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EVA YERBABUENA
"El huso de la memoria"
October 6th and 7th, 2006. 9:00pm.
Teatro Lope de Vega
Special 14th Bienal de Flamenco de
Sevilla. Reviews, programa, photos...
Eva
Magdalene
Dance, choreography and direction:
Eva Yerbabuena.
Dance: Patrick de Bana, Aida Badía, Edu Lozano (guest
artists), Mercedes de Córdoba, Sonia Poveda, Choni,
María Moreno, Mariano Bernal, Eduardo Guerrero, Juan
Manuel Zurano, Alejandro Rodríguez. Musicians: Paco
Jarana (author of the music), Manuel de la Luz, Enrique
Soto, Pepe de Pura, Jeromo Segura, Rafael de Utrera, Efraín
Toro, El Pájaro, Ignacio Vidaechea. Aforo lleno.
JUAN VERGILLOS
This is a show of brief moments, of details. Which,
paradoxically, doesn’t preclude a story line. If the
issue is memories, aren’t memories fragmentary after
all? Snippets of reality or fantasy poured out by time.
Fantasies or memories the dancer used to seek inspiration,
without trying to give it to the audience as a lump sum,
nor with inappropriate theatrical language as in her two
previous shows, but rather transformed into dance movements.
Her dance. Long moments: her three appearances. Three-hundred
years. Short moments, the interludes of saeta. Those parts
of the show with the group were more conceptual, although
I couldn’t grasp the concepts. I’ll think about
it the next time I read Proust. All it reminded me of, who
knows why, was classes, the dancer’s beginnings in
dance schools and companies. Jealousy and friendship. Mostly
the former, to tell the truth. Eva the dancer, is a withdrawn
woman, solitary, distracted, wrapped in a happy sort of
melancholy.
The group is very disciplined and also very rigid, with
some odd curiosities. But since the other part was coming,
Eva, solid gold, I got over it quickly. The gold: first
a few particles, those scattered by Aida Badía in
the saetas. Powerful and intimate, full of pain, Pepe de
Pura. ponderative, uncontrolled, weeping, the dancer. And
then Eva.
The stage was divided in two parts, dividing the dramatic
from the musical. The instrumentalists were behind a translucent
screen. Nevertheless, there was great communication within
the group. What a strange and distant truth is Eva’s.
So much joy in her arms. The mirabrás was an explosion
of life that reminded me of paintings of the old cafés
cantantes. The lady in bata de cola. So much eloquence in
a shawl. Majestic, powerful. A true queen. The flute as
a sort of retro touch: it has aged worse than the bata de
cola and the flower in the hair. In the nana she touched
my heart, and I have to admit, I wept. Not because of the
song, a lullaby to a dead child. It wasn’t that. It
was the total abandon of the interpreter. It was a pas de
deux with Patrick de Bana. She was in another world. He
was airborne, lost in the heights, unto himself. And nevertheless,
the communication was total. Although what they communicated
was isolation, loneliness, depression, bitterness. Eva was
the mother, the madona, the neolithic goddess of fertility.
Also the lighting and wardrobe, emphasizing the large breasts
of a mature woman. Her broad mother’s hips. I have
to admit it. I love the apparently careless way this woman
dresses. It’s very Eva, it goes well with these landscapes
of abandon in pure dance, the moment. Melancholic honey.
With the bees and the wax. A disorganized spectacle, lacking
scenic direction and narrative pace. Yes, it’s true.
So what? I’m tired of seeing sterilized shows in this
festival. The poet is a pretender, it’s true. But
when you have truth up there on stage. Truth is truth. Let
the other thing stop. It’s one thing to come out of
the theater smiling to forget everything you saw with the
first sip of wine. And quite another to have the feeling
deeply inside for two days. And this has happened only twice
since the festival began. Or at least it’s only happened
to me twice. With Tábula Rasa, and last night. An
ungainly Eva. Eva all the way. I ask for nothing more, but
I’m glad she’s gotten rid of the actors and
awkward stage sets for El Huso de la Memoria. Unkempt, that’s
how Eva dances in the kitchen at home while she prepares
a pot of soup with “hierbabuena”, or mint. It’s
the highest praise for someone we admire so much. Unkempt
and perfect.
