Avant-garde Spanish flamenco dancer Maria Pages stages the world premiere of her production "Sevilla" in Tokyo from May 14 to 16.

Pages (1963-) started dancing when she was a 4-year-old in Sevilla in Andalucia, the home of that quintessential Spanish traditional performing art, flamenco.

Thereafter, she has continued to push forward to create new forms of that style. After establishing herself at distinguished Spanish troupes such as that of Antonio Gades, Pages decided to establish her own company in 1990.

It was not until 1995, though, as the lead dancer in "Riverdance," that Pages genuinely put herself on the map, attracting widespread critical acclaim for her take on the popular Irish dance spectacle.

The experience was clearly a watershed, giving her the confidence to present her own ambitious works one after another.

In one of the more important of those works, 1996's "The Andalucian Dog," the title of which echoes "Un Chien Andalou," the masterwork movie by Sevilla's surrealist son, Luis Bunuel, she broke her genre's taboos by using rock and tango music for flamenco. Then, in her multi-award-winning 2004 production "Songs before War," she focused her staging around John Lennon's "Imagine."

In each of her productions, Pages expresses her own nouveau flamenco dance vision set to various musical genres, using simple modern costumes yet sophisticated lighting and stage sets.

"Sevilla" runs May 14 (5 p.m.) and May 15-16 (7 p.m.) at Bunkamura Orchard Hall, 24-1 Dogenzaka 2-chome, Shibuya-ku. Tickets are 8,000 yen, 10,000 yen and 12,000 yen.

For more information, call Conversation at (03) 5280-9966 or visit or www.bunkamura.co.jp