Five generations of women in one family have carried this art, mother to daughter. The fourth and fifth generations, Carolina Lugo and CarOlé Flamenco, performed around the world as the mother-daughter duo. Today, CarOlé carries it forward, for the generations still to come.
“The stunning flamenco performed by the mother-daughter team of Carolina Lugo and CarOlé Flamenco.”
— Ann Murphy, Contra Costa Times
It began in 1894 with Domitila, dancing flamenco and Spanish dance within her Gitano family and community. From her, it passed down through the women of the family, the matriarchy: Domitila to Romelia to Dora to Carolina, the fourth generation, then to CarOlé, the fifth. Carolina was handpicked at seven by Antonio Triana, who gave her a full scholarship. Later, at the studio in Los Angeles, Gene Kelly saw her dance and, believing in her, gave her private lessons of his own. At fourteen, Lola Montes took her into her professional company, where she toured internationally as a soloist and principal artist. At seventeen, a car accident nearly took her life, and doctors said she would never walk again. She returned to the stage, and to Lola’s company — five more seasons, eight in all. Lola Montes began that company in 1955, and in 1995 she passed it on to Carolina in succession. Today it is carried forward by her daughter, CarOlé Flamenco.
Rooted in a Gitano family legacy passed down through the women of the family, we carry flamenco and Spanish dance forward, in service to community. For us, it is a way of life that began in the home, and it has always been shared with families and communities. Flamenco was born among the Gitanos (in English, the Roma, formerly known as gypsies), a persecuted people. Our work in this centuries-old tradition is embodied somatic movement and breath, where the body can open up pathways for healing and transformation. This company exists to help: we perform, teach, and give back, for all ages, backgrounds, and abilities.
Flamenco is a Gitano culture, a way of life and an art form, part of the African, Asian, Indigenous, and Andalusian diasporas. We create a safe environment where Gitanos and non-Gitanos learn and celebrate together, and share love and laughter, because this art teaches, heals, and helps people overcome. We believe in every human being’s ultimate potential, beyond nationality, perceived race, and culture. We honor legacy while embracing evolution. Survivance, preservation, evolution.
We perform in film and commercials, in theatres large and small, in site-specific work, and more. Home-based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, our performances, events, and classes reach around the world. Flamenco already holds dance, song, music, spoken word in a single art, and our acting and comedy grow from that same root. Bring us your vision. We’ll bring it to life.
Company Artists
More bios coming soon.
Zanonda Keys — Dancer
Zanonda Keys is a flamenco dancer with CarOlé Flamenco’s Compañía FSDT, where she has been a devoted company member for over 15 years. Formed as an apprentice and private protégée of Carolina Lugo, training closely under Ms. Lugo’s personal guidance, she is humbled to stand inside a lineage few artists are ever invited to carry. She brings to her flamenco an enriched knowledge of the dances of the SWANA region — Southwest Asia and North Africa — a depth of influence that gives her dancing its distinctive breadth and soul. A graduate of UC Berkeley, she also holds a master’s degree in library studies, a reflection of her lifelong love of learning. She has toured throughout the United States, performing for audiences across the country, and she also teaches, working with students of all ages and all abilities. On stage, she captivates audiences with a piercing energy that is impossible to forget. A protégée formed by Carolina Lugo herself, and a company artist for over fifteen years, Zanonda does not simply perform the lineage — she carries it, and passes it on.
Marco Ogo — Dancer
Marco Ogo is a dancer who brings a lifetime of stage experience to CarOlé Flamenco’s Compañía FSDT, and he is honored to perform with the company. A native of the Bay Area, he began his professional dance career with the Los Angeles Music Center Opera. He studied ballet with the legendary dancer, teacher, and choreographer Carmelita Maracci in Los Angeles, and went on to perform with several modern dance companies, including Los Angeles Choreographers and Dancers. Marco relocated to San Francisco and performed with the Gary Palmer Dance Company. After taking a few classes with Rosa Montoya, he was asked to go on tour with her company, Bailes Flamencos, and danced in her company for four years. Marco’s love for flamenco led him to Madrid, where he lived for 15 years, studying, teaching, and performing this beautiful art form. He studied with many great teachers, including Ciro, La Tati, Antonio Canales, Paco Romero, Domingo Ortega, Antonio Reyes, and Manuel Liñán, but his main influence was Manuel Reyes, whom he considers his mentor. Those Madrid years shaped an artist of rare depth: a dancer whose strength is matched by his musicality, and whose presence on stage carries the weight of everything he absorbed there. Marco came back to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2013 and has taught flamenco and ballet at Peninsula Ballet Theatre and flamenco at the San Mateo Department of Parks and Recreation. Since his return to the Bay Area, he has performed with Carolina Lugo’s Ballet Flamenco and with other local artists, and he continues to perform with CarOlé Flamenco.
