For immediate release
Laura Sanchez. Director of LS Flamenco (617) 229 9717
laura@lsflamenco.com
Boston, Massachusetts: AFTER DARK is an expressive art short-film created during Covid-19 that combines flamenco with poetry, visual art, drama and creative expression. In this short-film the artist and creator, Laura Sánchez, portrays her resilience story with the purpose of inspiring others to regain hope. She also wanted to create awareness about mental health and the importance of the arts during difficult times. While lost and isolated, and a thousand miles away from her loved ones, Laura founded in AFTER DARK the refuge she needed to emotionally survive the lockdown.
AFTER DARK narrates the personal resilience story of an artist, woman, mother, and immigrant during quarantine and is also inspired by the stories of thousands of people affected by Covid-19. Stories that must be told and remember because they will mark a before and after in the way we see the world, relate to others and exist. Additionally, it represents an opportunity for the artists, who’s profession has been strongly affected by the pandemic, to reinvent themselves and explore new methods and ways to create.
“This work comes from Laura’s strong decision of overcoming traumatic memories that came to light during the pandemic. AFTER DARK proves that the art is not only an instrument for healing, but it is also a vital ally during times of suffering, fear, and loss. Art is the one thing that is strong enough to confront all of these and transform it. Laura’s piece signifies transformation and hope”.
Those are the words Belén Maya, internationally renowned choreographer and co-director of AFTER DARK, uses to narrate the piece. Both artists worked together to bring LIGHT to the concept of Expressive Flamenco, a therapeutic expressive arts practice that combines flamenco with expressive arts developed by Laura Sánchez during her masters degree in Expressive Therapies at Lesley University in 2017. AFTER DARK was also created to bring awareness about relevant issues such as racial discrimination and climate change. Both issues are depicted in the short-film through different elements that are utilized as a form of expression.
Although AFTER DARK was created with very limited resources at the artist’s home in Everett, MA, it has been selected to participate in different independent film festivals around the world including but not limited to the cities of Los Angeles, New York, Berlin, Lisbon and Montreal and it has been nominated for three awards winning the category of “Best Dance on Camera” in the Independent Short Awards Festival in Hollywood, CA.
In order to continue presenting this work, the artist started a crowdfunding campaign to get the necessary funds to hire the professional talent to finish editing AFTER DARK and pay all post-production and promotional costs. The project has been supported by over a hundred people from different countries reaching 75% of their goal in just a few days.
Laura Sánchez has started an initiative to bring AFTER DARK beyond her personal resilience story through the voice of other women around the world. A group of women have been invited to share their artistic response to AFTER DARK in a form of words or other expressive ways to bring LIGHT to AFTER DARK through their own voices. The words heard from these women validate the importance of presenting AFTER DARK into different platforms to bring hope to other souls around the world.
“What a powerfully challenging, penetrating, uplifting film! Amazingly lived, felt passages moving through anger, frustration and despair to deeper connection with self through looking inward and outward; through permission to feel, explore and imagine; through allowing feelings and expressions of hope, trust in oneself and the unknown future to emerge and be genuinely felt and experienced. The unfolding images, words, movements at the end were especially moving to me.” Those were the words of a woman in Massachusetts describing her experience watching AFTER DARK.
The artists are now working on the virtual premier that will happen in January of 2021. Followed by a Q&A with the directors that will discuss the creative process and present not only the artist’s story but also the resilience stories of other women during the pandemic.
To read more information about AFTER DARK you can click here. And if you want to to support the campaign with GoFundMe you can click here.
To watch the Teaser here.
