XII FLAMENCO FESTIVAL DE BERLÍN

Text: Estela Zatania
Photos: Gijsbert Copier

Flamenco 3. Guitar: Ulrich Gottwald “El Rizos”. Cante: Carmen Fernández. Dance: Elena Vicini.
Chanta la Mui. Dance: Olga Pericet Daniel Doña, Marco Flores.

Thursday, the Festival de Berlín changed venue to the luxurious Akademie der Künste with a capacity of 500 people, to receive two very different presentations.

The first, two women and a man: voice, dance and guitar. The second, two men and a woman, all three dancers, with recorded music.It was like a comparative study of the possibilities of a stage with limited personnel and absolute creative freedom. Flamenco 3 is a work that surprises with its elegant simplicity, a sincere expression of contemporary flamenco. What it did NOT have: music or songs not identifiable as flamenco forms, instruments or percussion other than the guitar, props of any kind, a smoke machine. After the extravagant works of recent years, the simple layout inspires fear from the outset: “these people are going to bore me to tears with their minimalism”. But as the show unfolds, it begins to dawn on you: the flamenco that got you hooked in the first place was nothing more than this, a voice, a guitar, compás, and it was always more than enough.

Elena Vicini, Carmen Fernández, Ulrich Gottwald 'El Rizos'

The possibilities of a stage with limited personnel and absolute creative freedom

Serene dancing. Instead of mad speed-ups and dancers whose every pirouette sprays the floor with sweat, Elena Vicini, Italian, seeks out the understated elegant line in a very specific aesthetic, because flamenco dance, like the Andalusian character, is elegant first and foremost. A variety of influences can be detected from the most noteworthy stylists of current flamenco dance, from Farruquito and Belén Maya, to Rafaela Carrasco and even Israel Galván.

Serene guitar-playing. Ulrich Gottwalk “El Rizos”, German, with his flamenco sensibility, and knowledge that reveals the extraordinary affection that counsels each note he plays, has a classic style with the perfectly assimilated contemporary details that his youth requires.

Daniel Doña, Olga Pericet, Marco Flores

Serenity in the singing. Carmen Fernández, from Utrera but living in Germany for the last twenty years, has not forgotten the essence. She’s known cante since childhood, it’s inside her, and she has that classic Utrera delivery of the clean, sincere voice, without any kind of special effects. Malagueña with abandolao serves as a pretext for bulerías, a petenera is sung standing in profile to the audiene, as if to throw off the evil spirits (some suspicious sort always leaves the premises when petenera is sung) and soleá por bulería. The show ends as discreetly as it began as Carmen ambles off singing to herself: “La música me atrapa, sus notas me lastiman, de mi garganta sale, una corona de espinas” (‘Trapped by the music, its notes are painful, a crown of thorns comes out of my throat’), an especially apt verse to end with, because the three do not overshadow the music at any moment, but rather let themselves be carried away by flamenco. With no tricks or special effects, putting contemporary forms to the service of tradition, these artists prove that no one needs to feel squeamish about the presence of foreigners in flamenco any more, it’s an unavoidable reality, the natural outcome of a half-century of globalization.

The second part of the program was a work presented in London last year, “Chanta la Mui”, of Olga Pericet, Daniel Doña and Marco Flores, three young maestros with a show that is original and intelligent, polished and professional, and has almost no flamenco at all. A rigurous post-modern aesthetic which yearns to be contemporary, although to a contemporary dancer it might even seem outdated, comes off as novel or ill-advised, depending on your personal critera, for having been included in a flamenco festival.

Olga Pericet

An ascetic, cerebral projection which manages never to cross over into coldness thanks to the abundant talent of the three young stars

A palette of colors mainly limited to black and dark gray, with the obligatory splash of electric red in a bata de cola of Olga’s, with feathers to match that fall from on high, can become tiresome, not so much due to the lack of visual stimulation, but because of what seems like the dancers’ intense desire not to be accused of committing flamenco. You miss the human voice. With the shining exception of a recorded martinete in the voice of Manuel Agujetas which momentarily relieves the absence of abandon, the rest is an ascetic, cerebral projection which manages never to cross over into coldness thanks to the abundant talent of the three young stars. Their extreme competence makes you accept the show for what it is: an impeccable theatrical dance show which does not pretend to offer flamenco. In fact, the farruca danced by Marco Flores, winner of the highest dance prize at the last Córdoba contest, the most conventional interlude of the work, almost seemed out of place given the tone of the rest of the show.

Noteworthy moments include a sort of “bullfight suite” which pokes fun at the cliché of bullfighting, another number is done to Middle Eastern music, French chanson is the musical motif for a cabaret dance, another bit has the three dancers with minuscule red fans, and Olga has a fascinating choreography that makes effective use of robotic movements.

It would be ridiculous to say “this is no good because it isn’t flamenco”, however I do hereby declare “this is outstanding and it’s not flamenco”. Presumably one cannot prove a negative, so it’s not up to me to provide proof. However, the concept that the presence of cante and compás turns everything into flamenco, and the absence of same purges all trace of flameno, continues to hold water. The work was a resounding success with Berliners.

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