Juan Peña “El Lebrijano”. Guitar: Pedro María Peña. Percussion:
Tete Peña. Chorus: Juan Reina, Rosario Amador. Milagros Mengíbar: Cante: Juan Reina,
Manolo Sevilla. Guitar: Rafael Rodríguez. Paco Cepero: Second guitar: José Ignacio
Franco, Miguel Salado. Cante: Elu de Jerez. Dance: Irene Carrasco,
Juan Antonio Tejero. Percusión: Carlos Merino. Palmas:
Luis y Ali de la Tota.
Text & photos: Estela Zatania
Closing night of the Festival de Jerez 2005. At the
last minute Bernarda de Utrera calls in sick and has to be
substituted by Juan Peña “El Lebrijano”
on a program that includes veterans of cante, dance and guitar.
The formal elegance of the Seville
school
Milagros
Mengíbar opens the evening with petenera. The lady
from Triana who thirty years ago won the “Encarnación
López La Argentinita” dance prize at Córdoba’s
Concurso Nacional de Arte Flamenco, appears in a turquoise
blue bata de cola with an embroidered shawl, her hair in a
meticulous bun, discreet make-up and coral earrings. This
is the formal elegance that characterizes the Seville school
as defined for an entire generation by Matilde Coral. In addition
to physical appearance, it is a concept of women’s flamenco
dance that is discreet and restrained, depending almost exclusively
on precious hand and arm movements, and a minimum of footwork
and acceleration – the most eloquent visual expression
of the philosophy “less is more”, and the antithesis
of contemporary flamenco dance centered on footwork, velocity
and what some traditional dancers call “karate moves”.
The ‘bata de cola’ is a basic element for Mengíbar,
and she uses it with assurance and command. Her regular singer
Juan Reina was less worthy of praise with a profusion of inappropriate
half-notes than trivialized the melodies, and an excess of
choreographed caresses between the dancer and singer, something
that has little to do with the minimalism that normally characterizes
the Sevilla school, subtracted dignity from this elegant woman’s
dance.
King of the golden age of the
festivals of the seventies
With
his trademark “trueeeena” Juan Peña “El
Lebrijano” opened his performance accompanied on the
guitar by his nephew Pedro María Peña who is
becoming an outstanding cante accompanist, peppering his traditional
style with modern details in just the right measure. The audience
reception is warm, especially considering that most people
came expecting to find Bernarda de Utrera whose absence is
not mentioned. This singer is capable of offering high quality
flamenco singing but instead opted for his “derivative”
repertoire which left no one happy. His voice didn’t
come together either, and only in the final bulerías,
so different from Jerez style, employing modulations, pieces
of popular song and tongue-twisters, did we get a glimpse
of the singer who used to be the king of the golden age of
the festivals of the seventies.
Milagros Mengíbar returns with a white bata de cola
trimmed in red, and half a rosemary bush decorating her coiffure.
We hear the “tirititrán” of alegraís
and the dancer gives another ‘class’ in correct
handling of the bata de cola. Once again her restrained, quiet
stately and very Andalusian style dignifies a dance we’ve
seen so mistreated in some recent works.
The unmistakable Cepero sound
Francisco López Cepero, good ol’ Paco Cepero,
Medalla de las Bellas Artes in 2004 and lifetime guitar worker,
was in charge of the second part of the program and, in effect,
the closure of the festival. The maestro presented his regular
format of recent years with second guitars José Ignacio
Franco and Miguel Salado and the ‘decorative’
dancing of Irene Carrasco and Juan Antonio Tejero. The voice
of Elu de Jerez was also included for brief moments of cante
that seemed like lost orphans. The long recital, excessively
long for some, was based on bulerías, tanguillo, guajiras,
rumba, colombianas, siguiriyas and tangos among other themes,
with the unmistakable Cepero sound, his eloquent silences
and his most representative variations, stylized and minimalized.
Overall, there was a somewhat deficient sound system, and
lots of down-time between one number and the next made for
an impatient audience. More worrisome, just now when the most
avant-garde contingent is looking for anything to criticize
in classical flamenco and defends aggressive evolution, is
the fact that three respected veterans given the responsibility
of closing out this important festival, were unable to connect
convincingly with the audience despite having provided dignified
performances. Theirs was the task of demonstrating that experimentalism
does not compare favorably to traditional flamenco, but the
mission was not accomplished.
