Cabrolé brings different communities together to bring you a night of dance, song, queerness, joy and community, with an ethos of love, acceptance and self-expression for all.
Flamenco was born in late 1800s Spain from a desire of marginalised and migrant communities to bring people together and to create a new communal language to express themselves. Embedded in the bodies, gestures, lyrics and music of flamenco is a mix of people and their histories from India, Central America, the continent of Africa, Eastern Europe and the Andalucian Roma community.
The name Cabrolé comes from the Spanish word ‘cabra’ for goat and the famous ‘olé’ meaning bravo. Goats are known for their rebellious souls and olé is used to show your appreciation. ‘Cabrolé’ is a call to rebellion, on stage, and in glitter!
After the performance, we move into a joyful, music-filled post-show ‘Flamenco Fiesta’ organised by Irene Giménez from Fin de Fiesta CIC, which brings together a wonderful mix of musicians and performers from the community.
While this part of the event doesn’t include BSL interpretation or creative interpretation of instruments, it is introduced with a short BSL welcome to help set the scene. Everyone is warmly invited to stay, dance and celebrate together – it’s a vibrant, shared experience open to all.
Funded by Arts Council England and supported by Instituto Cervantes London, Corali Dance Company, Poplar Union, Stanley Arts, Head of House Designs, Duckie, Raze Collective, Queer Life Social, Triangle Deptford, Fin de Fiesta, K5 Studio Lis Murphy and Branded + Moniker.
We met Charlie Wood, who is performing in Cabrolé! and this everything we talked about.
Cabrolé! blends flamenco, cabaret and unapologetic queerness. What drew each of you to this project, and what did you want to bring to the stage that audiences haven’t seen before?
Speaking only for myself, I was drawn in by a few factors – partially the notion of how my cabaret practice, and that of my fellow participants would blend with flamenco as a practice. I didn’t know much about flamenco before the project other than it’s reputation for passion and excellent frocks (which was reason enough to be involved) but I was keen to deepen this understanding and see how we could all learn from it and find it’s queerness. I was also keen to work with everyone I knew to be involved. The project is lead and artistically directed by Patricia Langa – an excellent artist and passionately joyful creative who I would follow literally anywhere along with a parade of London’s finest cabaret artists who I adore all of both personally and professionally. Cabaret is a funny art form in that it is built of individual moments and practices, but each show becomes an unusual collaboration between these individuals and ends up feeling like a big, strange family. Cabrolé is the best of this type of work with the energy and secret queer history of flamenco thrown into the mix as well – all of this comes together to make something unlike anything I’ve seen after years on the scene.
The show is part of the KUNSTY late-night cabaret lounge — a space that pushes beyond the traditional auditorium. How does performing in that kind of setting change your relationship with the audience?
Cabaret is much more about the relationship with the audience than a lot of other forms of theatre and performance. It works well in spaces that have a certain intimacy and off beat energy which I think the KUNSTY stage will be perfect for. Especially for a show like this that is interested in breaking down the barriers of audience and performance, we want people to be involved and feel like part of the world we are building. Any divide between onstage and off stage will also totally disappear when the evening concludes in a Flamenco dance party with a live band at the end of the night!
Flamenco has a long history of expressing passion and protest. How do you connect its roots in resistance to contemporary queer identity and politics?
Flamenco has its origins in folk dance and through all human history it seems in the darkness there has always been folk dance. It’s the defiant human spirit in it’s purest form. It’s catharsis and anger and relief and a way of maintaining one’s identity and history and culture without any resources. Queer cabaret is a kind of folk art in it’s own way too. It’s often done with no budget or formal training and made in large part to serve the community. I think these ideas combine very beautifully. This is a worrying time for the queer community with hard won rights dissolving shockingly fast and it’s a time when that flamenco spirit of defiant folk art is more needed than ever. They are coming for our culture and communities but we will never stop dancing. Plus flamenco is camp as tits and we all absolutely lean into that energy.
The name Cabrolé mashes “cabra” (goat) with “olé” — a joyful, rebellious cry. What are you each rebelling against right now, creatively or personally?
There are so many things to rebel against right now but I think the main thing it feels like Cabrolé is rebelling against in this moment is despair. Even in the year since we first started this project the world has become exponentially more fraught and dark. I think projects like this represent everything that the world at large is NOT in this moment. Cabrolé is inclusive and joyful and it platforms people from all different backgrounds and experiences. It celebrates that diversity and cultural exchange. It’s also not only a show but a community building project with workshops and events being held for young people and adults with disabilities and people who have not been able to access the arts. And it’s FUN. I don’t think that events like this are going to solve everything (please keep marching and doing everything you can!) but the arts at it’s best can imagine better ways for the world to be and invite everyone to come along and that’s one of the big things we are trying to do with this project.
