Artistic Direction
Csaba Ökrös and Assuntina Gessa met in 2016 while he and she were training in flamenco, he in guitar, she in dance. Together, they both continued their explorations of flamenco in Spain while playing as a guitar/dance duo in third places in the Grand-Est. Their first shows, first created as a delegated production, then carried by the Minera company that she and he founded in 2024, brought together artists from Latin music, contemporary dance, jazz and rock.
Their desire is to feed off the encounter of flamenco with different musical and choreographic aesthetics.
Assuntina Gessa
A self-taught flamenco dancer of Italian origin, Assuntina Gessa trained in flamenco dance for over 15 years and flourished in parallel in graphic design, then she devoted herself to live performance from 2016. She integrates body and rhythm techniques by regularly training with other dancers and develops her own technical working method and choreographic language in contact with musicians, including guitarist Csaba Ökrös with whom she brings together a group of artists. Together, they created the show Minera Nueva (Baboeup Productions) in 2018 at the S.M.A.C. Café Music as part of the Festival International Arte Flamenco Mont-de-Marsan, then Caravela (2021). She collaborates with Kader Fahem Trio as a dancer. To extend the flamenco gesture, she works on the close relationship it implies with other disciplines: rhythm, singing and dramatic expression, and she is currently discovering contemporary dance which constitutes a new opening for her. She collaborates with the Logos Company as a Dancer-choreographer on the pieces Huellas (2022) and Compte à Rebours (2022). In 2024, she founded the Minera company, creating the show Regreso "Tablao" (2024).
Csaba Ökrös
Flamenco guitarist of Hungarian origin, Csaba Ökrös was immersed as a child in traditional Hungarian music, of which his father was one of the representatives, and he played his first notes on a violin. In France, he joined the M.A.I. course in Nancy in 2008 and played in several contemporary music groups. He then entered the Metz Conservatory in the classical and then jazz sections and studied flamenco at the same time, for which he was passionate. He accompanied flamenco dance classes and trained with several guitarists including Rafael Sègre in Nancy and Manuel Fernandez in Granada. With Assuntina Gessa, he toured with a small guitar-dance form and then created with her the shows Minera Nueva (2018), then Caravela (2021). His influences are those of new flamenco with which he mixes an energy from rock and a gypsy soniquete. Csaba explores different musical genres that permeate his compositions (Hungarian music, Cuban sòn...). He currently plays in the Afro jazz group Kalifa Mougnou, in Sea sex and son. He founded the Minera company with Assuntina Gessa and created with her the show Regreso Tablao (2024).
Approach and action
Registered and committed to its territory, and open to other regions and neighboring countries, the Minera company pursues several objectives. First of all, it wishes to offer professional shows and quality artistic performances, aimed at transmitting emotions to a wide audience, through dance, through music, and through a certain approach to flamenco. In this approach, it offers its audiences varied contexts of discovery and different perspectives. Flamenco, listed as an intangible heritage by UNESCO for its richness and history, is an art that is still alive and constantly evolving. It is a transdisciplinary genre, between dance, music and dramatic art. The Minera company wishes to promote flamenco outside of archetypal visions, in the Grand-Est and more widely in France, by introducing the public to a unique aesthetic, and by contributing to its development through its transmission and mediation axis.
In order to achieve its objectives, the Minera company works around two axes:
A Research and creation axis
The company's creative approach consists of exploring flamenco by inviting other artistic identities and aesthetics to come together around the same rhythmic language (the flamenco compass). A certain hybridization with traditional codes is sought in connection with the artists' personalities, around a search for quality of movement, rhythmic interpretation, and aesthetic and choreographic research. From its pure expression, flamenco changes at will, for the artists, sometimes into material, sometimes into method to dialogue with other artistic expressions.A Transmission and mediation axis
In order to reach different populations, Minera adapts its “echapées” to specific audiences (schoolchildren, disabled audiences, dependent elderly people) and invites dynamic and flexible exchanges around its shows. In connection with its artistic projects, the company offers workshops, dance discovery, and dialogue between the different expressions of flamenco (rhythm, song, dance). To deepen its mediation approach, the company offers shared creations with amateurs to allow them to experience the creative process and thus invite them to change their perspective. The Minera company also gives regular flamenco classes to initiated amateurs at the MJC des 3 Maisons.