Manuel Liñán is a flamenco dancer and choreographer who has transformed the art form, making it freer and more contemporary. Intellectual and deeply expressive, he combines impeccable technique with a vivid imagination. Recipient of Spain’s National Dance Award, he performs to sold-out theatres around the world, yet he feels most alive in the tablao: a space of barely twelve square meters, with the audience pressed close, where every breath can be heard and where he is compelled to sustain extraordinary focus and honesty. Without them, he could not move an audience.
Filmed somewhere between documentary and dreamlike journey, “The Flight of the Shawl” is a soleá performed with a bata de cola—the traditional flamenco dress with a long train—and a shawl, elements historically associated with women’s flamenco.
