Belen Maya

Belén Maya was born in 1966 in New York City while her parents, the flamenco artists Carmen Mora and Mario Maya, were touring. In a 2018 interview she identified herself as Spanish and described her father's background as Roma. Despite growing up around performers, she did not return seriously to flamenco until age eighteen, beginning formal study at that point in Madrid at Amor de Dios and at the school of the Ballet Nacional de España. There she trained across ballet, classical Spanish dance, jazz, contemporary dance and flamenco under teachers including Paco Fernández, María Magdalena, Goyo Montero, Rosa Naranjo, Carmen Cortés, Paco Romero, Manolete, La Tati, El Güito and Anunciación Rueda "La Tona." She moved to Seville and accumulated practical tablao experience at Los Gallos, Corral de la Pacheca and Café de Chinitas before joining her father's company.

Maya advanced within three years from the ensemble to principal dancer and répétiteur with Mario Maya's company, later becoming a principal dancer with the Compañía Andaluza de Danza. This progression joined repertory discipline to the intimacy and rhythmic pressure of tablao performance. Carlos Saura's 1995 film *Flamenco* gave her international visibility as a representative of a new generation. Her compact, contemporary silhouette and non-ornamental stage presence challenged familiar assumptions about how a female flamenco soloist should look and move.

From the late 1990s onward, Maya developed a long partnership with singer Mayte Martín, creating chamber-scale dialogue between cante and dance. Her own company became a laboratory for collaborations across flamenco and contemporary performance. Works such as *Los Invitados* (which won the 2014 Festival de Jerez Critics' Award and featured artists including Manuel Liñán and Carmen Linares) and *Romnia* (2015) placed lineage, gender and Roma identity at the center of the stage. *Romnia* in particular examined Roma women's histories through flamenco, Eastern European Roma music and contemporary theatrical framing.

Maya's teaching and university residencies at Duke and Drexel extended her inquiry through lectures, demonstrations and conversations about gender and flamenco. The 2026 Festival de Jerez lists her as dancer and choreographer of *Ni tú ni yo*, with artistic direction by Fernando López and guitar and music by Juan Diego Mateos, documenting continued performance work alongside her other roles.