Festival Flamenco Nimes 2012. Israel Galván 'La Curva'

A STRANGE COLDNESS

Text: Estela Zatania
Photos: J.L. Duzert

Dance and choreography: Israel Galván. Piano and composition: Sylvie Courvoisier. Cante jondo: Inés Bacán. Compás: Bobote.

Last night at the Theater of Nimes Israel Galván’s most recent work, “La Curva” was presented.  Currently, Galván is the undisputed number one of men’s flamenco dance.  He is a well-known international dance star, his name easily fills the largest venues and his work receives the funding of Spain’s Instituto Andaluz del Flamenco.

So how come I left the theater hankering for flamenco?  After fifty years of seeing, hearing and enjoying all kinds of flamenco, good, bad and in-between, I am incapable of detecting its presence in “La Curva” when Israel dances, except for some brief moments.

 “La Curva” is an additional turn of the screw of “Tábula Rasa”, another Galván work.  About that show I wrote five years ago: “…a work that was taken out of its creator’s mental oven way too soon before it was finished cooking”.  Now we have “La Curva” with a similar layout…the piano, the unaccompanied voice of Inés Bacán, the absence of guitar.  And sure enough, the idea is more developed, but in my opinion the result is equally incomplete.

Galván is magnificent, no doubt about it.  His technical ability, speed, clarity and extraordinary creativity are worthy of the greatest praise and admiration.  But genius does not define flamenco.  What then does?  I’m not about to lay down limits, but here’s what philosopher John Dewey theorized about the nature of what we call “style”:  “By style is meant the constant form […]. The undefined pervasive quality of an experience is that which binds together all the defined elements” (The Concept of Style, Berel Lang).  What might be the elements that define flamenco?  From my absolutely subjective point of view, compás is one of them, if not indeed the most important one when it comes to dance.  So that’s what Bobote is for, right?  The best guarantee, you bet.  But his participation is extremely limited.  And when he does take part, your lungs suddenly fill with flamenco oxygen and the collective relief is palpable.  Thing is, the duendes are reluctant to be seen when there’s no compás.

But doesn’t any artistic endeavor justify itself, regardless of arbitrary definitions?  Let’s say for a moment it does, but not even then does “La Curva” come off as flamenco.  I found it produced an abstract feeling of coldness that is uncharacteristic of flamenco.  Depressing in spite of some comic details that Galván always likes to insert.  It’s as if the dancer wanted to overcome a dislike of the traditional flamenco with which he was inculcated from a very young age, via an extended personal demonstration.  Last year in an interview Israel declared:  “I like to feel like I’m questing for something, I can’t afford the luxury of being bored”.  This is quite admirable and understandable.  But it begs the question: being a genius, why does he not try to find himself within the structures of flamenco?…is this great genre which is a World Cultural Heritage too small for him?

In “La Curva” Israel dances atop a table, José Greco-style, he rolls on the floor in flour or talc raising a great white cloud and getting covered in the fine dust, he uses the singer’s voice not as cante, but as an element of sound, he calls a taxi, he interviews himself changing from chair to chair to be both the interviewer and the interviewee, towers of folding chairs collapse noisily, the ballroom dance of Israel and Bobote…and all the while, a strange drowsy coldness.
 
Another great thinker, Ramón Gómez de la Serna wrote that “to get bored is to kiss death”.  I can’t deny that some moments of “La Curva”, especially during the futuristic piano of Sylvie Courvoisier, had me bored, and I feel obligated to warn followers of traditional flamenco dance that this work might not be for them.  Israel Galván must be seen, but not if you have a hankering for flamenco.