Palabra Flamenco's poet Garth Martens wrote a Dispatch on his work with Palabra Flamenco for WRITE Magazine, a publication of the Writers' Union of Canada, for their Summer issue. Read it here.
 

On behalf of the 2018 Victoria Festival of Authors, poet Barbara Black interviewed Palabra Flamenco's artistic director and dancer Denise Yeo and producer and poet Garth Martens. "[I rely on] simple patterns robust and earthy enough to contain heightened energy," admits Denise. "Nothing clever or terribly sophisticated is at hand material-wise when the good dancing happens. Clever and sophisticated are for other times when the performance goal is different."
 

The Georgia Straight's Kathleen Oliver reviewed Palabra Flamenco's La Palabra en el Tiempo for the Vancouver Fringe Festival: "There’s virtuosity to burn in this hour of dance, music, and poetry. I know next to nothing about flamenco traditions, but the sensual pleasures of this show are many: Denise Yeo’s dancing, by turns sinuous and ferocious (not to mention her exquisite costumes); the rich voice of poet Garth Martens, and his fleeting images of travel to an unspecified Latin-American location; the soulful singing of Veronica Maguire; and especially the music. Guitarist Gareth Owen plays like he has a hundred fingers, and the foot stomps, handclaps, and clacking castanets of other cast members enhance the extraordinary rhythms of the piece. Let it wash over you."
 

Showbill Canada's Tony Carter reviews our show for the 2018 Victoria Fringe Festival, calling Garth Martens' poetry "equal-parts passionate and desolate" and Denise Yeo's dancing "guaranteed to captivate". He singles out Veronica Maguire for her "air of authenticity and experience" that elevates the show to "another level entirely". They conclude, "Utterly beguiling to behold as each of these talented performers ... build off of each other to a sensual fever pitch .... La Palabra En El Tiempo is a gift to behold. Four fantastically talented people have crafted a show that is greater the sum of its parts — parts that were already impressive to begin with!"
 

Janis La Couvee names Palabra Flamenco's La Palabra en el Tiempo a "local pick" of the Victoria Fringe and interviews the company's artistic director and principal dancer Denise Yeo and producer and poet Garth Martens. "Flamenco has always made me feel a lot—as both audience member and artist. It’s as though I’m asked to discern, below what’s happening on stage, the shape of something older and dimensionless. Something worth attending to," says Denise. "Poetry has a similar effect on me, an expansion in my chest, a tug from below. The show was an experiment to see if both art forms in the same space, at the same time, might point to the same thing without one being collapsed into the other."
 

Janis La Couvee reviewed La Palabra en el Tiempo for the Victoria Fringe Festival: "On Thursday I saw the explosive La Palabra en el Tiempo ... WOW .... This unique marriage of talents creates an incredible experience — Maguire carries the grief of the world in her voice, Owen seems melded to his guitar, as if one, fingers travelling intimately over the strings, Martens declaims like the prophets of old — stern warnings and jeremiads, potent messages — Yeo is a spitfire, uncontainable in her passionate delivery, staccato feet blurring in ferocious movement. Powerful and primal exaltations of people who refuse to be cowed."