All the information IX Festival de Jerez

“Espartaco”. Dance: José Porcel, Celia Pareja, Elena Martín, Javier Palacios, Julio Príncipe, Leticia Calatayud, Josué Vivancos. Guest artist: Francisco Velasco. Choreography and artistic director: José Granero. Director: José Porcel.

“Dos mujeres, dos miradas”. Dance: Alicia Márquez, Soraya Clavijo. Guitar: Manuel Pérez, Paco Iglesias. Cante: David Lagos, Pepe de Pura, Rosario la Tremendita.

Text: Estela Zatania

In creative writing class there used to be a teacher who always made a big thing about the importance of avoiding mixed metaphors. A script based on a story about gladiators set in the Nazi era and expressed via Spanish dance would have earned its author a failing mark and a visit to the headmaster for remedial instruction. But even this outlandish proposition we saw Sunday night at the Villamarta theater could have been granted suspension of disbelief had “Espartaco” by the young dancer José Porcel exhibited an acceptable artistic and staging level. It’s no pleasant task to have to criticize the sincere efforts of sincere people with a long curriculum, but glory would have been theirs had they hit the mark, just as surely as they deserve to be admonished. “Espartaco” came across as a satire of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” done by an amateur theater group with insufficient funding.

After the first scene, in the darkness of the theater, illuminating with your cell phone as best you can, you quickly fumble for the program to skim for the identity of the culprits responsible for all this and you see: “Artistic director: José Granero, Director: José Porcel”. We don’t know much about Porcel, but it’s incomprehensible that a respected veteran like Granero who two decades ago created the brilliant Spanish dance work “Medea”, didn’t give better counsel to this young dancer who spends the hour and a half of the show bare-chested, like an Iberian Sylvester Stallone, revealing hours of drama class, not to mention his abs, and scant time in dance class.

This festival is turning out to be a veritable time machine: if Saturday we were transported to planet Belén Maya/Rafaela Carrasco, year 2068, Sunday it was San Francisco, USA, 1968. Even two brief moments of recorded cante in the voice of the late Indio Gitano who is not mentioned on the program, were too little and too late to avoid the unfortunate disaster that was “Espartaco”.

Alicia: elegant perfectionist, sweetly arrogant, intimate friend of the “bata de cola” and lovely vision of Andalusian beauty...

At twelve midnight at the Sala la Compañía, it was back to art – discreet but authentic. The stars of “Dos mujeres, dos miradas” are Alicia Márquez and Soraya Clavijo, from Seville the former, and Jerez the latter, and both experienced dancers. On the one hand, Alicia, the elegant perfectionist, sweetly arrogant, intimate friend of the “bata de cola” and lovely vision of Andalusian beauty. On the other, Soraya, internalized and instinctive, dark insinuation and flashes of temperament. With the singing of David Lagos (who’s sounding better all the time), Pepe de Pura and Rosario la Tremendita, the two women open with a long martinete and siguiriya in which they take turns dancing. The stage of the Sala la Compañía is small, but the dancers need no more than a few square feet each to interpret dances that taste of old without being old-fashioned. Alternative tuning on the guitars, so popular these days, adds subtle mystery that enhances the plaintive feel of siguiriyas. First Alicia, then Soraya, light and dark, doing slow motion camera (another successful fashion), and between both dancers, a three-dimensional portrait of a fundamental piece of the flamenco repertoire.

A cante solo on the seventh fret in A position manages the difficulty of combining male and female voices in the same tone, and Pepe de Pura remembers cantes from one of the early recordings of Camarón de la Isla, the singer who triggered a surge in the popularity of tangos. Soraya begins a soleá which soon turns into soleá por bulería, a rhythm she uses to pull off some surprising ‘tricks’ that bring enthusiastic “oles” from the audience. Alicia Márquez brings light to the darkness that dominated up to that point (scant illumination, black costumes), and is a vision of elegance in her white bata de cola with red trim to dance traditional alegrías with the perfection she is known for.

Soraya, internalized and instinctive, dark insinuation and flashes of temperament.

The last number which brought the dancers together in a choreographed bulerías to ‘romance’ rhythm, was anti-climactic. The need to mirror one another’s moves meant the two women were deprived of their respective personalities: Alicia couldn’t show off her sweet subtlety, nor Soraya her temperament, and they were reduced to a “corps de ballet” of two. Nevertheless the discreet recital was a good showcase for two young dancers, and for the famous “escuela sevillana”.

Not far from the Sala la Compañía, at the peña Sordera, Jesús Méndez, nephew of La Paquera and one of the most promising young singers in Jerez, offered his recital with the accompaniment of another young man on the rise from another distinguished family, Diego de Morao, and all’s well that ends well on this evening which had begun in such a disappointing way.