BOARD OF DIRECTORS
ANA TERESA RODRIGUEZ
Chairman of the Board
CAROLINA LIZARRAGA
Vice President
GABRIELA NEGRON
Secretary/Treasurer
ROQUE GARCIA
Director
RAFAEL RINCON
Director
AIDA LOPEZ
Director
FRANCISCO ANGULO
Director
MANAGEMENT TEAM
CAROLINA LIZARRAGA
Artistic Director
ROQUE GARCIA
Executive Producer
GLORIA CARNEVALI
Research Director
DANIELA TUGUES
Dance Director
CESAR OROZCO
Musical Director
RAFAEL NARANJO
Technical Director
ALEJANDRO ZAVALA
Choral Director
VICENTE ALBARRACIN
Drama Director
CONSULTING DIRECTOR
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GRACIELA DANIELE
Argentine-American Choreographer/Director
10-Time Tony Award Nominee
Former Director-in-Residence at Lincoln Center Theater
American Theater Hall of Fame inductee
CONSULTING PRODUCER
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RICHARD FRANKEL
Multi Tony Award Winner
Record for producing the show that has won
the most Tonys in Broadway history:
‘The Producers’ (12 Tonys including Best Musical)
BIOS
CAROLINA LIZARRAGA
Artistic Director
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Carolina began her artistic journey at the age of four as a Flamenco dancer. Granddaughter of Don José Angel Matheus, a prominent bullfighting promoter who developed a close relationship with famous bullfighters, she grew up inspired by the love of Spanish culture.
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In 1992 Carolina assumed a leading role as teacher and choreographer, and subsequently director at the Lizarraga Flamenco Academy in Venezuela, founded in the early 70’s by her mother Lilian, who had become thoroughly acquainted with Flamenco culture while living in Spain. During the 90’s Carolina conceived, choreographed and directed on an annual basis large-scale dance shows for the academy which included live musicians and more than 500 students. Simultaneously, she undertook extensive research trips to Spain to the renowned flamenco academy 'Amor de Dios' in Madrid and the iconic 'Festival de Jerez' where she studied with acclaimed flamenco dancers.
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In 1999, after obtaining a law degree in the University of Carabobo, she decided to commit herself entirely to the performing arts, founding Las Lizarraga Dance Company. Using her knowledge and experience Carolina conceived and choreographed, along with a team of devoted professionals, the show ‘Venezuela Viva’ (Venezuela alive) which premiered in 2005 displaying in spectacular fashion the link between Flamenco and Caribbean rhythms.
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Carolina has directed ‘Venezuela Viva’ in more than 10 countries, including special performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2005 (Top Ten Bestselling show - 5 stars from The Scotsman), the Organization of American States at Salón Las Américas in Washington in 2007 and the British Red Cross Royal Gala at the London Palladium in 2011. She has also conceived the musical ‘Orinoco’ based on the Latin American antiheroine Doña Bárbara from the Rómulo Gallegos literary masterpiece. Carolina is a graduate of the Commercial Theater Institute (New York) and splits her time between New York and Miami in permanent contact with the members of the team.
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ROQUE GARCIA
Executive Producer
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Roque obtained an engineer's degree at the Andrés Bello Catholic University (Caracas) in 1989 and then joined his family’s graphic arts and printing business Grapho-formas. For 17 years, beginning as the art department supervisor and finally becoming the VP of Production of the company, he worked with a team of 150 employees, largely contributing to establish the reputation of the company as one of the leaders in the national market.
In 2000 he married Carolina, and transferring his managerial skills to the stage they joined forces to develop the show 'Venezuela Viva' and produce it internationally. His family background could not be more ideal for this task, his father being from Spain and his mother from the Venezuelan "Llanos", home to the Joropo genre. Roque thus grew up listening to Flamenco and Joropo, frequently helping his mother organize large family celebrations where both genres were equally displayed.
To date, Roque has produced or co-produced more than 300 theatrical performances in 10 countries, managing an average of 35 people (cast & crew). An inveterate music-lover from Opera to Salsa, Roque shares with Carolina the habit of tirelessly researching the marvels of their cultural lineage. He is a graduate of the Commercial Theater Institute (New York).
