Alice Blumenfeld fell in love with flamenco at age 12, and since then it has been the driving force in her life. She is the founder and artistic director of ABREPASO Flamenco and a visiting assistant professor of dance at Oberlin College. She holds an MFA in dance from Hollins University and a BA in comparative literature from New York University, where she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. In 2012, she received a Fulbright grant for flamenco choreographic studies in Spain. As a freelance dancer, she has worked with many of the major flamenco companies in the U.S., including Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana, Clinard Dance, Nélida Tirado & Co., Forever Flamenco, EntreFlamenco, among others. She studied at the National Institute of Flamenco, Flamenco Abierto Andrés Marín, and with Manuela Ríos, Concha Jareño, Cristina Hall, Nélida Tirado, Juana Amaya, Adela Campallo, among others.

Alice’s current work combines a strong foundation in flamenco’s improvisational structures with post-modern choreographic frameworks to explore what makes us truly human and our connection to nature. She is fascinated by the ways imagery and language shape movement and how we translate language into dance and vice versa. Her work has been commissioned by Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center, the National YoungArts Foundation, the National Hispanic Cultural Center, Kent State University, Mendocino College, Clinard Dance Chicago, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Albuquerque, Jácome Flamenco, and the American Bolero Dance Co. In her free time, she can often be found taking long walks in the woods of Ohio or the mountains of New Mexico, reading, baking bread, or making jam.

Availability

Upon request

  Videos courtesy of TEDx and the teaching artist via YouTube.                                                                                     Alice Blumenfeld — choreography and dance

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Joan Zucker — cello

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Joaquin Gallegos — guitar

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Meagan Chandler — cante