Bárbara Martínez has an extensive performance career that began at age 11 with The Children’s Chorus of the Metropolitan Opera. She has spent a lifetime crafting performance skills as a dancer and vocal artist, specializing in choreography, composition and musical arrangements. Bárbara is one of few flamenco artists who perform regularly both as singer and dancer with the major flamenco dance companies in the United States, such as Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana, A Palo Seco Flamenco Company, Pasión y Arte Flamenco Company, Sol y Sombra Flamenco Company, EntreFlamenco, Cava Flamenco Miami, Juanito Pascual, Nelida Tirado, Arts Flamenco, Flamenco Sepharad, New Andalucía and others.
She leads several solo projects. One is her personal latin jazz/flamenco program that began with a sold-out evening at Carnegie Hall twelve years ago. This program has grown to include music from South America, the Middle East, Sephardic music and jazz, always maintaining the essence of flamenco at its core. One of her newest projects is called Barbarella, her female band that plays Bárbara’s original songs in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Bárbara is also passionate about a new one-women dance theater project called TrashBata, that speaks to the environmental crisis of plastic in our environment using the language of flamenco.
Bárbara comes from a lineage of celebrated Argentinian tango singer/actresses Morenita Rey (her grandmother) and Libertad Lamarque (her grand-aunt.) Her father, Rafael Martínez, was a celebrated Venezuelan sculptor who played a role in the kinetic art movement from Latin America. Bárbara has work as an actor, dancer and choreographer in multimedia musical plays written and directed by her mother, playwright and art-historian, Amelia Arenas.
Bárbara appears in the documentary “Sobre Las Olas – A Story of Flamenco in the U.S.” by Carolina Loyola-Garcia and the photography exhibit “100 Years of Flamenco in New York” produced by NY Performing Arts Library and Carlota Santana Flamenco Vivo. The Philadelphia Inquirer called her voice “achingly beautiful” and The New York Times said she makes “something fresh of the Latin style.”
Bárbara is an honors graduate from Brown University. She teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School and is currently pursuing a Masters in Songwriting from Berklee College of Music.
Photographer: Noe Martínez