Rocío Molina: Al Fondo Riela (Lo Otro del Uno)

The iconoclastic choreographer Rocío Molina has coined her own artistic language based on a reinvented traditional flamenco style which respects its essence, but embraces the avant-garde. Radically free, she combines in her works: technical virtuosity, contemporary research and conceptual risk. Unafraid to forge alliances with other disciplines and artists, her choreographies are unique scenic events based on ideas and cultural forms ranging from cinema to literature, including philosophy and painting.

Dance House Helsinki presents the second part of Molina’s trilogy Trilogía sobre la Guitarra dedicated to the guitar. Al Fondo Riela (Lo Otro del Uno) delves into the dark side of the human psyche.

All transcendent moments are followed by a dark night of the soul. Beneath the slow passing of clouds, the dark, tumultuous sea rises to engulf everything. Atop it, Rocío Molina dances Al Fondo Riela, the antithesis of Inicio (Uno), the meeting with Lo otro de Uno (The Other). “On stage, I am accompanied by my own ego and two completely different guitarists. Eduardo Trassierra is harmony and technical complexity. Yerai Cortés is natural intuition. Al Fondo Riela is a piece about reflection and the loss of reality, a work where all the ghosts of my past emerge. You have to suffer through it to reach the third part, which will be a liberation.”

Dressed in spartan black, Molina spars with two guitarists. She dances farrucas, seguiriyas, bulerías, soleás, in a constant struggle with her own image, with Lo Otro de Uno (The Other), who forces her down into the depths of all her own fears. Vanity, ambition, pride, solitude… but Al fondo riela (it glimmers in the depths). A trembling light pulsates at the end of the never-ending soleá, colour seeps back into the darkness. The liberation, the Vuelta al Uno (Return to the Self), is near.

Rocío Molina

Rocío Molina, a versatile dancer, is one of the Spanish artists with greater international repercussion. She was born in Malaga in 1984. She started to dance at the early age of three years old. At seven, she was outlining her first choreographies. At 17, she graduated with honors at the Royal Dance Conservatory in Madrid and became part of the cast of professionals companies with international tours.

At 22, she premiered Entre paredes (Among the Walls), her first work, which was followed by many more self-creations, all of them with a thing in common, a curious and transgressor look at a flamenco style escaping from the well-trodden paths: El Eterno Retorno (2006), Turquesa como el limón (2006), Almario (2007), Por el decir de la gente (2007), Oro viejo (2008), Cuando las piedras vuelen (2009), Vinática (2010), Danzaora y vinática (2011), Afectos (2012) and Bosque Ardora (2014), Caída del Cielo (2016) and Grito Pelao (2018), Inicio (Uno) (2020), Al fondo Riela (Lo otro del Uno) (2020) and Vuelta a Uno (2021), the last three productions being part of Trilogía sobre la guitarra.

Molina has been working with the leading figures of flamenco such as María Pagés, Miguel Poveda, Antonio Canales, Israel Galván, and of the contemporary arts such as Carlos Marquerie, Mateo Feijóo or Jean Paul Goude.

She has been an associate of the Chaillot National Theater in Paris since 2014, and has been invited to most prestigious theatres and festivals around the world – from Avignon to the Barbican Centre in London, to the City Center in New York, the Esplanade in Singapore, Tanz Im August in Berlin and the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow.

She has received many awards, including the Spanish National Award for Dance, Best Dancer Award at the Seville Bienal, the Gold Medal awarded by the Province of Malaga, the Max Award in 2015 and in 2017, the Dance National British Award in 2016, Venice Biennale 2022 Silver Lion for dance.

Eduardo Trassierra

Eduardo Trassierra (Villaverde del Río, Seville, 1982) received his first lessons at the age of nine from his father, José Trassierra, to whom he dedicated a beautiful piece called En la Gloria. Later he would take lessons with Manuel Torres, who initiated him definitively in the flamenco guitar. At the age of eleven he entered the conservatory and from that moment he began his musical career, accompanying singing, dancing and studying classical music in parallel to flamenco. From there, and from his insatiable restlessness, comes the great versatility of this musician whose interests expand towards very diverse musical traditions, from jazz to Sephardic music, traditions that he explores and from where he comes to incorporate forms, rhythms, sounds that nourish his creative heritage.

In 2002 he became known after being awarded with the Giraldillo Joven del Toque in the XII Bienal de Arte Flamenco de Sevilla. It is from then on that Eduardo Trassierra began his career as a soloist.

In 2008 he collaborated with the Nurnberg Philharmonic Orchestra performing Fantasía para un Gentil Hombre by Joaquín Rodrigo. That same year he presented his new show Trassierra Flamenco Project at the Molière Theater in Brussels. In this show he experimented with more open harmonies and African, Balkan and Turkish rhythms. With this formation he toured the United States in 2010.

In 2011 he composed the music for the shows Vinática and Danzaora by Rocío Molina, initiating a fruitful creative relationship that continues today. With her company, since then, he has toured practically the entire world.

Yerai Cortés

Yeray Cortés Merino, better known artistically as Yeray Cortés, was born in 1995 in Alicante. His parents introduced him to flamenco music, teaching him to play the guitar from a very young age. He started playing the cajón, accompanying his father in the falsets of Paco de Lucia and Tomatito until he opted for the guitar. He began his career working in the best flamenco clubs in Madrid and in major theaters in Spain such as: Teatro de Bellas Artes (Madrid), Teatro Coliseum (Barcelona), Teatro Lope de Vega (Seville), among others.

He has had the good fortune to accompany great artists such as: La negra, La Tana, Richard Bona, Marcos Flores, Alfonso Losa, Manuel Liñan, Las hermanas Bautista, Chuchito Valdés, Javier Colina, Farruquito, among others. He is also musical composer and interpreter of songs such as La Zapatera by Juan Debel & Yerai Cortés and the show FlamenKlorica by Vanesa Coloma. In 2021 he received the Guitarra con Alma Award from the Festival de Jerez for his guitar in Rocío Molina's Al Fondo Riela. He was also composer/arranger, of Tania García to whom he has composed and produced albums among many other national artists.