Rocio Molina - Bosque Ardora

As part of the wide-ranging Dance Umbrella festival, the Barbican hosts a world premiere from the Malaga-born dancer and dance-maker Rocio Molina.

In Bosque Ardora , Molina is joined on stage by two male dancers and six musicians in what’s billed as an exploration of the struggle for survival in the animal world.

This is far from the stamping, flounces and polka-dot dresses of traditional mass-appeal flamenco.  Molina is intent on searching for the very essence of the genre.   Her work mixes flamenco with ballet, bolero, and Spanish classical dance, and exploits the possibilities of music and sound as it looks at flamenco from a 21st-century perspective.

Described by the Evening Standard as an ’ incredible ’ dancer,  Molina’s mood in her 2013 programme Danzaora struck The Daily Telegraph as capable of ‘switching from mischief to murder in the space of a phrase.’