Flamenc-OH!! will be at the Assembly Rooms – Music Hall at 2:15pm for tickets go to http://www.edfringe.com
How did the team strike a balance between honouring the traditions of flamenco while also using comedy to challenge some of the art form’s perceived rigidity?
As comedians, we always approach things with respect—but not with reverence. There’s a difference.
That little bit of distance allows us to look at a subject from a different angle, through our own language of physical comedy and visual humour. At the end of the day, we’re comedians, and flamenco wasn’t going to get special treatment!
Our job is to find the humour in whatever world we’re exploring, and flamenco gave us a lot to work with. It’s passionate, dramatic, proud, highly ritualised… and sometimes a little rigid.
The interesting thing is that we never wanted to laugh at flamenco. We wanted to laugh with it. Once you spend time around that world, you realise that behind all the intensity there are also human beings, egos, rivalries, family tensions and contradictions. That’s where the comedy lives.
And the great thing is that flamenco is strong enough to take it. You can turn it upside down, put it through complete theatrical chaos, and somehow it still comes out looking unmistakably flamenco.
Flamenc-OH!! explores generational conflict within a flamenco family — what conversations about artistic evolution and cultural inheritance did that theme spark during development?
Flamenco is part of Spanish culture, of course, but the funny thing is that none of us at Yllana came from a flamenco background. We weren’t flamenco purists and we certainly didn’t start out as experts.
The real flamenco knowledge came from the cast and collaborators. They’re passionate flamenco artists, and in many ways they pushed us further than we originally planned. Every time we thought, “Maybe that’s too much,” they would say, “No, let’s go further!”
And if you look at flamenco’s history, evolution isn’t exactly new. Since artists like Camarón and Paco de Lucía, flamenco has constantly absorbed influences, reinvented itself and found new ways of expressing itself.
So the idea of mixing styles didn’t feel controversial. What felt more radical was taking flamenco into the world of clowning and physical theatre.
Yllana is known for visual humour and physical comedy, but flamenco is such an emotionally precise and disciplined form — how did those two theatrical languages influence one another in rehearsal?
Actually, we discovered very quickly that they have more in common than people might think.
Flamenco is a deeply physical language. It’s full of codes, gestures, rhythms, looks and movements that carry meaning. Physical comedy works exactly the same way.
People often think comedy is chaos, but good comedy is incredibly precise. If a gag happens one second too early or one second too late, it’s gone.
The same is true in flamenco.
Both forms demand discipline, timing, musicality and total commitment from the performer. So there was a lot of common ground.
And honestly, flamenco gave us an endless amount of material to play with. The dramatic pauses, the intensity, the rituals, the virtuosity, the passion… everything is already so theatrical that even the smallest disruption creates a huge comic effect.
The exciting part was discovering comedy hidden inside flamenco itself, rather than imposing it from outside.
The show blends flamenco with musical styles ranging from hip hop to country — what did those unexpected mashups reveal about flamenco’s versatility as a living art form?
From the start, blending flamenco with other musical styles was at the heart of Flamenc-OH!!.
We’ve explored that connection of blending musical styles before in shows like Pagagnini and A Comedy of Operas, and we’ve always loved what happens when great music meets comedy.
We weren’t trying to modernise flamenco. Flamenco doesn’t need us to modernise it. It’s already a living art form.
What we discovered is that flamenco survives every collision. You can put it next to hip hop, country, rock or almost anything else, and somehow its identity remains intact.
Those mashups also create an easy way into the show for audiences who might not know much about flamenco. Suddenly they’re hearing something familiar and something completely unexpected at the same time.
And theatrically, that’s where a lot of the fun comes from.
Having previously found success at the Edinburgh Fringe with A Comedy of Operas, how has the company evolved its approach to creating internationally accessible performance rooted in specific cultural traditions?
This year is actually Yllana’s 35th anniversary, so we’ve had quite a lot of time to learn what works around the world and what doesn’t.
We’ve performed in 48 countries, had Off-Broadway seasons, and toured all over the world. One thing we’ve learned is that audiences understand honesty.
Most audiences outside Spain don’t know much about flamenco. But they understand passion, family conflict, ambition, pride, obsession and failure. Those things exist everywhere.
Our job is to build a bridge. The flamenco artists bring the authenticity, and Yllana brings its physical comedy language. Somewhere in the middle, audiences connect with it whether they’re in Madrid, Edinburgh, New York or Seoul.
Flamenc-OH!! is described as being for both devoted flamenco fans and complete newcomers — what do you hope audiences unfamiliar with flamenco take away from the show beyond the comedy and spectacle?
First of all, we hope they leave wanting to hear more flamenco!
We were very careful to preserve what makes flamenco so extraordinary: its visual beauty, its emotional power and its incredible level of artistry.
The performers in the show are fantastic flamenco artists, so even the most devoted flamenco fans can enjoy the quality of what’s happening on stage.
But for people who don’t know flamenco, we hope the show becomes an invitation rather than a lesson.
You don’t need to understand all the codes or traditions. You just need to feel it.
If audiences leave laughing, but also with a new appreciation for the music, the performers and the culture behind it, then we’ve done our job.
That’s really what Flamenc-OH!! is about: bringing together the artistic power of flamenco and the universal language of laughter.