Event Details
Welcome to Holland! is a multidisciplinary work that combines flamenco with poetry, humor, spoken word, film and physical installation to uplift the traditionally invisible role of the caregiver. This autobiographical live performance is inspired by Laura’s experience as an Hispanic, immigrant mother of two, one of them with multiple disabilities. Welcome to Holland!? redefines the narrative of motherhood in contemporary society and amplifies voices of children with disabilities, and their siblings and caregivers, who often go unheard.
Welcome to Holland!? was initially inspired by activist Emily Kingsley’s poem about having a child with a disability. Laura’s second childbirth was impacted by profound trauma transforming motherhood into an uncharted odyssey, a landscape where every known path demanded reinvention and redefinition. Laura embraced Emily’s metaphor of Holland in her despair to find hope when uncertainty was all she had. Welcome to Holland!? reframes the poem to grasp her essence of being a mother—a caregiver—when waking up to a world transformed, a place that demands a rebirth and redefinition of everything known and that she now calls “Holland!?”
This event is co-presented by FLOR and Mayo Street Arts.
About the Artist
Laura Sánchez is an award-winning flamenco artist, creator, choreographer and educator originally from Cádiz, Spain. She began her flamenco education as a child and received professional training from the Dance Conservatory of Madrid. Laura holds a Professional Certificate in Expressive Arts Therapies from Lesley University where she developed an emerging therapeutic dance practice, Expressive Flamenco©. She presents this work internationally and continues to serve annually as Guest Professor for the Lesley University Expressive Therapies Master’s Program. Her most recent research work was published at the Journal of the American Dance Therapy Association in 2021.
Laura actively performs as a soloist in flamenco venues in the Eastern U.S., and placed 3rd at the 2016 Flamenco Certamen USA, an international competition that takes place in NYC annually. She has worked as an independent choreographer and producer and has presented several flamenco shows over the past ten years in Massachusetts.
During the pandemic she created an award-winning short film, AFTER DARK, She has received funding from the prestigious Live Arts Boston grant led by the Boston Foundation, in 2021 and 2024, the Next Steps to Dance and NEFA’s dance fund. She has been a recipient of the Mass Cultural Council Choreography Award in 2021 and was honored to be a member of Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana Professional Consórcio Flamenco, a group dedicated to growing flamenco on the national stage, in 2020.