Susana Casas
with invited artist
Juan Fernández
Cómo Reluce
DATE & TIME
Sun. June 21ST, 8:00pm
LOCATION
Rodey Theatre, UNM
About
Cómo Reluce
Cómo Reluce (“How It Shines”) is a festival-created concert in which Susana Casas treats “shine” as an earned condition: something constructed through practice, judgement, and the decision to keep going. The work is grounded in Casas’s personal journey as a woman and an artist—the obstacles she has navigated, the expectations she has had to outgrow, and the kind of joy that appears when technique becomes freedom rather than display.
Rather than presenting a literal autobiography, the program uses structure to convey experience. The concert unfolds as a suite of short scenes with distinct musical and physical propositions. Some sequences center the body as a percussive instrument—sound made visible through weight, articulation, and timing. Others shift the emphasis to the melodic line, where the dance rides inside the guitar’s phrasing and allows breath and suspension to mark the edge of each idea. The pacing makes room for contrast: density and spareness, extroversion and inward focus, unison and counterpoint.
Juan Fernández (“Juan del Puerto”) joins as an invited artist, not as a secondary figure but as a second grammar. At times, he mirrors Casas; at times, he challenges her timing; at times, he clears space, so her choices read with greater sharpness. Guitarist Ramón Amador anchors the concert’s musical spine while also coloring the space between sections—turning transitions into part of the dramaturgy rather than mere pauses.
For audiences, the experience is intimate and legible: a composed evening where personal history is not narrated but shaped into rhythm, contour, and the disciplined radiance of a form made live.
“”
Antes, Susana Casas, bailaora mayúscula y con mayúsculas… (First, Susana Casas, a bailaora of the highest order—capitalized in every sense…)
ExpoFlamenco
Cast & Credits
Susana Casas
Dance
Juan Fernández
Invited artist, Dance
Iván Carpio
Cante
Jonathan de los Reyes
Cante
Ramón Amador
Guitar
Photo: Courtesy the artist
About
Susana Casas
Sevillan bailaora Susana Casas began dancing at age eight with José Galván and later continued her formation with Matilde Coral and Manolo Marín. She started touring internationally in the early 1990s (Europe, Mexico, Japan) and has appeared in screen projects including Carlos Saura’s Flamenco as well as other television/documentary work. In 1994 she joined Mario Maya’s company for De lo flamenco and De Cai a Cuba, presented at the Bienal de Sevilla, while maintaining an active tablao career in venues such as El Arenal, Los Gallos, and Tablao Flamenco Cordobés (Barcelona).
From 1998 to 2004 she was a member of the Ballet de Cristina Hoyos, performing works including Arsa y Toma, Al compás del tiempo, and Tierra Dentro; in 2003 she assumed the leading role in Yerma. She later performed with the Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía in productions such as Viaje al Sur and Romancero Gitano. As a creator, Casas premiered Por un sueño at the Gran Teatro Falla (Cádiz) in 2009 as dancer and choreographer, and took the work to the Shanghai World Expo the following year. In 2022 she won Canal Sur’s
Tierra de Talento.
Photo: Courtesy the Artist
About
Juan Fernández
He has toured worldwide with numerous flamenco companies, among them the Ballet Flamenco de Madrid, the Las Minas Puerto Flamenco company, and the show Authentic Flamenco, with engagements across Europe, the United States, and Canada. Notable credits include the opera La Traviata alongside Mercedes Ruiz and the Festival de Confolens in Toulouse with his own show De Los Puertos.
His prizes include first prize at the Concurso Nacional por Alegrías de La Perla de Cádiz (2011), first prize at the Flamenco Ciudad de Ubrique competition at the Festival Flamenco de la Piel (2014), the Flamenco Villa de Guillena competition (2015) sharing the bill with Argentina and Vicente Soto “Sordera” at the Festival de la Bulería de Guillena, and the Critics’ Award for Best Show in Japan.
Juan Fernández continues to perform De Los Puertos at leading tablaos and venues across Spain, and teaches workshops in Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Denmark, and Germany. His passion, technical mastery, and international reach have established him as one of the outstanding bailaores of his generation.
Study with
Susana Casas
during festival flamenco 39
