music festival in Essakane.

My real aim is Essakane, an obscure desert oasis a half-day's drive beyond Timbuktu, and the site of what's billed as the "most remote music festival in the world." It's a three-day Afro-pop powwow held by the Tuareg, the traditionally nomadic "blue people" of the Sahara.

It's a tribe often feared for the banditry of its rebels and respected for the fact that it has never really been conquered. Historically its great power came from its role in the trans-Saharan trade in gold, slaves and salt. Even now, Tuareg caravans make the 15-day journey south from the northern salt mines to Timbuktu on the Niger River. They rest their camels during the day and use the stars to navigate at night. The skin tint of the nomads comes from the indigo dye they use for their turbans and robes, which leaves a permanent stain.

Festivals have always been a part of their nomadic lifestyle. They're a time to race camels, stage sword fights, settle scores, make policy and play music. However, the Festival au Désert is something new. It's open to outsiders, including Westerners as well as other tribes. Tradition still rules during the day, but after the sun goes down, the jamboree transforms into an open-air pop concert, complete with a stage, lights and 20-foot-high speaker stacks. In 2003, the ex-Led Zeppelin frontman, Robert Plant, performed alongside the local talent. In 2004, Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz fame showed up. His "Mali Music," a personal album that came out of that experience, is what in fact has drawn me halfway around the world.

The night before it begins, I'm bivouacked in Timbuktu regretting my decision to come. It's taken me six days to get here from Bamako. For much of the way, there's not even a real road. The fabled town seems like a place cursed by fate. It's not much more than a pile of rubble, slowly sinking beneath the encroaching Sahara. The canal, which connects the port town to the river, dried up decades ago, as did part of the Niger itself briefly during the great drought of 1985. Tuareg rebels shot the place up with their Kalashnikovs during a siege in 1990. Torrential rains in 2003 melted 40 of the city's historic mud houses. Last October, there was a plague of locusts. And now, the clerk at my "luxury hotel" informs me, the city has run out of toilet paper. And beer!

The next day, it's clear why. Absolutely everything is going to the festival. Whole restaurants are being thrown into the backs of trucks. Every last Land Cruiser in town is being loaded down for the drive into the desert. There is no road between Timbuktu and Essakane, just sand. To drive through it without sinking requires standing on the gas and pointing the steering wheel toward a mark on the GPS. When my driver does stop, it's always on the top of a dune so we can get going again by sliding down the other side.

When we finally get to the festival site, we're deep into the desert. It's beautiful. The sand is exceptionally white and fine and pure, and for the first time since I've touched down in Africa, everything seems clean. There are camel-skin pup tents for shelter at night and bigger tents for shade during the day. A variety of cafes are scattered about, improvised out of a cooler and maybe a few chairs.

Most astonishingly, there are flush toilets - permanent stalls built for the festival - standing incongruously among the dunes.

There are about 800 Westerners here, a predominantly European crowd, and approximately 6,000 Malians, most of them Tuareg, who arrive on gaily decorated camels, which outnumber the four-by-fours by seven to one. Goats and donkeys roam the grounds freely. Bread is baked the traditional way, in a hole dug in the sand. I see a sheep's stomach inflate after being filled with hot coals and organ meats and then twisted shut - it acts as a sort of pressure cooker. At one point a bar fight between two young Tuareg is broken up by a contingent of elders who gallop over to adjudicate from their wooden saddles. Spontaneous jam sessions erupt everywhere else.

Overall, an atmosphere of friendly chaos prevails, and though it's easy to strike up conversations, it's almost impossible to find any reliable information. Who's on the lineup? Rumors swirl: Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Tracy Chapman, Dee Dee Bridgewater. But no one really seems to know anything.

