Great Neck Library Sunday Performance: Trashbata Performance presented by Barbara Martinez

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with this performance that blends art with environmental awareness. Trashbata is created by Bárbara Martínez, a New York City-based choreographer, dancer, and singer. It is a flamenco-style dance that draws society’s attention to the effects of plastic pollution on the environment. Thanks to Bárbara’s open spirit, she and artist Clemente Ettrick have formed a collaboration that extends her idea into the realm of paintings.

We… and they… hope their work will encourage you to consider the role that everyone plays in harming our planet and the power each of us has to turn the situation around.

About the Performer:

Bárbara Martínez has an extensive performance career that began at age 11 with The Children’s Chorus of the Metropolitan Opera. She has spent a lifetime crafting performance skills as a dancer and vocal artist, specializing in choreography, composition, and musical arrangements. Bárbara is one of few flamenco artists who perform regularly both as singer and dancer with the major flamenco dance companies in the United States, such as Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana, A Palo Seco Flamenco Company, Pasión y Arte Flamenco Company, Sol y Sombra Flamenco Company, EntreFlamenco, Cava Flamenco Miami, Juanito Pascual, Nelida Tirado, Arts Flamenco, Flamenco Sepharad, New Andalucía, and others.

She leads several solo projects. One is her personal Latin jazz/flamenco program that began with a sold-out evening at Carnegie Hall twelve years ago. This program has grown to include music from South America, the Middle East, Sephardic music, and jazz, always maintaining the essence of flamenco at its core. One of her newest projects is called Barbarella, her female band that plays Bárbara’s original songs in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Bárbara is also passionate about a new one-woman dance theater project called TrashBata, which speaks to the environmental crisis of plastic in our environment using the language of flamenco.

Bárbara comes from a lineage of celebrated Argentinian tango singer/actresses Morenita Rey (her grandmother) and Libertad Lamarque (her grand-aunt.) Her father, Rafael Martínez, was a celebrated Venezuelan sculptor who played a role in the kinetic art movement from Latin America. Bárbara has worked as an actor, dancer, and choreographer in multimedia musical plays written and directed by her mother, playwright and art-historian Amelia Arenas.

Bárbara appears in the documentary “Sobre Las Olas – A Story of Flamenco in the U.S.” by Carolina Loyola-Garcia and the photography exhibit “100 Years of Flamenco in New York” produced by the NY Performing Arts Library and Carlota Santana Flamenco Vivo. The Philadelphia Inquirer called her voice “achingly beautiful,” and The New York Times said she makes “something fresh of the Latin style.”

Bárbara is an Honors graduate from Brown University and completed a Master’s in Songwriting at Berklee College of Music in 2025. She currently teaches music at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School.

The performance will be at the Great Neck Library, 159 Bayview Avenue, Great Neck, on Sunday, September 7, at 2:00 p.m. Registration is required and will begin on August 28 at 10 a.m. Great Neck cardholders and residents can register online, in person, or via phone. Non-residents are welcome as walk-ins, as space allows. For more information, please contact Great Neck Library at (516) 466-8055 or email adultprogramming@greatnecklibrary.org.