How does Cabrolé! fit within your artistic world — or challenge it?
I mean as someone who is not a trained dancer, I’m very challenged by the dancing itself! It was a scary and exciting expanding of my practice to make a piece inspired by a form of dance but this project is so inclusive it can even involve people like me who have (at least) two left feet! We didn’t stop at flamenco as a point of inspiration though, we also looked at other aspects of Spanish queer history and culture as well as sharing our own stories and practices with each other. I was very inspired by our exploration of the poetry and illustrations of Lorca, which was very movingly taught to us by the wonderful Medusa Has Been who is also participating in the show!
Charlie, your performances carry such physicality and emotional intensity. How do you channel that energy within the flamenco framework, and what have you discovered about yourself through this process?
Firstly thank you! I think flamenco is a perfect tool to communicate emotional intensity so as a style of movement it lends itself to my practice very well. I do have a contrarian need to disrupt any sort of brief I ever get so I did decide to add a third leg and an 8 foot virgin Mary inspired human sheath to my act but the show is very accommodating of that kind of ridiculousness and it’s not like flamenco itself is a stranger to a slightly audacious outfit so I’m all good there! I also found a lot of the work we did around queer history very emotional and wanted to pay tribute to that history of queer resistance and activism in my act which was also able to fit very seamlessly into the night as a whole alongside the more riotous and comedic offerings. I think I’ve learnt that despite my lack of know how around dance – the world of movement really does have something to offer my practice and maybe I have a small something to offer it in return. It’s also taught me that collaborating with costume designers, especially our very own Lambdog1066, is an absolute dream and I want to do it always and forever going forwards!
There’s a strong sense of community pulsing through Cabrolé! — it’s more than a show, it’s a shared celebration. How do you both see joy and collective experience functioning as a form of queer activism?
I sometimes fall into the trap of forgetting the importance of joy as a form of activism. It’s very easy to think that such a thing is frivolous when the world is so serious and scary but something I like to hold on to is that they WANT us to be miserable! The powers that be WANT queer people to be disheartened and ashamed and disconnected from each other. If we allow that to happen we are doing their jobs for them. Trans people deserve to feel happy and accepted. Immigrants and older queers and people with all kinds of disadvantages deserve to be celebrated and be part of art and culture and dancing and cabaret. We all deserve to dance (however poorly) with each other and be with our communities in spaces that are built by and for us. Art and performance and music has the power to build these spaces and we need them to enliven us and keep up the morale and the fight. Things are bad now and they are going to get worse before they get better. We need each other and we need hope cos we aren’t gonna get through this without those things and we are going to have a way better time doing it than those who operate from a place of hatred.
The KUNSTY cabaret lounge prides itself on being “late-night and radical.” What does radical performance look or feel like to you in 2025 — especially in a city where queer nightlife is constantly under pressure
Honestly the way things are going, just having a space like this that platforms these kinds of voices is already pretty radical in itself. It’s nice to see an institution like the Southbank Centre acknowledge the cultural importance and artistic significance of the work being done in underground and fringe spaces. There is a golden age of queer art happening right now in this city but its at real risk of being lost – venues are closing left right and centre for lack of funds, exorbitant London prices and increasing censorship. I hope nights like this encourage people to explore their local gay bar or punk venue and support this really vital scene! Without these spaces in 20 years all the major theatres and galleries and TV shows will be empty – it all starts in the underground.
There’s a post-show Flamenco Fiesta that invites audiences to join in the movement and music. What does that act of breaking the performer–audience divide mean to you?
I think it gets right to the heart so Cabrolé’s commitment to the community nature of the project. We as the performers are not here to ‘perform for you’ so much as we are here to welcome you into our world and entice you to join in! There will be no pressure to get more involved than you would like but it is such an unjudgmental and beautifully inclusive space I think most people will struggle to resist the pull of the inclusive and foot stamping pull of the dancefloor.
What’s one thing you hope people carry with them when they leave Cabrolé! — a feeling, a question, maybe a spark of rebellion?
I hope people leave feeling what I felt leaving the project after its first show – energised, joyful, very in love with the community of people I found myself surrounded by, passionately ready to take the fight to the streets and with a new vocal habit of exclaiming OLE! in response to pretty much anything
And finally, when the stage lights dim and the rhythm fades — how do you each ground yourself after a night of such intensity and joy?
Personally, hugging all involved, some deep breaths, a little cry, a bit sleep then a big session of cackling and debriefing with the cast when we all have the energy to move again.
YASS Magazine 