The headliner of the Helsinki Flamenco Bienal will be one of the biggest names in flamenco dance today, the daring innovator Eduardo Guerrero. His work Desplante is a tribute to the flamenco traditions of the mining areas of southern Spain.

Eduardo Guerrero, 42, was born in Cádiz and started dancing as a child. In his adolescence, he was taught by leading maestros such as Mario Maya and Antonio Canales. At the age of only 19, he joined renowned flamenco groups and performed with names such as Eva Yerbabuena, Rocio Molina and Ballet Nacional de España.
Guerrero embarked on a solo and choreographic career in 2011 and has created dozens of works garnering acclaim and interest. He believes that dance must also have a social and community dimension and it should not be about superficial trivialities.
At the mining region’s Cante de Las Minas festival in 2013, his taranto and alegrías solos won him the Desplante award for dance. (Desplante translates to e.g. ‘courage’ or a ‘defiant new step’.)

Guerrero’s own Desplante work, now coming to Helsinki, is based on those award-winning performances of 2013, and premiered in Mexico in 2015. “Uncomplicated, intimate, strong and dramatic”, is how the artist’s own website describes it.
Flamenco’s traditional song styles, the palos, are the mainstays of the work. Guerrero will be accompanied by the great singer Alicia Morales and guitarist Pino Losada.

Guerrero has been described as a risk-taker and a boundary-breaker who still respects tradition. He can dance with fierceness and ferocity, but also with grace.
The long-limbed man’s ability to use his body has been hailed as supreme. The costumes in Guerrero’s works are always carefully considered and surprising.

“You only have to look at him to sense the duende,” writes the ExpoFlamenco publication. “He dances with every pore of his skin, with skill that equals the greatest of the greats of flamenco dancing.”
Guerrero’s motto could be a verse sung in one of his performances: “Flamenco is a glowing furnace that never goes out.”

Duration approx. 80 min, no intermission

Age rating: 7+

The stalls form a designated alcohol serving area for adults age 18 and older. The balcony is for people of all ages, no alcohol serving.