 Marco Flores “De Flamencas”
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Text: Estela Zatania DOUBLE TRIUMPH OF CLASSIC FLAMENCO Fifth day of the Festival de Jerez, the spring weather is holding and the good flamenco too. Yesterday, we had an authentic banquet of flamenco to satisfy any follower of the genre. You didn’t need to study the program, nor force yourself to have an open mind, and nobody said “get with it, this is the year 2012”. Nothing. You just slipped into your seat and let yourself be carried away by the intense emotion triggered by cante, dance and guitar. Miguel Lavi Video I “discovered” him in 2008 here at the Festival de Jerez. Just when we were all moaning over the shortage of young talent in Jerez cante, this singer from the San Miguel neighborhood appeared out of nowhere, gave his best performance, ripped our souls apart and for all practical purposes, returned to anonymity. These are not propitious times for traditional cante, but Miguel Lavi doesn’t give up that easily. Fortunately.
Yesterday evening at the Palacio Villavicencio, he began his recital singing well but holding back a bit in a series of tonás with the authentic flavor of his neighborhood. Accompanied on guitar by Manuel Parrilla, he went on with tientos, a bit more laid-back, chewing every syllable. Will the magic flow as it did four years ago? These are things that not even the singer knows. In malagueña his voice was painfully sweet and things began to look promising. In the bulería por soleá, or bulería pa’escuchar as they say here, Lavi started to sizzle and the audience shouted out encouragement. The ease with which he phrases the verses, and the iron-clad compás reflect his years of experience singing for dance. Lengthy applause. In siguiriyas the duende reared its head and Lavi showed flashes of the best sort of madness, adding dimension, and standing our hair on end in the last lap when he closed with “Se lo pío a las estrellas…”. Bulerías brought us back to planet Earth, and the enraptured audience would not let him leave the stage without a fandango encore. MARCO FLORES “De Flamencas ” Video Dance and choreography: Marco Flores, Guadalupe Torres, Lidón Patiño, Ester Jurado. Cante: Mercedes Cortés, Inma Rivero. Guitar: Antonia Jiménez, Bettina Flater. Palmas and dance: Ana Romero. Choreographic collaboration: fandangos and nana, Olga Pericet; tangos, Guadalupe Torres. Original music: Antonia Jiménez. It’s not the first time we’ve seen a flamenco show with a female cast. More than five years ago dancer La Farruca created the work “Gitanas”, but aside from the racial orientation, the guitarists were three men. Now dancer Marco Flores from Arcos de la Frontera has gone one step further with his work “De Flamencas” which includes two female guitarists, the excellent Antonia Jiménez and Bettina Flater, in addition to six women for voice, dance and palmas. In actual fact, when you consider that the sort of “strength” required to play a musical instrument is more spiritual than physical, it ought to surprise us that there aren’t more women playing guitar. Be that as it may, I have to confess I would have enjoyed the contrast of at least one male voice in last night’s show, without meaning to imply that the two women singers were not top notch. Fortunately, in the realm of singing for dance, which until about 40 years ago was another specialty reserved for men, female voices now abound.
A little over one year ago I attended the premiere performance of “De Flamencas” at the Córdoba festival where three years earlier Marco Flores had managed a historic victory, carrying off the highest dance prizes. The road to last night’s well-deserved success at the Villamarta Theater has been long and arduous. Throughout the show last night, an unmistakable smile of satisfaction that could not be hidden grew little by little on Marco’s face. This was his definitive coming of age. The audience became more worked up with each dance, and broke into shouting and rhythmic applause at the end. This is the most excited reaction we’ve seen so far in this year’s Festival de Jerez, and the aroma of prizes is wafting in the air. This is a show of dance with no story line, and plenty of singing, the way us flamenco fans like it. There are several group numbers, notably a medley of tangos that includes a wide range of styles, from tientos to marianas, Repompa, Titi, etc…which is when you notice the extreme preparation. In other companies, well yes, they dance all together, but these women, extraordinary dancers all of them, move like a single person even in the most subtle details, indicating a high level of discipline. On the downside, apart from serious problems with the amplification, we’re still waiting for the fashion of scant illumination and black clothing against a black back-drop to lose steam. Noteworthy on the upside is singer Inma Rivero who lends her wall-to-wall flamenconess to everything she touches. And Marco. What can I say about Marco Flores? Elegant to a fault. Possessing impeccable good taste, he is subtle, serene, sober and graceful, defining the phrase “economy of movement”. He danced cantiñas and soleá, but the form is the least of it. This is how people used to dance; no flamenco dancer today says more with less. At times like this it makes you wonder: who is the more creative person?…the one who invents a new language because he can’t find inspiration in classic flamenco?…or the one who discovers a universe within existing parameters? |
