Pilar Rioja | |
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Born | María del Pilar Rioja del Olmo September 13, 1932 Torreón, Mexico |
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Career | |
Dances |
María del Pilar Rioja del Olmo (Torreón, Mexico, September 13, 1932) is a Mexican dancer who focused her career on Spanish dance.
Her training included mastering all branches of this dance: the bolero school, the folkloric, the classical, the stylized, and the flamenco dance. Her contribution was the "innovative idea of introducing castanets into dance, with Italian and Spanish baroque music",[1] an idea that she derived from her work with Domingo José Samperio, who invented "concerted crotalogy". It is also considered to be characterized by fusing the flamenco tradition with traditional Mexican dances.[2][3] In the U.S., she was called the "María Callas of dance".[4]
Since 2003, Rioja has won program support for the creation of the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA), conducting research in several areas.[5] The investigations she has carried out include: