As a boy, Manuel Liñán used to love to try on dresses and dance in them at home, something he had to hide from his bullfighter father. He started performing in flamenco tablaos as a teenager and flamenco’s rigidly defined gender roles didn’t invite his dress-wearing either. But at 42, the award-winning dancer from Granada is finally able to fully embrace his inner bailaora.
In this opening show of 2022’s flamenco festival, Liñán and his supporting cast of six men perform in full-skirted dresses, wigs and makeup, embodying flamenco’s postcard image: froufrou frills, shawls, bata de cola skirts and castanets. They dress like their mothers, or grandmothers even. And sometimes they dance like them too: the gutsy matriarch hitching up her skirts and showing everyone how it’s done.
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