Last December at Abrons Arts Center, flamenco artist Nelida Tirado teased out the complex layers of her Latin identity, weaving traditional Spanish flamenco dance with the bomba y plena rhythms of Puerto Rican social music and dance in her evening-length party “Dime Quién Soy” (“Tell Me Who I Am”). In this ensemble production, which included a full band upstage playing Gonzalo Grau’s effusive, original music, Tirado had a few memorable solos. 

In her opening solo, she sets up the dream-like feel that permeates the rest of the production: a dream both surreal and coherent, where the multitudes of self refuse labels and cross boundaries.  

Clad in an athletic warm-up suit that seems meant to refer to an old school, street style of the Bronx, her arms reach skyward in the first intimations of flamenco port de bras. Her eyes follow her articulating fingers and her rolling wrists. Small swivels turn her inside the spotlight of this first unusual juxtaposition. She caresses the air to the sounds of the ocean and a gentle guitar. The spell is soon broken as other dancers cross the space and eventually restrain her with their hands. But there is no need to worry, Tirado cannot and will not be contained. 

In another dreamy sequence a singer walks on. Her presence turns Tirado’s head away from a domino game and draws her toward a flamenco solo. She sings, “Yo no voy a jugar,” (“I am not going to play”) among other phrases that my middling Spanish ear is unable to decipher as Tirado pounds the floor in an intense build of energy and emotion. 

A short time later, she changes her jibaro dress for a sparkling black flamenco gown. This time, the cross-cultural mixing can be seen in the deep knee bends, rolling hips, and other small flourishes that lend a cheeky flow to the sharp, classical footwork and architectural arm shapes. In this fairytale culmination, that comes with so many requisite false endings, Tirado is the flamenco star who has not lost the feel of bomba percussion. 

In the end, Tirado and her excellent cast wait for their Bronx bound train. Their faces are full of color from the vigorous embodiment and mixing of Latin dance cultures near and far, traditional and contemporary, concert and social, in a celebratory refusal of homogeneity.

How to define freedom right now? In these solo performances I find an entry in the ability to express one’s full identity, with all the shades, subtleties, and affinities of that experience. The work of Florentina Holzinger might add transparency as another qualifier of free expression.