You may be getting a little tired of the (insert ethnicity here) version of the Romeo and Juliet story, but chances are you're starving, whether you know it or not, for some authentic Spanish flamenco. Starting tonight in Zhongli, Jose Greco Flamenco Dance Company will be offering both to audiences around Taiwan.
The Spanish troupe headed by Jose Greco II touched down in Taipei yesterday and will circumnavigate the island in 10 days, stopping in five cities and making it back up to Taipei for four shows Jan. 7-9 at the National Theater.
The main act, Los Tarantos, is a musical retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in the context of feuding gypsy families in Barcelona. Originally a stage play by Alfredo Ma entitled La Historia de los Tarantos, the story was adapted for the movie screen in 1963 and starred famed flamenco dancers Carmen Amaya and Antonio Gades.
In the black-and-white Oscar-winning film, the tarantos style of flamenco is used to convey the passion of the love story. In the Jose Greco production, which has already graced the stages of Italy this year, the love story will be used to show off the passion of the flamenco.
The show will also include an anthology of the classics of Spanish dance. Foremost will be a celebration of the great art of flamenco, which derives from the music of Moors, Jews and Gitanos (Gypsies) living in Spain. In the 15th century, at the height Spanish persecution of these groups, flamenco music and rudimentary dancing were born as an outlet for social and economic suffering.
The show will also feature another classic Spanish dance known as the Jota of Aragon. The Jota came out of the Aragon region in eastern Spain in the 1700s. In the tradition of the ancient carols, it refers to a dance as well as a song and is performed at both feasts and funerals to this day.
Jose Greco II, son of flamenco great Jose Greco Sr., founded the dance company in 1986. Jose II began his dance studies with ballet, not flamenco, at Spain's National School of Dance. His father was originally opposed to his children studying dance, but that seemed only to make Jose II and his sister, Carmelo (who will be dancing in the shows) more determined to become worldwide flamenco stars.
Performance notes:
What: Lost Tarantos by Jose Greco Flamenco Dance Company
Where: Zhongli (Dec. 31,
Tickets: NT$400-NT$3,000
call Kuang Hong Arts at (07)740-3466 or visit www.ticket.com.tw
Jan. 5 to Jan. 11 Of the more than 3,000km of sugar railway that once criss-crossed central and southern Taiwan, just 16.1km remain in operation today. By the time Dafydd Fell began photographing the network in earnest in 1994, it was already well past its heyday. The system had been significantly cut back, leaving behind abandoned stations, rusting rolling stock and crumbling facilities. This reduction continued during the five years of his documentation, adding urgency to his task. As passenger services had already ceased by then, Fell had to wait for the sugarcane harvest season each year, which typically ran from
It’s a good thing that 2025 is over. Yes, I fully expect we will look back on the year with nostalgia, once we have experienced this year and 2027. Traditionally at New Years much discourse is devoted to discussing what happened the previous year. Let’s have a look at what didn’t happen. Many bad things did not happen. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) did not attack Taiwan. We didn’t have a massive, destructive earthquake or drought. We didn’t have a major human pandemic. No widespread unemployment or other destructive social events. Nothing serious was done about Taiwan’s swelling birth rate catastrophe.
Words of the Year are not just interesting, they are telling. They are language and attitude barometers that measure what a country sees as important. The trending vocabulary around AI last year reveals a stark divergence in what each society notices and responds to the technological shift. For the Anglosphere it’s fatigue. For China it’s ambition. For Taiwan, it’s pragmatic vigilance. In Taiwan’s annual “representative character” vote, “recall” (罷) took the top spot with over 15,000 votes, followed closely by “scam” (詐). While “recall” speaks to the island’s partisan deadlock — a year defined by legislative recall campaigns and a public exhausted
In the 2010s, the Communist Party of China (CCP) began cracking down on Christian churches. Media reports said at the time that various versions of Protestant Christianity were likely the fastest growing religions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The crackdown was part of a campaign that in turn was part of a larger movement to bring religion under party control. For the Protestant churches, “the government’s aim has been to force all churches into the state-controlled organization,” according to a 2023 article in Christianity Today. That piece was centered on Wang Yi (王怡), the fiery, charismatic pastor of the
RSS