On a dune overlooking a ritual sword dance, I happen to meet three American musicians from Chicago. They play together in the band Las Guitarras de España. Doug Brush, 36, is the drummer; Greg Nergaard, 35, is the bassist;

and Carlo Basile, 41, is the guitarist. They're here on something of a pilgrimage. "You can see musical evolution," Brush explains, and "you can see it here." I ask them to explain. The CliffsNotes version is that today's pop music owes everything to rock 'n' roll, which ripped off the blues, which in turn came from the work songs and field chants sung by slaves, West Africans who were captured and sold into bondage - often by Tuareg raiders. So, depending on your point of view, the uncanny similarity of traditional Malian music and American folk forms is either just a coincidence, or not. "Listen to that," Nergaard says, gesturing to a guy strumming a guitar made from a tree branch lashed to a gourd resonator. "The chords, the shape of the melody: it's Johnny Lee Hooker, as far as I'm concerned." Basile, however, scoffs at the notion that somehow we've arrived at the cradle of rock. "Music has no DNA," he says, making the point that American slave owners stripped chattel of their culture. "Why can't it be that people in two different parts of the world simply come up with the same musical idea?" Brush splits the difference with a mystical compromise: "Maybe the blues springs from a genetic memory," he wonders, "instead of a tradition handed down through the generations?"

As night falls, it seems as if the festival may not even happen. Technical difficulties delay the start of the program by four hours. The sound is bad. One of two Western musicians on the bill is Hubert von Goisern, a punk accordionist from Austria famous for his yodeling. (The Germans I meet swear he's huge back home.) Even worse, I learn that some of Mali's best-known musicians - Ali Farka Touré, Oumou Sangare, Tinariwen - won't be appearing either. My buddies are philosophical, saying that you can hear all of them when they come through Chicago, anyway. The Chicagoans came to make new discoveries, but as I tuck into my sleeping bag, I can't escape my own disappointment.

The next day I interview Manny Ansar, 43, the festival's director, and discover how tenuous the situation really is. "Il est parce que, eh, how do you say it ..." Ansar fumbles, "the grasshopper." The festival had been expecting more support from the government and from Unesco, he explains, but after the locusts came and ate the region's millet crop, the money was diverted to disaster relief programs. And even though paid attendance doubled this year, there was still no money to compensate non-African headliners or hire foreign experts to set up the sound. "Three hours before the concert began," Ansar reports, "and the sound truck still hadn't arrived." But the United States State Department, he says (knowing full well that I'm an American), is his biggest headache. The desert beyond Timbuktu is a designated no-go zone for American citizens. The travel advisory stems from the presence of armed militants. And according to Ansar, it has scared off all the American talent. "Tell them you were here," he says, "tell them that you came back safe - maybe it will change."

The second night, the festival, which seemed teetering on the edge of total collapse, comes together awesomely. The sound problems are fixed. The wind has died down, clearing the sky of dust. And there, on a small stage, in the middle of the Sahara, unfolds a seamless, all-night spectacular. I give up trying to track who exactly is playing - there are never fewer than a dozen people on stage - once I realize that the bands share a rotating cast of dancers, drummers and backup musicians. More important, they share an aesthetic. Fit a traditional gourd-guitar - the kora or the ngoni - with a pickup and plug it into an amp, and the melancholy desert sound becomes screamingly electric. Layer that with tom-toms and bongos and water drums beating out indigenous rhythms, and you've got a parallel universe of rock 'n' roll. They know it, too. There is always a diva just ripping it, and I don't need a translator to know what they are singing about: sex, love and AIDS.

It isn't just a rock sound, it is a rock show. There are always three or four backup singers gyrating at the front of the stage - sometimes girls in shimmery cocktail dresses, sometimes Fulani boys in full cowrie-shell drag. (In the Fulani culture, men wear makeup and preen.) But the ultimate moment, for me, is when a musician by the name of Baba Salah lets loose with his electric guitar. That instrument has a special meaning for the Tuareg: it's a symbol of rebellion and freedom. The first big Saharan folk band to go electric was Tinariwen, and they really were rebels. They famously learned to play electric guitar in Muammar el-Qaddafi's guerrilla training camps in Libya.

During Baba Salah's set, I run into Las Guitarras, the Chicago band. We're all grinning madly. The entire crowd has been brought to its knees, spellbound. The music is creating such an ecstatic connection to the people around me and the desert from which it so obviously springs that I have, without even realizing it, driven my forearms deep into the silky sand. This is it, this is the experience worth the journey. "Can you hear it!? Can you hear it!?," Nergaard shouts to me. "Add a horn section," he exclaims, "and it's Eric Clapton."

