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PRESS

I draw on my Cuban roots, my experiences growing up in the mélange that is Miami, my experiences living abroad and the very deep and layered roots of flamenco.

My work is based on a deconstruction of traditional flamenco aesthetic and technique, and is constantly informed by collaborations with other artists of various disciplines.

It is a flamenco that is syncretic, displaced, infused with cross-cultural underpinnings and is based on a somatic/shamanic approach to movement that although rooted in a style, remains flexible.

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Niurca Marquez

Sussie Morse (The History House)

April 2, 2014

 

Spectacular show! Reverent and irreverent, honoring the past while fearlessly crewing a new future with a new language of movement that is challenging and relevant. Phenomenal!

Oscar Fuentes
March 31, 2014


The History House with Niurka Marquez was powerfully charged with universal memories rooted a diaspora we all can relate.
The multimedia combination with her modern flamenco performance made my memory run to my abuela's house; where she engraved in all of her grandchildren's minds, never to forget our origins.
The History House was charged with movements and gestures that evoked an emotional connection with the audience. The collaborators also brought the modern, the "Nu" and the urban to center stage with Dinora De Jesus, Jose Luis Rodriguez and Jose Manuel Dominguez; adding a collaborative audio/visual/dance storytelling like no one else could tell it.
At the end of the show, I was left with a very present remembrance of my own History House, of my Abuela and her engraving of the importance of my last name and family stories I will never forget.
Oscar Fuentes @thebiscaynepoet

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/cultist/2014/03/history_house_niurca_marquez_nu_flamenco.php

Marie Whitman


April 3, 2014
History House by Niurca Marquez took me on a journey through the lush lineage of the past, honoring familial, cultural and artistic traditions. At the same time, I was shown the wondrous ways that the lines of our stories can be blessedly blurred. While the facts of our histories can sometimes feel set-in-stone, I was remined that the heart’s tales are subjective, sacred and shape-shifing.
While some purists may get hung up on classification (Is this Flamenco? “Nu” Flamenco? Contemporary Inter-disciplinary Theater? etc.) they’d be missing the powerful point. With integrity, clarity and creativity the History House pays homage to tradition while acknowledging the glory of both integrating it and breaking it. The melding of Niurca’s distinctive movement vocabulary, text, live music by Jose Luis Rodriguez and the video work of Dinorah de Jesus, kept me emotionally engaged and passionately present. The scenes with Niurca and Actor Jose Manuel Dominguez, were particularly riveting and the sensations of those moments stayed floating in me after I’d left the theater. That moves me: the experience of bathing in memory after you leave a place, a person, an experience.
Though Niurca’s Cuban-American history is so different from mine, this magical multi-disciplinary work told a story that felt familiar, shared, communal. The performance stirred in me my own sacred stories - the taste of my Italian Grandma’s meatballs and the way she and her sisters would pepper the dinner conversation with Sicilian slang. I remembered the lilt in her voice as she sang Catholic hymns in church. I remembered Grandma's love and longing and how it seeps into my own movement, writing, art, life. When a performance work can bring you home to your heart, to your own magical memories, we are blessed to be an audience member.
~ Marie Whitman


Marie Whitman Words and Wonders
NOMAC: North Miami Arts Collective

 

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