Phyllis Akinyi (she/her) is a Danish-Kenyan dancer, choreographer, performance artist, and dance researcher based between Madrid and Copenhagen. She works within the realm of flamenco and has spent many years researching and highlighting its African and diasporic expressions. Her artistic practice centres a continuous investigation of the ‘betwixt and between’ – researching entanglements of movement, culture, and identity, from an anthropological lens of bodies caught in cultural ‘in-betweens’.

Akinyi plays with stretching the (imagined) limitations of flamenco, both in time, space, sound and movement, often taking flamenco on a journey away from the traditional stage and into a site-specific and/or durational performance frame - a frame she calls Spatial Listening, where flamenco meets performance art, Africanist Spirituality, and sonic movement. In her recent work she examines clichéd contradictions, freedom in the in-between, ‘invisiblised’ African flamenco roots, folkloric futurism, communities and solitude, and an eternal struggle to claim space and oneself.

Born in Puerto Rico, her training in dance has been enriched by influences from a wide range of teachers assimilating contemporary dance, classical dance and classical Spanish dance. She has been active in flamenco companies in Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Turkey and the US. Her most important piece “La Gallina Pollona” was created during this time where she fusions flamenco rhythms with her Puerto Rican history and musical roots exploring their similarities and connections. 

Since 2019 Reilly is based in Malmö, teaching flamenco dance locally and abroad while deepening into the artform of traditional flamenco. She has worked as a guest teacher with Cullberg and leads “Tablao Flamenco Malmö” and  Flamenco Live show along with musician Stephan Jarl.

Rubino's music is a mashup of classic flamenco, Latin American rhythms, and original pieces. In Andalusia she studied with Spanish guitar masters and taught and toured for several years. In 2012, she was included in the Spanish documentary “Tocaoras” as one of the few foreign female flamenco guitarists and in 2017 she was one of five female guitarists portrayed in a large reportage in the Spanish magazine El País under the name “Ellas dan el toque” (“The women tackling the macho world of flamenco guitar”) and awarded the STIM scholarship (Swedish Composer’s International Music Bureau Composition Scholarship). She has opened for flamenco guitar legend Vicente Amigo and toured with Spain’s premier female flamenco guitarist Antonia Jiménez. In 2018, she performed at flamenco festivals in Spain together with percussionist Nasrine Rahmani and collaborated on this occasion also with flamenco legend Paco de Lucia’s harmonica player Antonio Serrano and Spain’s most sought-after double bass player, Javier Colina.

Since 2016, she has repeatedly worked with her project “The Double Bass Project”, together with the Swedish double bass player Peter Janson and singer Helena Ek and has during 2018 toured regularly with Swedish flamenco guitarist Robert “Robi” Swärd.