World Flamenco Congress

The Instituto Cervantes, on its 30th Anniversary, has organised a World Flamenco Congress. This is a way to get behind spreading the word of flamenco through an international programme, based on the usual collaboration of the Cervantes Institute with the main global festivals and in exhibition halls across five continents. With the aim of highlighting the status of flamenco as a ‘high culture’ throughout the world, with popular roots – after its declaration as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity – this congress aims to generate a space for reflection through five thematic channels that will bring together the best of the flamenco art of today and its possibilities of evolution in a world of constant crisis and change: the Word, the Body, the Transformation and the Future, The Fusion and Diversity, and the Emotions. The World Flamenco Congress was curated by Rocío Márquez, PhD cum laude (with honours) from the University of Seville, Interuniversity Master’s teacher of ‘Investigation and Analysis of Flamenco’, and lecturer of the flamenco voice as well as being a singer; and boasts the artistic direction of Miguel Marín, president of the Association of Flamenco Festivals – formed of the most important flamenco festivals in the country – and, for decades, director of the Flamenco Festival of New York and London. Through a multidisciplinary program, of artistic reflection and exhibition, the Congress will take place on the five continents, developing in each geographical area one of the aforementioned themes, in which national and international specialists will participate, alongside a hundred artists, analysing issues that have come with the identity of flamenco art for more than a century.