Text: Estela Zatania
Photos: Paco Sánchez
 The eighth day of the Festival de Jerez 2007, and eight more to go. At midday, in the San Ginés bodega, after students received their diplomas from their teachers Matilde Coral, Andrés Marín, Rocío Molina and Rafaela Carrasco, La Farruca presented her show “Gitanas” which is the main dish Saturday night at the Villamarta.
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Edu Lozano
Sala La Compañía. 7:00pm
Dance: Edu Lozano. Cante: Jeromo Segura, Pepe de Pura, Rafael de Utrera. Guitar: Paco Jarana, Salvador Gutiérrez. Percussion: Manuel “El Pájaro”. Palmas: Carlos Grilo.
 Edu Lozano didn’t waste any time getting started at the Sala La Compañía, and began directly, bravely, doing strong footwork to a four by four compás. His posture and countenance project an intensity which is amplified by strong features and diminutive size: he’s a compact ball of flamenco energy. Like other newcomers we’ve seen at the festival, he commits the indiscretion of allowing much too little cante, but his Farruquito-style dance (the family has created the best-established style of current flamenco dance) brings forms and details that are completely original.
An unnamed female dancer interprets guajira with bata de cola, fan and an overdose of cuteness. The contrast is total when the next number is siguiriyas played with the somber sound of a lowered sixth string that so many guitarists use these days. Edu appears in white, which impacts with the same austerity as black, his size obliges him to seek lines that make him grow, and here the singers do get used adequately. After 50 minutes, suddenly, the recital ends, and once again there is mumbling in the audience about being short-changed.
María Pagés “Sevilla”
Teatro Villamarta. 2100h
Dance: María Pagés, María Morales, Sonia Fernández, María del Mar Jurado, Isabel Robdríguez, Anabel Veloso, Rocío Rodríguez, Silvia Moreno, Emilio Herrera, José Antonio Jurado, Alberto Ruiz, Eloy Aguilar, José M. Maldonado, Pedro Ramírez, Daniel Vegas.Voice: Ana Ramón, Ismael de la Rosa. Guitar: José Carrillo “Fyty”, Isaac Muñoz. Percussion: Chema Uriarte. Cello: Batio Hangonyi. I love María Pages’ show, they take me right back to my childhood.Full of color, uncomplicated music, musicians dressed in jacket and tie looking like the Blues Brothers, a make-believe starry sky, fanciful backdrops that change as if by magic, shoes that glow in the dark...All that and more is to be found in the dancer’s new show “Sevilla”.In fact, if you glance at the program notes (I swore never to do that again, but since I got to the theater early....), María explains that this work is a sentimental journey to her hometown, and she “chose dreams as the means of transportation”.
When the curtain goes up, Pagés is already in high gear, spinning around and doing her serpentine arms thing, with the whole company behind.The women are wearing shoes of different colors, that is, each one has one black shoe, and one red one. A couple of group dances follow; throughout the show there are bits and pieces of Shostakovich, Sarasate, Bizet, Carlos Gardel and Juan Manuel Serrat among many others.Guitar and cante, not so much.
This show, which is the official image for Seville in 2006/2007, and received generous financial support from the city government, is laid out like a string of picture postcards, without missing a single cliché. Holy Week, the April Fair complete with sevillanas, the flamenco tablao where María dances caracoles with shawl and fan, the bullfight, the old palace... Like every show that comes out of the Pagés factory, it’s good theater, apt for all audiences except flamenco fans.In addition to the caracoles performed as a retro detail, there are brief moments por soleá, tangos without music to represent the ambience of old Triana, even a saeta backed-up by four cajóns for the Holy Week segment; sketches to evoke ambiences without delving deeper. There are moments that come very close to being tacky, but the impeccable theater instincts of María Pagés, and the good taste of the people she surrounds herself with, manage to keep the level up, and each detail is lovingly cultivated and elaborated, including the original wardrobe inspired in a harlequin or surreal motif.
Esperanza Fernández
Bodega Los Apóstoles. 12 midnight
 At the Bodega Los Apóstoles, after the complimentary glass of sherry, Esperanza Fernández took over the stage with her brother Paco on guitar. Standing, wrapped in one of her magnificent shawls, she sang an original version of farruca, a form which seems to be enjoying small comeback lately. She sits down and gets right into a varied buffet of abandolao cantes, without first passing through malagueñas, and why not? It’s a short jump from the folkloric compás of verdiales to the compás of bulerías, a cante better suited to Esperanza’s heritage, geography and temperament.
She pays tribute to Fernanda with her soleá, and follows up with alegrías. But alegrías from Cádiz, not the usual Pinini cantes she commands so well, and any flamenco fan from Cádiz would have approved. In siguiriyas on seven “por medio”, she makes some concessions to commercialism that deform the cantes. Tangos de Triana, with an authentic taste of oldness, incluldes some styles from Extremadura and others from Jerez. Anthological bulerías to end, and throughout it all, Paco Fernández right on the ball with his respectful and enriching accompaniment, very flamenco.
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