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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lyndsey Winship

‘I just knew it would sound incredible!’: why the Globe is giving Shakespeare some flamenco fire

A woman in a black top and beige tiered skirt dances with others in a bright studio space. Love’s Labour’s Lost rehearsals in Shakespeare’s Globe.
‘We wanted to show the power of these women’ … Love’s Labour’s Lost rehearsals in Shakespeare’s Globe. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

On a heatwave day in London, Shakespeare’s Globe has turned into a fiesta. Hard-heeled boots strike the wooden boards with rat-a-tat rhythm, skirts swish, a guitar strums, voices rise along with the temperature. Perched in front of the stage is director Indiana Lown-Collins, who is zhooshing up one of Shakespeare’s wordiest plays with a hot flourish of flamenco.

Lown-Collins is half-Spanish and grew up in Spain where flamenco was her way into the arts. Working as resident associate director at the Globe a few years ago, she fell in love with the building and its acoustics and couldn’t stop thinking how well flamenco would work on its oak stage, ringing around the circular space. “I just knew it would sound incredible,” she says.

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