Abrepaso shares language of flamenco with Northeast Ohio

Alice Blumenfeld fell in love with flamenco in her youth growing up in New Mexico where there is an annual festival and national institute dedicated to the Spanish art form.

“I just became enraptured in the rhythm and had what in flamenco we call an experience of ‘duende,’ sort of an out-of-body experience,” she said. “I just knew in that moment that this was what I would dedicate my life to.”

She went on to tour with national companies and even studied flamenco in Spain for a while. But as time went on, she said she realized she wanted to find a way to tell her own stories through flamenco.

 Alice Blumenfeld performs flamenco in Ronda, Spain. [Alice Blumenfeld]

“I felt a lot flamenco outside of Spain was just perpetuating the stereotype of the woman in a red dress. And it's an image that sells, it sells tickets to shows,” Blumenfeld said. “There wasn't really a company that had space for the American artists to tell their stories.”

Realizing that she could be the one to start such an organization, Blumenfeld launched her own pre-professional company Abrepaso, which means “opening a pathway.” In Northeast Ohio, she is teaching both dancers and audiences about flamenco.

“A lot of people will say, ‘Oh, it’s like tap dancing.’ And in some ways it is, in that we’re making rhythms with our feet,” she said.

One of the differences in the footwork is how flamenco dancers push their feet into the ground.

“It’s almost like when you have an ink stamp and you don’t quite have enough ink on it, so you press down extra hard to make that image clear,” she said.

The dancing fuses with music, often singing and guitar. Abrepaso Flamenco dancers performed recently at Cleveland Public Theatre’s annual community arts event Station Hope. Their performance mixed poetry and choreography centered around ideas about dignity.

“I was thinking about that word in the way that flamenco allows for dignity and sort of empowers the individual to find dignity if they have been dehumanized in some way,” she said.

 Abrepaso Flamenco organization of flash mob in Cleveland in 2021. [Daniel Otaneda]

Flamenco has helped Blumenfeld express herself ever since she was first introduced to it back in middle school.

“One of the really cool things about flamenco is that it attracts people from all different walks of life, different economic backgrounds, different ethnic backgrounds. And I think that's because flamenco is a hybrid form to begin with. It drew from many different cultures and histories,” she said. “I just want to give people the opportunity when they need that expressive outlet, flamenco is here for them.”

Abrepaso Flamenco will perform August 4 at the Music Box in Cleveland and August 6 at the Knight Stage in Akron. Blumenfeld is also teaching classes and workshops this summer at Cleveland City Dance in Shaker Square and at the Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center on Cleveland’s Near West Side.

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