Hear the applause at the first Vienna Flamenco Festival

The Círculo Divino Flamenco Festival celebrates its premiere at the Odeon Theater. The experts reveal themselves at the latest when there is applause.

When knowledge is lacking, clichés often intervene. Flamenco is something that is not known to many in Austria. Perhaps also because there has not yet been a festival format dedicated to the musical traditions of southern Spain, such as the Esch Flamenco Festival in Luxembourg or the Flamenco Biennale in Amsterdam. Susan Zelinger is already working to correct this omission. With Círculo Divino, which takes place for the first time this year from October 5 to 8 at the Odeon Theater in Leopoldstadt, it wants to add a recurring format to Vienna. At the same time erase a little local ignorance. “Many people think that flamenco is a tourist spectacle, but it is one of the few art forms that manages the balance between tradition and avant-garde, which then has nothing to do with polka dot dresses, flowers in the hair or men in black,” she says. “With suits and sometimes even without Guitar.’ One of the symbols of this modern movement is Israel Galvan, who appeared at Vienna’s Imbolstanz Festival for the first time this year.

Zelinger lives in Vienna and Jerez in Andalusia, where flamenco also has its origins. When Spanish director Carlos Saura released Carmen in 1983, she – like many others in the audience – was struck by an enthusiasm for flamenco. She danced and performed for twenty years, later working as a music journalist and editor-in-chief of the German flamenco magazine Anda. Today she still gives introductions and lectures at international flamenco festivals. She’s well connected to the scene, which made it easier for her to convince flamenco artists to perform at Trun in 2018. Just like this year for Vienna.