Pamela Martinez — Flamenco Dancer
Pamela Martinez is a professional flamenco dancer, delighted to bring her artistry to CarOlé Flamenco’s Compañía FSDT. A native of Santiago, Chile, she has lived in California, USA, since 1999. She is a multitalented artist: a Chilean folklore dancer and former actress as well, and 10 years ago she graduated as a fashion designer. Pamela has been performing for 35 years as a flamenco dancer in theaters, venues, festivals, wineries, fairs, and private events in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, the United States, and Spain. Her passion is definitely the art of flamenco, which has motivated her to travel to Seville, Spain, every year, for five months each time, to intensively study the art of flamenco. On stage, Pamela has a captivating, intriguing presence: she dances the way she lives, with her whole heart, and audiences feel it. She is known for her passion and charismatic energy in what she does — the art of living the life.
Azriel “El Moreno” — Cantaor
Azriel “El Moreno” is a cantaor (flamenco singer) who is proud to lend his voice to CarOlé Flamenco’s Compañía FSDT. He loves flamenco, and for the last couple of decades he has performed in Bay Area tablaos, private events, and theater shows with many of the local flamenco dancers and guitarists. Raised in Argentina, with Jewish roots from Germany, Syria, and Turkey (traced back to Spain before the expulsion), he started singing for audiences at a young age in his father’s synagogue. His first steps in flamenco, both as a singer and a dancer, were in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with guitarist Ives Lucero and dancer Ramona Garduño. His singing carries everything he is: the sacred music of his childhood, the soul of Argentina, and a lifetime inside flamenco’s cante — a voice that does not just accompany the dance, but feels it. Lately, he has been training and getting inspired over Zoom with Manuel Gago, an exceptional cantaor and maestro from Cádiz.
Geoff Hawkins — Flamenco Guitarist
Geoff Hawkins is a flamenco guitarist in Northern California. To accompany CarOlé Flamenco’s Compañía FSDT is, for him, a genuine honor. He performs both as a soloist and as accompanist to flamenco dance and singing. His present style, which is contemporary, remains rooted in traditional flamenco, owing to his studies with the Gitano guitarists Agustín Ríos in California and Juan del Gastor in Sevilla — both nephews of the legendary guitarist Diego del Gastor — and to his devotion to traditional cante flamenco. His early guitar studies were with flamenco guitarist Mariano de Córdoba here in California, and later in Madrid, Spain, with classical maestro Aureo Herrero. In Spain he accompanied the classes of dancer Concha Vargas in the famous Sevillano bar La Carbonería, and in the U.S. many of the finest dance academies around the San Francisco Bay Area, including Yaelisa’s Caminos Flamencos, Rosa Montoya, Theatre Flamenco of San Francisco, and the San Jose Flamenco Society. He lived abroad in South America, in Chile for almost four years, performing and teaching flamenco arts with his wife, the flamenco dancer Pamela Martínez. He currently resides in Sonoma County, and for the past 20 years has performed, together with his wife, as an accompanist and as a soloist, appearing regularly at winery events, concerts, festivals, and educational and cultural demonstrations all around Napa and Sonoma counties and beyond. He is an aficionado of cante flamenco and has sung for many classes and flamenco presentations. His playing is the sound of that devotion: accompaniment that listens, breathes with the dancer, and knows when to hold back and when to blaze. Since 2006, lutherie has become another passion: building the flamenco guitars that he plays. His guitars are based on the Esteso model made famous by the Hermanos Conde (Sobrinos de Esteso).
Apprentices
Photos and bios coming soon.
Frances — Coming soon.
Celia — Coming soon.
