Rocío Molina

Saturday 23 July, 12:00 noon
Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, Venice

La Biennale di Venezia will present the Silver Lion to the Spanish bailaora and choreographer Rocío Molina.

Wayne McGregor writes in his motivation for the award: “Molina’s avant-garde, extravagant and powerfully raw choreographies fuse traditional flamenco with modern dance styles and impulsos – improvisations that characterise her unique dance language. Indeed, Molina has coined her own artistic language based on a recalibrated traditional flamenco style which respects its essence but embraces the genuinely new. Radically free, Molina 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. …Molina weaves a 21^st Century dialogue with the past to reinvent a fresh future for the form – speaking directly to the now in honest and evocative terms. She seems to tear though the classical ‘rule’ book to construct her own volumes, inspiring and moving us to look and feel anew”.

McGregor concludes: “Rocío Molina can’t help but be boundary-less – in ideas, partnerships and impressively in her dancing itself. Morphing between the feral, the sensuous, the upright, the parallel, the violent, the tender – in an astonishing explosion of physical and creative energy. Rocío Molina is a force to be reckoned with, in art and in life”.

Rocío Molina (Malaga, 1984) started to dance at the early age of three years old. At seven, she was outlining her first choreographies. At seventeen, she graduated with honours at the Royal Dance Conservatory in Madrid and became part of the cast of professional companies with international tours.  At the age of twenty-two, she premiered Entre paredes, her first work, which was followed by many more self-creations, all of which have in common a curious and transgressive perspective of flamenco that departs from the beaten path: : 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), 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.

She has been an associate of the Chaillot National Theater in Paris since 2014. 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