Estévez y La Moneta. Jueves Flamencos Cajasol

Dance: Rafael Estévez, Fuensanta “La Moneta”.  Cante: El Galli, Miguel Lavis. Guitar: Miguel Iglesias, Paco Iglesias. Palmas and compás: Patricia Guerrero, Eduardo Leal

Text: Estela Zatania
Photos: Remedios Malvarez

REINVENTING THE FLAMENCO COUPLE

Partnered flamenco dance is a thing of the past.  But someone forgot to tell this to Rafael Estévez and Fuensanta la Moneta who decided to reinvent the genre supported by the considerable weight of their respective personalities.

The fascination with two perfectly synchronized dancers moving like a mirror image of one another, which had always been the basis of flamenco dance couples such as Antonio and Rosario, José Greco and Nana Lorca or Antonio Gades and Cristina Hoyos, doesn’t interest these two young people.  Perhaps because their styles are so different: Fuensanta, from Granada, with the fast and furious dance of Sacromonte, and Carmen Amaya always looking over her shoulder, counselling each move; Rafael, remembering the past in his own particular way, looking towards a different but genuine sort of flamenco, with reflections of Israel Galván’s geometry.  Convention and experimentation.

Physically, they’re not bookends either.  She is thin and brown, he is on the husky side with a pale complexion.  So it’s even more fascinating to see how the perfect chemistry they achieve, based on mutual admiration and a shared vision, makes their collaboration the most interesting event to surface in flamenco dance in several years, despite the scandalous lack of interest on the part of programmers of major festivals.  Which in turn makes you realize the future of flamenco in general depends more on economic and political interests than artistic ones.

For this reason there are no plans to continue this work of Estévez and La Moneta which debuted last summer at Granada’s Corral de Carbón, and signed off with this performance at the Jueves Flamencos, so I feel privileged to have been able to attend this unique event.  It was a small format presentation: two dancers, two singers, two guitarists and two people doing palmas.

The program says “alegrías, tonás, siguiriyas, granaína y malagueñas, abandolaos, rumba, tangos, tientos, colombiana, soleáres and corridos”, and that’s just what they did, with no whistles and bells, no staging other than the classic semicircle of musicians and the dancers in the middle.  Not one weak moment, not one glance at the watch.  These people look to historic maestros who went before them, so their boundless creativity and high technical level are at the service of artistic sensitivity and good taste.  The most admirable thing is each one manages to communicate a particular message without upstaging the other, dancing together but individually, reinventing and breathing new life into classic forms.

Rafael has the most interesting arms and hands of any flamenco dancer today, and the surprising capacity to pull off moves normally associated with women’s dance, while keeping in masculine character.  He is the more daring of the two, saying more with less while she says less with more, but in the end they compensate each other mutually and perfectly, and it all comes out right.

Normally, flamenco dance to non-rhythmic cante becomes little more than a narcissistic exercise.  But the granaína and malagueña of Rafael offer the opportunity to contemplate and admire his fascinating catalogue of moves.  Abandolao cante wraps it up, and Estévez disappears into the wings with no music, slicing the air with his hands, carrying off the compás as he goes.  Also noteworthy is the tientos tangos of Fuensanta, Granada native that she is, it couldn’t be any other way, and they toná siguiriya the two share.  The face-to-face duet to a 12-beat compás with no music or singing, sitting in profile, used to preface soleá and classic romance, synthesizes the beautiful communication they so effortlessly construct.

Kudos for the singing of Miguel Lavis and el Galli, for the outstanding guitar-playing of Miguel and Paco Iglesias and for these brave young dancers, Rafael and Fuensanta, who dance as if their lives depended on it.