The dance company Flamencos en route celebrates its 35th season with a special production: "ay!". Alive with music and dance, ay! leads the audience into the poetic universe of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca.
The exclamation "ay!" is ubiquitous in Lorca's poetry. It expresses both lament and delight, all the while longing for nocturnal tranquility. Sound and articulation of the scream represent inexhaustible realms of feelings that transmute into choreographic vignettes, oases of moods created by intense music and dance.
In Lorca's poetry - especially in the poemas del cante jondo - nocturnal gardens and landscapes are inhabited by mysterious dancing creatures. In the production at hand, these creatures represent an archaic and surreal visual world, influenced by three different choreographic styles based on contemporary flamenco.

Video

Aargauer Zeitung

original in German

Elisabeth Feller, Aargauer Zeitung, 20.10.2020

Der Bund

Review
Where Demons Slumber
For 35 years, Flamencos en route have demonstrated that their music - though rich in tradition - is full of zeitgeist. "Ay!", their anniversary production, is as hypnotic as a nocturnal dance tableau.
Beautiful Ghostly Shadows: "Ay!"
Merki makes the invisible visible and gives the unspeakable a form of expression. Parallel to the multi-layered soundtrack of song and live music, Merki's choreography transforms emotions into bodily movements, space, and time, thus handing the dancers a concise means of expression. Inornate, technically perfect, and intense.

Marianne Mühlemann, Der Bund, 22.12.2019