And the soleá. I’ve already said everything
there is to say about Eva’s soleá, I can’t
add anything. Purely in the present. Circular. A place where
absolutely everything makes sense, a place for everything,
and everything in its place. A gift that goes beyond her
technical command, overwhelming, but always at the service
of expression (perhaps the former, the technical command
which is above emotion, isn’t really what it seems).
Her way of making us feel the dramatic pace. The soleá
is everything, happiness and desperation, death and life.
Fertility. Time, memory. The music, that “strange
form of time” according to Borges. Simple awareness
of time. The language of the soul. The very intimate music
for the pas de deux becomes a pas de trois with Paco Jarana,
and Pepe de Pura makes four. Music joins them por soleá,
with Pepe de Pura, Rafael de Utrera, with the wonderful
Enrique Soto. The moments in slow motion underline the passage
of the hours. Stopping the clocks. Eva also remembered the
cave, the insolent ways of Sacromonte. A date with erudition
or a tribute. Parody and declaration of love. Excessive
and distilled. Subtle and coarse. Great and diminutive.
Eva is everything, all of that is what her dancing transmits.
Impossible to do more. And ask more, why? Eva is doing her
thing and arrives, will arrive, when we least expect it.
Eva is a princess who sometimes pricks her finger on the
spinning wheel and falls asleep for a hundred years. I ended
up with new tears in my eyes and the audience cheering,
from love, from desire, from pain, from hate, from pleasure,
from everything. Did I mention this is a show about the
family and maternity? Consider it mentioned.
Remedios Amaya / Capullo
de Jerez
Friday, October 6th, 2006. 11:30pm Hotel Triana
Text: Estela Zatania
Remedios
Amaya and Capullo
de Jerez are two charismatic figures whose popularity
transcends mere music. She is from Trana with roots in Extremadura,
and he, from one of the most typical neighborhoods of Jerez,
each one with their respective diehard following, which
is neither the Antonio Mairena group, nor fans of flamenco
rock. They share an audience of Camaron fans who discovered
flamenco in the nineteen-seventies when it ceased to be
the private domain of old people and smokey back-rooms.
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Remedios, the young girl who triumphed with her rumba song
“Compasión”, disappeared from the stage
after a humiliating defeat at Eurovision, and years later
made a comeback thanks to a recording with Vicente Amigo.
She came to the patio of the Hotel Triana with her group
that included her sisters, Joaquína, Carmen and Marta
doing chorus and palmas, Luis Carrasco and Alejandro Amaya
on percussion and her regular guitarist Juan Diego from
Jerez. Despite her opening greeting “I’m a Triana
girl, through and through”, Remedio has a repertoire
rich in Extremaduran cante, and people from that area have
a weakness for mining cante. The singer began with her personal
interpretation of cartageneras, followed by “Camino
de la Feria de Zafra”, a sort of Extremaduran bulería.
She kicks off her shoes for the tangos which are up next,
and sings her “canastero” style – these
tangos have little to do with those of Cádiz –
without amplification. The patio is filled to overflowing
when she gets into bulerías again, this time with
her outbursts of dance, and the show ends with more bulerías
from her sister to finish up.
People continue to arrive, locals, nationals and foreigners,
many of whom have raced over from the Lope de Vega theater
where Eva Yerbabuena was dancing, so as not to miss these
other stars. Capullo de Jerez is received with a warmer
than usual ovation and starts out dedicating his performance
to “all the children of the world”. Bulerías
and tangos form the basis of festive cantes of Remedios
and Capullo – if she adds mining cante, he always
starts out with bulería por soleá from the
original soundtrack of his creative mind. With Niño
Jero junior on guitar, he continues with fandangos. The
singer is hoarse but the program doesn’t vary, and
that’s just how his fans like it, besides, there are
always new verses and spontaneity within the fixed formula.
Tangos and bulerías, the little dance, and see you
next time. Capullo is the same as always, in the best sense.
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