GLORIA CARNEVALI
Research Director
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Gloria spent most of her childhood and adolescence travelling around America and Europe, leading the typical nomadic life of a diplomat’s child. Differences and the inclination to compare and mix them, tinged her view of the world from very early on. Fond of literature and history, she is widely read in Spanish, Portuguese, English, French and Italian. She studied philosophy at the Central University of Venezuela specializing in philosophy of art. Head of Education at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas, director of the Museum of Modern Art of the Soto Foundation in Ciudad Bolívar, and research fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge, she is the author of two books on the philosophy of art.
Gloria spent twelve years as cultural attaché in London, producing around forty events a year, both national and multilateral. She funded the Bolívar Hall International Guitar Festival. This included a student series in which young guitarists from eight British academies played together for the first time, a fixture now of other guitar festivals in London. Time Out magazine included her in its article The Specialists, recommending the Bolívar Hall as the best place in London to discover Latin American talent.
Three times she travelled with teams of the BBC Radio and Television to record music in Venezuela which resulted in The Hidden Music of Venezuela series of BBC Radio 3 with Lucy Durán and an appearance in the film The Harp. She created the group Trabuco with seven maestros of Venezuelan strings and maracas, a group which toured Great Britain and Europe and recorded a CD at the West Deutsche Rundfunk in 2008.
Gloria met Carolina and Roque in 2004. Since then they have been collaborating successfully. She currently lives and writes in Cambridge, UK.
CESAR OROZCO
Music Director
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Author of the 'Venezuela Viva' and the 'Orinoco' musical scores, Cesar is a Cuban/Venezuelan pianist, composer and arranger with an innovative approach to blending Venezuelan and Cuban music with Jazz and Flamenco. Music runs in the family: his father Danilo Orozco was one of the most influential musicologists in Cuba, mentor of luminaries such as Compay Segundo (Buena Vista Social Club). Cesar began his musical studies at age seven and in 1998 graduated in violin studies and music ensemble conducting from the National School of Arts in Havana. Soon after, he moved to Venezuela to join the Carabobo Symphony Orchestra as a violinist for five years. After two years being pianist of Latin Grammy winner band Guaco, he became part of the 'Venezuela Viva' team in 2004 and toured with the show to ten countries as musical director and pianist.
Having moved to the U.S. in 2012, Cesar received a full tuition assistantship from The Peabody Institute of the John Hopkins University where he completed a GPD major in Jazz Piano. He has produced 3 CD’s: Son con Pajarillo (2007), Orozcojam (2010) which was awarded Best Vocal Instrumental Album at Cubadisco 2012, and most recently his debut recording in the U.S. No Limits for Tumbao. Some of the artists he has worked with include Paquito D’Rivera, Pedrito Martínez, Oscar D'León, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Simón Díaz and Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, among others, and he has performed at the Bimhuis Jazz Club (Amsterdam) and The Kennedy Center (Washington D.C.). In 2014, he received a DownBeat Magazine Student Music Award. Cesar is also an active clinician and educator. He has taught master classes at Berklee College of Music (Boston), Loyola University (Baltimore) and is faculty at Wharton Institute of the Performing Arts (Berkley Heights, New Jersey) and at Corlears School (Manhattan).
DANIELA TUGUES
Dance Director
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With more than 30 years on stage and having been educated by masters of the genre in Spain, Daniela is a Venezuelan Flamenco dancer, teacher and choreographer with a distinctive eclectic approach to several world dance genres. She has been the principal dancer and dance director of 'Venezuela Viva' and 'Orinoco' choreographing both shows along with Carolina Lizarraga. Daniela has danced in Casapatas 'the temple of Flamenco' in Madrid, and has been invited to teach at the unique 'Amor de Dios' Flamenco dance school in Madrid. She is featured in the film Flamenco (1994) by the Academy Award nominee and multiple award-winning Spanish director Carlos Saura.
Daniela has been regularly in high demand teaching workshops around the world and she is currently considered a pioneer of a new dance expression called "Flamenco Latino" which blends Flamenco with Latin dances. Daniela also has been the lead female dancer of the Paco Peña Flamenco Dance Company with which she has toured extensively and participated in festivals around the world. All in all, she has performed in the United States, Canada, Venezuela, Peru, Costa Rica, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, England, Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium, Romania, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. The New York Times has praised Daniela as follows: “Dancing her Tientos, Mrs. Tugues was a queen of the flamenco lean, cool as low-riding car as she tilted back her regal torso. Her hands had a gnarled beauty, her face a look of sweet pain..."
