Rafaela Carrasco’s Spanish Flamenco Theatre

On November 17, Rafaela Carrasco’s Spanish Flamenco Theatre will take the stage at the Kremlin Palace. The legendary company will present its new production, Night. The Architecture of Insomnia, which instantly became an international sensation and received several prestigious dance awards.

This spectacular production, combining flamenco dance, live instrumental music, lavish costumes, and magnificent vocals, will now be presented to Russian audiences.

The acclaimed company will also perform in St. Petersburg on November 21 at the Baltic House Theatre-Festival. The Russian tour is being presented as part of the Diaghilev P.S. International Arts Festival.

Night. The Architecture of Insomnia

Night. The Architecture of Insomnia is a new masterpiece by celebrated flamenco artist, director, and choreographer Rafaela Carrasco, created together with playwright, actor, and poet Álvaro Tato.

This is their third collaboration. Their previous productions, Born of Shadow (2017) and Ariadne. The Thread of the Myth (2020), received international acclaim and numerous awards.

In Night. The Architecture of Insomnia, traditional flamenco is combined with contemporary dance, while the soundscape incorporates recorded music, live flamenco singing, and poetry about the night, performed by one of Spain’s leading actresses, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, known to Russian audiences, among other roles, from the films of Pedro Almodóvar.

Playwright Álvaro Tato explains:

“The inspiration for the production naturally came from the tradition of flamenco. But not only from flamenco. Poetry celebrating the night and its metaphors also played an important role: from Spanish folk-song traditions to Baroque authors such as Lope de Vega and Luis de Góngora; from mystical poets such as Saint John of the Cross and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to Romantic, Symbolist, and Modernist poets including Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Antonio Machado, Rosalía de Castro, and Juan Ramón Jiménez.”

A Journey Through the Night

Insomnia.

Flamenco dance fills the night. The sound of the piano. The human voice. The movement of the body.

A sleepless journey from sunset to dawn, revealing the deepest secrets of emotion, consciousness, and memory.

Night. The Architecture of Insomnia offers audiences a dance, musical, and poetic exploration of the great themes and contradictions of the night in all their complexity and mystery.

The night becomes a mystical experience, a game, a hallucination, a ritual. It is a great shadow, a source of inspiration for artists, a dark mirror in which everyone can find a reflection of their own fears and doubts.

Night changes everything. It transforms, disorients, and creates its own restless rhythm. Night is pure movement — and audiences are invited to follow its steps together with the celebrated company of Rafaela Carrasco’s Spanish Flamenco Theatre.

Rafaela Carrasco

Rafaela Carrasco is a celebrated flamenco dancer and choreographer. In 2002, she founded her own company and began developing her own artistic projects, many of which have received top awards at major international festivals.

From 2013 to 2016, she served as Director of the Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía.

An outstanding dancer, sensitive teacher, and gifted choreographer, Carrasco turns everything she touches into an artistic event. Reinterpreting, modernizing, exploring, and personalizing flamenco have become the defining principles of her artistic life.

She has developed her own vision of the dance — sensual, conceptual, and deeply personal. Carrasco has taken flamenco to a new level, transforming Spain’s national dance into an international language of artistic expression.

As Spain’s most widely read newspaper, El País, wrote of her: “The works of Seville-born Rafaela Carrasco leave no one indifferent. There is always room in them for experimentation, unexpected discoveries, and innovative solutions.”

In 2023, Rafaela Carrasco received the Premio Nacional de Danza (National Dance Award of Spain) for Night. The Architecture of Insomnia. It is the highest national distinction in the field of dance in Spain, awarded annually to leading choreographers and dancers across all genres.