Estrellas

Tamara Adria’s avant-garde flamenco troupe Arte y Pasión is reprising its 2017 production Estrellas. An official DreamWeek event, Estrellas brings together both visual and performance art, as well as flamenco performances. Adria, who is Jewish, seeks to draw parallels between contemporary issues (such as the Texas detention camps filled with migrant children) to events in 1940s Germany. “From the Inquisition to the Holocaust, we have a history of being insulted by our identity … We are called “Jew” as if it is an insult even though that is what we are,” Adria said. Beginning in 1939, Nazi officials ordered all Jewish people over the age of six to wear a yellow star on the left side of their chest. The badge was used not only to identify, but to humiliate and segregate. Estrellas is the Spanish translation of the term “stars.” According to new data released by the FBI, hate crimes against Jews and Jewish institutions rose by 37 percent between 2016 and 2017. In October, a gunman fatally shot 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Developed in Medieval Spain, the art of flamenco incorporates Arabic, Moorish and Jewish traditions (Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492). Perhaps no other art form better exemplifies the merging of cultures while also expressing the pain felt by marginalized peoples.