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RAFAEL NARANJO
Technical Director
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Since 1995, Rafael has been a specialized audio engineer with an evolving path to encompass technical production in general. Throughout his career he has excelled in several areas such as Recording Studio, Live Performance and Sound System Designs & Optimization. He has an associate degree in Audio Engineering from the Stock Music Center, as well as specializations through several seminars: Meyer Sound Labs. Inc Seminar “Comprehensive System Design and Implementation” (2006 & 2008); Sennheiser Sound Academy Seminar “RF Academy” (2007); and Adamson Systems Engineering, seminar “Sound Quality of Loudspeakers”.
Along the years Rafael has worked in many projects, being some of the most prominents: Audio engineer at Z01audio recording studio (2010 - Present); Recording, Mix and Master for productions of Classical, Pop, Rock, Latin and Jazz projects; Audio engineer for Caramelos de Cianuro (2015-Present) as Monitors & FOH Engineer and Production Management; Audio engineer for Guillermo Davila (2009-2018) as Monitors & FOH Engineer and Production Management; Audio Engineer for Interaudio Valencia c.a. (2006-2017) as Consultancy, System Engineer and FOH & Monitor Engineer; Audio engineer for Nelson Arrieta (2005-2013) as FOH Engineer and Production Management; Audio engineer for Fundación Venezuela Viva (2005-2015) as Sound Designer, Technical Director and/or FOH Engineer in almost all of its projects: Tour Edinburgh (Fringe Festival 2005), Tour Netherlands 2006, Tour USA 2007-2008 (Washington DC-OEA, Houston, New Brunswick), Tour Germany 2008, Tour Edinburgh (Fringe Festival 2009), Tour Mexico 2010, British Red Cross Venezuela Viva Royal Gala (London Palladium 2011), Festival Miaoli Taiwan 2012, and Orinoco the musical (Aula Magna UCV, Caracas) Seasons 2011-2012-2013.
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VICENTE ALBARRACIN
Drama Director
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Vicente is a renowned director and writer who has developed his work in various genres over more than 35 years of career. In theater, he has worked in successful plays for adults, for children, musical theater and opera, and on television he has worked on numerous soap operas, series, humor and variety shows. He has also been a lecturer and teacher in Direction and Acting for Theater and TV, at educational institutes in various countries.
He has worked with countless theater companies, taking their productions to a wide number of stages in Europe and the Americas. On television he has worked on programs that have been watched in more than 150 countries, produced by important companies such as RCTV in Venezuela, Telemundo and Univisión in Miami, and Televisa-México, with whom he currently works as a writer. For 9 years he has been residing in Miami.
ALEJANDRO ZAVALA
Choral Director
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Alejandro is a singer, composer and musician with extensive experience in Venezuelan traditional music and other genres of Latin American popular music. Private singing tutor and currently director of his own school “Contemporary School of Voice” in Caracas. In the 90’s he founded the band “1492” dedicated to the fusion of Venezuelan rhythms. From 2002 to 2005 he worked as a researcher and musicologist at FUNDEF, currently called the Center for Cultural Diversity. Between 2001 and 2007 he served as singer for the group Tartara Latin & Pop. In 2004 he participated in the Viña del Mar International Song Festival, as singer of the vocal ensemble directed by Cesar Muñoz. Between 2010 and 2014 he worked for Fundación Venezuela Viva as the protagonist of the musical “Orinoco", in addition to serving as vocal director of the company. He also directed the Venezuelan Pedagogical Musical Theater program, an initiative of the foundation to train talents from different strata in dance, singing and acting.
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He has made three record works, “Origen” (2009), “Primavera para Mayo” (2011) and “Colores Tierra” (2014), which represent Alejandro’s dedication and deep interest in exalting and recreating traditional Venezuelan music within the framework of new sounds. In his most recent production, he had the collaboration of the prestigious Venezuelan producer “Guataca Producciones”. He is currently a composer for the prestigious international independent publisher Peer Music, making musical productions for Sonofilia Estudio Record, a recording studio of which he is a partner. He also continues his work as arranger, composer and vocal coach.
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