"A Solas"
Joaquin Grilo
Tuesday, October 3nd, 2006. 9:00pm. Teatro Central

Special 14th Bienal de Flamenco de Sevilla. Reviews, programa, photos...

In the dark

Dance: Joaquín Grilo, Esther Jurado. Musicians: José Valencia, Carmen Grilo, Pablo Martín, Alexis Lefevre, Antonio Montiel, Daniel Méndez, Juan Requena, Fidel Cordero, Joaquín Flores, Carlos Grilo. Script: Teófilo Calle. Stage director: Sebastián Haro.

JUAN VERGILLOS

What a good dancer Joaquín Grilo is. What coordination. What command of technique, and contratempo, and flamenconess. Hips, shoulders, hands, arms. And prodigious feet, quintessential Jerez. Without a doubt the best of Jerez dancing today. In this show he also takes on some new challenges, such as that of dancing soleá with house slippers. What a good singer José Valencia is. Soleá, bulerías... He too faced challenges, such as new melodies, which he managed with plenty of skill. He had to work the low tones, with new melodies and new formulas. He is possibly the best flamenco singer of the current scene.

And what a boring work. In the beginning, when the main character appears as an aging performer (that’s what the program said) I thought he was going to say something. But he didn’t say anything. Or if he did, I didn’t hear it. Confusing story, confusing angst. These are two very different levels of fiction, the one of play-acting and the one of flamenco representation. And the first of the two was confusing and ingenuous. While the second was of overwhelming eloquence. In addition, the play called for depressing lighting that kept us from seeing the evolution of the performers. Esther Jurado, beautiful and dominating the stage, charging it with sensuality and feminine delicacy: wonderful arms, flexible waist. And the music was strong, from Méndez, Martín and Lefevre. But what dragged everything down was, as I say, the story.

It is the countering of a fundamentally abstract language, with narration and a story line. In the first case, the interpreter connects, in his fictional representation of pain or joy, with his personal baggage. In the second case, he has to resort to external factors, characters and invented situations constructed by third parties. It’s funny that when the tendency in contemporary art is to abstraction, when the concept and the essentialism fill the stage, when the narrative is removed from its natural setting (novel, cinema, theater...), flamenco tries to be modern, contemporary, precisely with this self-conscious sort of narration.

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Special 14th Bienal de Flamenco. Program, reviews, photos