Bringing together a mix of Spanish culture with Tawiwanese dance, Flamenco de Formosa showcases an intergenerational story of cultural exchange detailing a mirrored love of flamenco dance between mother and daughter. The performance is choreographed and led by Ballet Nacional de España member Hsueh Yu-Shien, and features an array of dancers including Yu-Shien’s mother and Taiwanese flamenco pioneer Lian Ho.
The performance will take place on Sept. 1 at the Vancouver Playhouse as part of Vancouver TAIWANfest 2024.
A shared love and affinity for flamenco
For Lian Ho, it was love at first sight for flamenco. After getting the chance, at a young age, to see the flamenco-focussed Ballet Nacional de España perform live, she says it was an experience she has never since been able to forget. The long-time dancer recalls the first moments she witnessed the movement and flow of the dance form, and how she found them to be profoundly and deeply moving.
“When I saw flamenco for the first time, I was so touched, and I cried,” she says. “I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what was the meaning from the melody, but it was something touching.”
Soonafter, she decided to pursue dance professionally, but opted to study contemporary dance. However the thought and feeling of flamenco never truly left her. So after pursuing her studies in New York, Lian Ho traveled to live and study flamenco in Madrid, recalling it as one of the most important times in her life. After returning to Taiwan and to teach the challenging dance form in her home country, she eventually settled down to raise children.
For Yu-Shien the same cycle of coming to love and appreciate flamenco would repeat, as she recalls her own first experience learning from her mother to dance flamenco, and experiencing a movement and flow so enrapturing it was hard to even understand or put into words.
“When I was six or seven years old, that was kind of my first concrete memory of falling in love with flamenco,” she says. “At that age, maybe it’s too young to know what passion or falling in love is, what it really means to love something. But I felt like a very proud peacock, dancing. A kind of that pride and shining on the stage.”
It would be that same spark of interest that would drive Yu-Shien’s desire to reach the highest levels of flamenco performance. After becoming the first non-Spanish dancer to become a member of the Ballet Nacional de España, and winning first place in a major Spanish international dance competition, Yu-Shien has now set her eyes on the choreography and incorporation of her cultural roots into this most recent work.
Flamenco de Formosa
Named after the Portuguese name for Taiwan, Ilha Formosa, or “beautiful island”, Flamenco de Formosa reflects an intercultural blend with Spanish flamenco and Taiwanese culture, speaking to intergenerational stories of the lives of Lian Ho and Yu-Shien.
For Yu-Shien, it’s an opportunity to express not only a cultural blend, but a personal and historically-rooted one, presenting different eras of Taiwanese society and reflecting on intercultural mixing from there.
“My mother took that original passion for flamenco and transformed it into something very great. It’s not just a blend of style or culture. [Flamenco de Formosa] is that, but it’s also a representation of some of the different eras and changes through Taiwanese society,” says Yu-Shien. “You can see that in the dance. It is also a representation of my generation, the next generation of dancers and their relationship with the land with Taiwan.”
Overall, she hopes that the show can allow the audience to reflect on their own culture, experiences of immigration and their respective cultural contexts as they witness this personal and moving story.
“I hope the performance will be like a mirror,” says Yu-Shien. “There are a lot of immigrants in Canada, just like there’s lots of immigrants in Taiwan. So through this performance, I hope people can find the warmth and passion in their own lives.”
For more information on the performance, visit: www.vancouvertaiwanfest.ca