Not long after, I retreat from my vantage point in front of the stage and listen to the rest from the backside of a dune. The stars are an arm's length away. There I reflect on what it is I'm hearing waft over the sand. It feels like I've stumbled into another culture's Woodstock or Burning Man, yet this really is a gathering of the tribes. It's not just an artistic statement - the sound really captures their lives. The young Africans that I was rocking out with actually do live simultaneously in the ancient world and in the modern. I won't soon forget a conversation I had with a Songhai teenager. I didn't have to ask him which ethnic group he was from because I could guess by the decorative scars on his face. We talked about his favorite rapper, 50 Cent. I don't know if what I heard out there was, strictly speaking, the roots of rock 'n' roll, but it sure would be a great future.

On the trip home I'm reminded - because it's everywhere - of Mali's abject poverty.

Per capita G.D.P. is a pitiful $900. These people, who I found to be welcoming and kind, live on the rest of the world's scraps. The fact that every year they go to the end of the earth and somehow cobble together the best concert I've ever seen from little more than bits of wire and string makes me love them. I didn't think I'd ever say this, but I know I'll be back. And next time, I'll be packing the Charmin.

Live Radio Interview w/ Carlo Basile of Las Guitarras de España on "848" WBEZ, Chicagopublicradio.org

Follow this link and scroll down to interview which aired on January 19th, 2005: http://www.wbez.org/audio_library/hb_jan05.asp

"Un Respiro por El Mundo" as reviewed by Debi Winston Buzil May-June 2005 Issue of Yoga Chicago

Las Guitarras De Espana’s CD Un Respiro Por El Mundo (A Breath for the World) is a holistic trip to the roots of Spanish guitar, taking us on a journey through India, Sri Lanka, Morocco and Cuba. The sublime combination of vocalist Patricia Ortega-Alonso, guitarist Carlo Basile and percussionist Doug Brush set the framework for layer upon layer of sound. Middle Eastern oud, flugel horn, palmas (or handclaps) and flamenco wails are among the instrumentation, and the arrangements are tasty and well done.

“Walking Prana” (featuring Satya Gummuluri) begins with what could sound like a muezzin’s call to prayer and continues with incredibly sensitive vocals evoking the feeling of being rained upon. Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos’ “Prelude No. 4" is a nice classical breath. And then there’s the footwork of the dancers on tracks like “Un Respiro Por El Mundo” that celebrate the fact that we all live in a “body house.”

You can attend a Las Guitarras performance locally (visit theguitarsofspain.com for venues) and see for yourself how tabla figures so predominantly in Spanish music. An added attraction is the flamenco dancers at their shows--joyfully, sultrily strutting their stuff. As magical as their music is the artwork on the CD. The photo of Doug Brush on a camel in a vast desert being led by a young guide with an i-pod reminds me of the crosscurrents between east and west. The breathtaking photo of a flamenco dancer melting into her skirt is a cause for reflection. Un Respiro Por El Mundo captures the soul, the heat and passion of the human heart.

Click here for complete story as featured in The Hindu newspaper in India, January 2005.  

Here is an excerpt:       

An infectiously joyful celebration of music and dance - that is how one could describe the unique dance performance of the two artistes. The connoisseurs of dance and music were treated to a spectacular `jugalbandi' performance of Kuchipudi and the Spanish dance form, `Flamenco', at the VUDA Children's Theatre last week.

The two dancers broke open like flames dancing across the stage, revealing a fascinating confluence between two personal heritages. Flamenco and classical Indian dance forms have been fused and researched by many artistes due to their strong historic and stylistic influences on one another. This propelled Kuchipudi dancer Siri Sonty and the Flamenco dance artiste, Wendy Clinard, to explore the similarities between the two forms and come out with an outstanding presentation of this blend.

"We would like to name it as a contemporary dance or ballet which is an attempt to encompass our personal heritages," says Wendy, who is the director of the Clinard Dance Theatre in Chicago. Wendy had complete control over every part of her body during her performance. Even her deep, intense eyes seem to move in sync with her swoops and stomps. It was as if a sensual seriousness had enveloped her. Siri, with her flamboyant body movements, gave an enthralling Kuchipudi dance performance.