It's February, so it's been the Sadlers Wells Flamenco Season. I saw Israel Galvan, Aida Gomez, Rocio Molina, Tomatito and Eva Yerbabuena. Which means I saw three of the best dance troupes - Galvan, Molina and Yerbabuena - in the world today. Yes, including the Royal Ballet and anyone else you want to mention.
Tomatito's band are a straight-ahead flamenco trouple: guitars, cantores and an athletic gypsy dancer, Jose Maya. Tomatito mixes flamenco with jazz, doesn't let his technique get in the way of expression when needed and has a preposterous groove - sorry, compas. In the second half of the concert, the band hit "an impeccable groove" and no-one wanted to go home. This is an example...
Israel Galvan will make you think several times about what flamenco, tap and modern dance could be. Cheeky, technically challenging, full of odd poses and supremely confident. His guitarist Alfredo Lagos was startling: there are a handful of people who can play a trill with their fingers and a tune with their thumb and still keep a beat, and he's one of them.
What do I say about Rocio Molina? Sexy, inventive, a confident young lady with a style all her own... He stage presence when she wasn't dancing reminded me of a guy called Miles, the way she would stand away and then suddenly take the centre for her dance and pull everything together. The set looked like something a top-end ballet company might do if it had the budget. Her cantoras, including La Tremendita, complemented and challenged her. This time round I was starting to regret I don't speak Spanish.
And so we come to Eva Yerbabuena, one of a handful of artists who have reached the point where, if you don't get what she's doing, that's your problem, not hers. The show was When I Was... set in the Spanish Civil War. I'm going to let a professional critic describe it. The show was about how flamenco isn't just a bunch of moves and neat tricks on the guitar: it's an approach, a mood, a style, a way of interpreting. The only non-Spanish form like it is jazz. Yerbabuana could pull in a Chaplin-esque routine and moves, and make them flamenco; she could take a straight modern dance piece you would stand and applaud the Ballet Rambert for doing - the cockfight - and make that flamenco; she could set a number of traditional pieces - including a beautiful shawl dance - in a dramatic setting you'd expect to see at the ENO. And she could create a moment like this...
that hypnotised everyone.
How many times do I have to say this? What these guys are doing, right now, is the best new work in dance on the planet today. Get over tutus and swans, or body suits and bare stages, and arms held "like a ballerina" and watch what these guys are doing, feel what they are performing. This is how it must have felt to be able to go downtown and hear John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis play in the early sixties.
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