Dances with Dalí — A Surreal Flamenco Experience

Dances with Dalí is a new production from Flamenco X exploring the intersection of flamenco tradition and the visual language of Salvador Dalí. The piece uses Dalí's recurring motifs — distorted time, dreamlike landscapes, and the tension between memory and reality — as a structural framework for a program of original flamenco choreography, live cante, and guitar.

The production is led by a four-person creative team. María de los Reyes, founder of Flamenco X, serves as Artistic Director, developing the overall concept and performing as the ensemble's vocalist. Marija Temo, a classical and flamenco guitarist, vocalist, and composer trained at the Peabody Conservatory, serves as Musical Director, shaping the show's score and live accompaniment. Dra. Jeanne D'Arc Casas, an interdisciplinary dancer and choreographer with an MFA from the University of New Mexico and newly a PhD plus touring credits with Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca, serves as Director of Dance & Movement. Visual artist and educator Monica Barela-Di Bisceglie M.A., serves as Visual Arts Director, leading the design of puppetry, sets, and costumes drawn from surrealist imagery.

On stage, this creative direction is carried out by the full Flamenco X ensemble of dancers and musicians, including Rafaela del Sol, Juliette, and Cecilia Calvo, alongside guitarists David Elrod, Ross Fellrath and Mateo Davies. Each artist brings a distinct background in flamenco — from formal training in Spain to academic study in dance and theater — and the choreography moves between traditional palos and more experimental, theatrical staging. Featured additional dancers: Jeanne D'Arc Casas Panouze, Adriana Maresma Fois. 

Visually, the production extends beyond the performers themselves. Costume and set designer Eamon Ryan joins Monica Barela-Di Bisceglie in developing the physical world of the show, building puppetry, set pieces, and costumes meant to function as active components of the storytelling rather than backdrop, reinforcing the production's themes through material, texture, and movement.

Structurally, the evening is built around a series of connected scenes rather than a single linear narrative, each one built around a different aspect of Dalí's visual vocabulary — melted clocks and the distortion of time, fragmented or doubled figures, landscapes that shift mid-scene. Flamenco's cante jondo, with its emphasis on raw emotional expression, is used throughout as the connective tissue between these scenes, giving the production an emotional throughline even as the visual world around it shifts.

The production has been developed with support from donors and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, through a legislative appropriation from Minnesota's arts and cultural heritage fund.