With the founding of Pajarillo Pinta’o in 2003, Artistic Director Daniel Fetecua Soto has started to investigate the fusion of traditional dances and rhythms of Colombian Folklore with the principals of modern dance and German tanz-theater.

Pajarillo Pinta’o took its first steps as a traditional Colombian Folkloric dance ensemble while Colombian founder and artistic director Daniel Fetecua Soto was a student at the Folkwang Hochsule in Essen, Germany.

Later his choreography became shaped by not only his cross-cultural studies of Colombian traditional dance at Universidad Nacional in Colombia, but by his newly acquired experiences and training in dance-theatre, modern, and contemporary dance-notably, his position in the world-renowned Jose Limon dance company.

The culmination of this training and performance history has birthed a movement that interweaves the rhythms, music, choreographic structure and rites of the native dances of Colombia, with the lyricim and neo-expressionism found in contemporary dance.

Pajarillo Pinta’o is Daniel’s personal homage to his culture and his traditions.

Upon moving to the USA in 2006, Daniel started his work with dancers in New York City while continuing to travel annually to Germany to work with his dancers and Associate Artistic Director Maria Lucia Agon Ramirez abroad who KEEP the work alive across the ocean.

Here in NYC Pajarillo Pinta’o has started an incredible collaboration with Colombian musician and composer Pablo Mayor and his band Folklore Urbano as well as with the renowned Colombian singer Lucia Pulido, and Theatre Director German Jaramillo, founder and director of ID Studio Theatre.

In the last three years Pajarillo Pinta’o has been developing an infrastructure and under the managing direction of Anna Amadei, Pajarillo Pinta’o has received two grants from the Harlem Stage Fund for New Work (granted to Daniel Fetecua for two new choreographic works).

Our mission is to keep spreading the pure essence of Colombian Folklore to the world, and having people experience it through the music and the dances. We also aim to continue developing a new language and a new form to present the soul of tradition and its evolution in our contemporary world.

The richness of Pajarillo Pinta’o is that Daniel Fetecua has been willing to work with professional dancers, trained in many other disciplines (modern, contemporary, jazz) with a particular affinity with Latin sounds and beats but coming from all over the world. This way we show that Colombian Folklore is not something that only people from Colombia can do but that EVERYONE can experience, learn and enjoy!

Since 2010 Pajarillo Pinta’o is also a production company producing every year a project called DanSUR/DanSOUTH a choreographic collective directed by Daniel Fetecua willing to celebrate the traditions and the new waves of Latin American Dance.