Biography of Laura
Laura Sánchez is an expressive dance artist, choreographer and educator originally from Cádiz, Spain. She began her flamenco education as a child and received professional training from the Dance Conservatory of Madrid. Laura holds a Professional Certificate in Expressive Arts Therapies from Lesley University where she developed an emerging therapeutic dance practice, Expressive Flamenco©. She facilitates workshops, presents this work internationally and continues to serve annually as Guest Professor for the Lesley University Expressive Therapies Master’s Program. Laura actively performs in flamenco venues in the Eastern U.S., and placed 3rd at the 2016 Flamenco Certamen USA, an international competition that takes place in NYC annually. She works as independent choreographer for organizations including Boston College of Fine Arts, Massachusetts Government, Bridgewater University, and Kingston Theater. In her most recent work, AFTER DARK, Laura found herself a filmmaker, telling the resilience stories of a community affected by the Covid-19 global pandemic.
Biography of Belén:
Daughter of the artists Carmen Mora and Mario Maya, Belén was born in New York in 1966, during a tour of her parents. She began dance studies in Madrid at the age of 18 at the mythical Amor De Dios and at the National Ballet School. At 19, she went to live in Seville to join her father Mario Maya’s company as a dance corps, where she became a soloist and later lead dancer in the Andalusian Dance Company, and started as a bailaora at the Los Gallos tablao, an experience that will be followed by Corral de la Pacheca and Café de Chinitas in Madrid, and El Cordobés and Tablao de Carmen in Barcelona, among others.
She participates in the film “Flamenco” by Carlos Saura and is a soloist and / or guest artist in shows as diverse as Lo Real (Cia. Israel Galvan), Frontera (Cia. Ramón Oller), Los Caminos de Lorca (directed by Pepa Gamboa, together Rafaela Carrasco), Mujeres (together with Rocío Molina and Merche Esmeralda) or Never Grow Old (Swedish National Riksteatern Theater). In her own company, she invites interpreters such as Olga Pericet (Happy dances for sad people), Juan Carlos Lérida (Souvenir / The voice of her master) Manuel Liñán (The Guests), Jesus Mendez (Tr3s), David Montero (Rooms).
The main representative in her generation of “Neo Flamenco” or Contemporary Flamenco, Belén Maya jumps in Carlos Saura’s film “Flamenco” from a ship, that of tradition, to an ocean still unexplored at that time. The ocean of an updated Flamenco influenced by Contemporary Dance, jazz, pop, theater, and other techniques such as butoh or kathak.
Director, choreographer and performer, her recent teaching work has chosen various means of communication and transmission. On the one hand the teaching of traditional Flamenco at a national and international level, on the other the use of Flamenco as a tool for energy and experiential transformation.
And thirdly, the conferences, in which she makes a critical analysis of the concepts of gender, tradition, identity and representation, as well as a detailed explanation of the creative process as a research method: “Creative process and composition in Contemporary Flamenco”: Duke University (Durham, USA), Drexel University (Philadelphia USA), Los Angeles USA “Flamenco and Gender”: Seattle Central College USA, “La Muñeca Subversiva” El Dorado Barcelona, Universidad Pablo de Olavide Sevilla and “Bailar Later” and “Mujeres Various ”online conferences for the Flamenco Master of the Pablo de Olavide University.
Her solo “Romnia” confronts the contemporary gypsy woman from the musical universe of the Balkans, a naked exercise of courage in which Belén Maya accepts her heritage and makes her a body, forcing the viewer to witness an uncomfortable reality. She premieres at the Jerez 2020 festival “Ni Tu Ni Yo”, in collaboration with Juan Diego Mateos, directed by Fernando López.
AFTER DARK Awards and Nominations:
- Los Ángeles Film Award, Los Ángeles: Award Winner “Best Dance on Camera”
- Indie X Film Fest, Los Ángeles: Finalist & Award nominee
- Indie Short Film Festival, Los Ángeles: Semi-Finalist
- New Cinema Lisbon Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal: Semi-Finalist
- Venice Short Film Festival, Los Ángeles: Official Selection
- New York Short Film Festival, New York City: Official Selection
- European Short Film Festival, Berlin : Official Selection
- Asheville Fringe Arts Festival, North Carolina: Official Selection
- InShadow Screen Dance Festival, Lisboa, Portugal: Official Selection
- Montreal Independent Film Festivals, Montreal, Canada: Official Selection
