Israel Galván

Israel Galván

Israel Galván de los Reyes (born 1973 in Seville) is a Spanish flamenco dancer (bailaor) and choreographer. He grew up learning and dancing with his father, the dancer José Galván, and his mother, Eugenia de los Reyes.

He became a celebrity in flamenco thanks to his dancing steps with complicated feet movements, showing rapid-fire footwork punctuated by moments of stillness and silence. His art is a kind of avantgarde flamenco. He has been awarded several dance prizes.

Career

• In 1994 he joined the Compañia Andaluza de Danza directed by Mario Maya, and over the next decade won just about every top flamenco prize possible, including the Giradillo prize at Seville’s flamenco Biennal, the Flamenco Hoy critics’ award for best dancer of the year, which he received in both 2001 and 2005. In the same year he also won Spain’s national dance prize for the creative renewal of the Flamenco^[1] and in 2008 Premio Ciutat de Barcelona.
• Forming his own company in 1998 to create his first work Mira Los Zapatos Rojos, his reputation as risk taker grows each time he presents a new work since then, Metamorphosis, his flamenco version of Kafka’s homonymous novel; Arena, his dramatic and surprising choreography based on bull fighting; La Edad de Oro, in which he clings to references tracking the normal approaches and shuns "Age"; Tabula Rasa in which he turns the canon uspide down to offer his conceptualist and baroque flamenco; Solo, its most experimental and risky piece in which silence plays as a music. And his personal and so impacting vision of «the Apocalypse», El Final de este estado de cosas redux, premiered at the Operahouse La Maestranza in Seville (Summer 2008).
• In each of his works, Israel Galván has been collaborating with classic flamenco artists including Fernando Terremoto, Inés Bacan, Bobote, El Electrico, and contemporary flamenco innovators including Enrique Morente, Gerardo Núñez, Miguel Poveda, Diego Carrasco, Diego Amador, Alfredo Lagos, and with contemporary musicians.
• A very controversy reaction received his work 'Lo Real/ Le Réel/ The Real' in 2013: Standing ovation from the crowd that packed the Stasschouwburg in Amsterdam, leaving behind the reactionary reactions of the premiere in Madrid. On the one hand, due to the subject it approaches: the Nazi Holocaust against the gypsies. On the other hand, because of how Israel Galván’s body expresses it in a sort of body art or actionism of the body with certain self-inflicted violence. The bailaor’s physique has mutated for this show, nearly as a prolongation of that Kafkan process he undertook some years ago with 'La metamorfosis'. And he’s a victim of extermination. One who fights, who rebels, who swells with pride, who expresses his grief, who swears vengeance... but a victim who falls prey to death.
• Premios Max is the most important theatre award in Spain. In 2014, Israel Galván won the award in the 3 categories Coreografía, Interpretación and Espectáculo for his work 'Lo Real'.^[2] In 2015 he won the award in the category Bailarín Principal in his work FLA.CO.MEN.^[3]

Awards

• 2016: Critics' Circle National Dance Award : Special award for exceptional artistry

External links

• Website
• Biography
• Flamenco-World.com | La Web del Flamenco (article 1)
• Flamenco-World.com | La Web del Flamenco (article 2)
• Flamenco-World.com | La Web del Flamenco (interview)
• Israel Galván - La Curva
• Israel Galván - Lo Real

References