flamenco
Hanna Weibye
Before this Sadler's Wells Flamenco Festival-opening performance of Israel Galván's show FLA.CO.MEN, my guest wanted to know what the show would be like. And if I struggled lamely for words in response, it wasn't because I thought it would be bad – au contraire – but because Galván tends to defy both prediction and description.The 90 minutes that followed proved that any prophecy would indeed have been a waste of breath. He smashes a ceramic flamenco boot (after playing it like a flute). He pretends to read his dance steps off a score on a music stand, while wearing a chef's Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Claims to embody the spirit of flamenco, or to be born with flamenco in one's blood, abound in the programme of the annual Sadler's Wells flamenco festival. Sara Baras, whose show Voces opened the two week festival on Tuesday, doesn't make such a claim in writing: she doesn't need to. Her every move on stage radiates the self-possession of a flamenco aristocrat, a confidence so vital it simply bulldozes proscenium and fourth wall to set up a visceral – and vocal – relationship between audience and performer.Whether this is your cup of sangria or not probably depends on how you respond to that Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Guadalupe Plata are a Spanish three-piece whose tunes will be a sonic treat for those who like their blues raw but with an extra dash of flavour. On their self-titled second album, spikey blues, bebop and rockabilly sounds rub up against the Moorish and Romany roots of Andalusian traditional music to produce a very special gumbo that will appeal to lovers of RL Burnside, Tav Falco, Link Wray and gutsy Latino bands like The Plugz and Tito and Tarantula. In fact, there are plenty of times on this disc when Guadalupe Plata could quite easily be deputising for the supernaturally groovy house band Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
It is an axiom of Israel Galván criticism to say the Spaniard is wired differently. He's the "Bowie of flamenco" - leggy and intense, unpredictably sparky, intemittently brilliant, and sometimes incomprehensible. His new show, Lo Real/Le Réel/The Real which had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival last night is about gypsies under Nazism and in the Holocaust, but it approaches its subject in an impressionistic, roundabout way that during the performance feels a lot more like a journey into Israel Galván's oddball consciousness than a history lesson.Of course, that is a kind Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
No, don't check your calendar – it's definitely not March. I associate flamenco at Sadler's Wells so strongly with their annual two-week festival in early spring that watching Paco Peña Company at the Wells last night felt a bit like a cheeky out-of-season treat, akin to buying foreign strawberries before the native ones have come in. Fortunately, this was no watery, bland, forced berry, though: Peña and friends are some of the best in the business, purveying reliably high-quality goods in smart, well-produced packaging.The new show, Flamencura, does not follow Peña's last, Garcia Lorca- Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
"Sprung from pure flamenco, Manuel Liñán exudes purity from himself and his dance - he is life, freshness and passion." Leaving aside the need for a better copywriter, or at least translator, what does this, the opening line of the flamenco performer's biography in the programme for the Sadler's Wells Flamenco Festival, tell us about him? That he's not afraid of making big claims, certainly. That he may have a teeny bit of a god complex ("sprung from"? Like Athena from Zeus's head?). That he wants to establish beyond doubt his connection to a tradition, and his right to Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
The Sadler's Wells Flamenco Festival is cunningly scheduled for that particularly dreary fortnight in late February when winter has been going on forever, spring is still just out of reach, and half term brings the dismal realisation that we're only just halfway through the school year and summer holidays are still at least five months away. When you're longing to be somewhere else, there's nothing like flamenco, a raw, gritty music-and-dance form born among the dispossessed of southern Spain.It's come a long way since then, of course, and the flamenco stars imported by Sadler's Wells are no Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
When you're talking about dancers, the old adage about genius being 99% perspiration has a point. You have to work damned hard just to be average in professional dance; to be good, like Akram Khan and Israel Galván are good, takes sweat (and tears and blood, like as not). Still, all the perspiration in the world won't avail if you don't have that 1% of inspiration, a little blue flame of a pilot light in your soul, ready to spark the gas jets of hard work into fiery life, rather than just a lot of hot air.This show works because Khan and Galván are inspired. The premise is pretty simple: let' Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Akram Khan is unexpectedly softly-spoken. Acknowledged as a truly great dancer, he's a master of the classical Indian Kathak form that he trained in, and also supremely gifted at blending it with other movement vocabularies to create a personal signature style of elemental force, He creates hypnotic worlds in his pieces, with the kind of magnetic stage presence that draws you in so completely, you're often a little amazed, when the curtain drops, to find yourself still a perfectly ordinary human being sitting in theatre seat. Somehow, I expected this aura and gravitas to be matched by Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Thirty-year-old Rocío Molina has been rattling cages in the hide-bound world of flamenco. Back home in Spain, gloom-mongers are predicting she’ll bring down the art form with her brazen, off-the-leash excursions from its honoured tropes. Her shows are popular. And the fluorescent four-inch heels and electric bass guitar that feature in her latest – brought to London for three nights by Dance Umbrella, following a storming reception in Seville – will have done nothing to reassure traditionalists.Not one of the scenic or sartorial elements we’ve learnt to expect in theatre-mounted Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Dance as an art form doesn’t have a great track record in social and historical commentary. The endless grey areas, not to mention the complicated details, of history really require words to do them justice. Flamenco, of course, has words, but it’s still a highly emotive art form, one you might think unlikely to produce a subtle take on the theme of homeland. But 72-year old Paco Peña is not only one of the greatest living flamenco guitarists, he’s also a great producer, putting on thoughtful shows with wonderful performers from other traditions, seemingly revelling in the artistic richness Read more ...
Matthew Wright
With their self-conscious blend of flamenco, Latin and pop creating the improbable-sounding Catalonian rumba, the Gipsy Kings, who played to an ecstatic Royal Albert Hall last night, are one of the pioneers of the world music genre. Their contribution has just been recognised by the Grammys, where they shared this year’s World Music prize (with Ladysmith Black Mambazo) for their new album Savor Flamenco.Formed from two groups of brothers, the Reyes and the Baliardos, who celebrate 25 years together this year, they now live in Provence, but both families are originally from Spain. The Reyes’ Read more ...