Sara Baras
Who is Sara Baras?
Sara Pereira Baras was born on 25 April 1972 in San Fernando, Cádiz. She began dancing at her mother Concha Baras’s school, and took her first steps on stage with the children’s group “Los Niños de la Tertulia Flamenca,” with whom she toured festivals across Andalusia from a very young age.
At eighteen she joined the company of Manuel Morao and in 1989 performed at the Festival de Flamenco of the Teatro Alhambra in Granada. Around that time she also formed an artistic partnership with the bailaor Javier Barón, and continued refining her technique with teachers such as Manolete and El Güito, a formative journey that prepared her to lead her own project.
Career
In 1998 she founded the Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras, with which she premiered “Sensaciones” that same year, the first piece of a very fertile period that continued with “Sueños” (1999), “Juana la Loca” (2000), “Mariana Pineda” (2002), “Sabores” (2005) and her own version of “Carmen” (2007). In these productions she has worked with collaborators such as director Luis Olmos and bailaor José Serrano, and in 2006 she shared the stage with tenor Josep Carreras; she has also worked alongside guitarist Paco de Lucía.
Her company has taken flamenco to major international stages, among them the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and Sadler’s Wells in London, along with numerous tours across Europe, the Americas and Asia, establishing Sara Baras as one of the leading ambassadors of flamenco dance outside Spain.
Recognition
Among her many awards are the Premio Nacional de Danza (2003), several Max awards for “Juana la Loca,” the title of “Cara de Andalucía” in 2002, the Premio Galileo 2000 (2008) and, in 2009, the Grande Médaille de Vermeil de la Ville de Paris, one of the highest cultural honors awarded by the French capital. Curiously, her stage name, Sara Baras, is a palindrome.