Flamenco Festival USA – Territorio Flamenco (Flamenco at the crossroad)

Text: Mona Molarsky

Careening from kitsch to classic and back

Cante: Carmen Linares, Miguel Poveda, Arcángel, Diego
Carrasco. Dance: Rafaela Carrasco. Guitar: Juan Carlos Romero, Alfredo
Lagos, Jesús Torres. Percussion: Tino de Geraldo. Keyboard:
Juan Alexis Fernández. Bass: José Manuel Posada «Popo».
Chorus: Ana Mari González, Carmen Amaya.

According to African American legend, the intersection of
two roads is a dangerous place. If you wait there at midnight, you
may meet the devil. That's what happened to the great Delta blues-man,
Robert Johnson, or so the story goes. One night, he went to the
crossroads, lent the devil his guitar, and lost his soul.

Flamenco at the Crossroads, the final presentation of
New York’s Flamenco Festival 2005, a star-studded theme party
of sorts, was based on the 2003 album, Territorio Flamenco.
For the recording, flamenco artists had been asked to choose their
favorite works in any musical genre and “turn them into flamenco”,
a contract with the devil you might say. And now four of those singers
were bringing their “projects”, along with other works,
to Carnegie Hall.

It was enough to make anyone dizzy, with performers careening from
kitsch to classic and back with no explanation. Respected singer,
Carmen Linares appeared in a fabulous red gown to sing a tear-jerking
version of La Paloma, then knocked off an adept soleá
por bulerías before joining the cast in a cheesy, Broadway-influenced
number. Arcángel, the heartthrob from Huelva, did a traditional
fandango, a campy rendition of the old standard, La bien pagá,
and a creditable seguiriya, while Miguel Poveda, the young
singer from Barcelona, sang an Argentine tango and a souped-up malagueña.
Last, but certainly not least, Diego Carrasco, the idiosyncratic
Gypsy from Jeréz who transcends all categories with his singing,
dancing, guitar-strumming antics, led the group in a manic alegrias,
then pranced his way through his signature song, Inquilino del
mundo, and finally brought the evening to its climax with his
own, over-the-top rendition of Hello Dolly.

New York audiences have been seeing
this sort of thing on and off Broadway for more than fifty years

In an apparent effort to attract New York's large dance audience,
controversial bailaora Rafaela Carrasco was added to the
musical program. Her peculiar choreography that combines flamenco,
modern, jazz and wigged-out improv turned out to be one of the evening's
more interesting elements. The show opened with Carrasco's piece
Soledades, perhaps in homage to the baroque Spanish poet
Luís de Góngora, whose book by that name is a cultural
touchstone. Since there were few program notes, it was hard to know
the artist's intentions.

Carrasco, in a long, black gown, began with her back to the audience.
Her white arms jutted out in abrupt, angular movements that made
her a witchy caricature of a flamenco dancer. She stamped her feet,
clapped her hands, rubbed them together, then slapped her thighs.
She turned, awkwardly, on one leg, looking like a stork. As time
went on, her movements became weirder and weirder. Behind her, Arcángel
sang the opening notes of a toná. Olé, shouted the
audience, at the end. Carrasco picked up the train of her gown and
walked over to a chair, climbed on top of it and perched there,
hunched over like an autistic child. As a guitar sounded the opening
notes of seguiriya, she rotated on the chair slowly, climbed
down and crouched on the floor.

More than the Soledades of Góngora, Carrasco's
movements evoked Ally Sheedy, the disturbed teenager in that 1980s
American movie, The Breakfast Club. Her performance was
so far outside the norms of theatrical flamenco, I couldn't suppress
a smile. And OK, I'll admit it; I automatically give five points
to anyone, just for being that subversive. But was this a tongue-in-cheek
comment on the narcissistic, deranged behavior of so many in the
theatrical world? A straightforward expression of Carrasco's personality?
Or an effort to embody the esoteric, inward spirals of Góngora?
This reviewer didn't have a clue.

Carrasco's work in later pieces was more ordinary. In Solo
un solo, Miguel Poveda's contemporary take on a malagueña,
Carrasco appeared in street clothes–red high heels, tight pants
and tank top–to do what was fairly standard jazz dancing with an
occasional flamenco touch. New York audiences have been seeing this
sort of thing on and off Broadway for more than fifty years. So,
if Carrasco's trying to break the barriers of convention, she needs
to study her dance history.

Dancing aside, Flamenco at the Crossroads was a sorry
excuse to fill Carnegie Hall. The few well-done, traditional pieces,
all but disappeared under a tide of mediocrity. This production
was terribly miked, making the guitars muddy and undistinguished.
And the staging–if you can call it that–made no visual sense,
with musicians hovering close to the back wall, creating a vast
gulf between artists and audience. All the technical problems could
have been forgiven, of course, had the artistry been sufficient.
But the most dispiriting thing of all was to see so much energy
being poured into what we New Yorkers would call schlock.

Carrasco worked the crowd like an M.C.
at a New Jersey wedding

It's all well and good that some of today's flamencos want to «expand
the territory» of their art. And however they choose to amuse
themselves at private fiestas is their business. But when you bring
a show across the Atlantic and ask an audience to devote their time
and money, you need something of substance to offer.

Diego Carrasco's several vaudeville-style numbers epitomized the
problem. This flamenco from Jerez, who seems to have led a secret
life, sipping rum in the old Cuban dance halls of the Bronx, certainly
has charisma. But so do half the Latino guys in New York.
And, in the nice weather, you can find them singing, dancing and
horsing around in the park. Like so many of the other performers
in Flamenco at the Crossroads, Carrasco seems to believe
that, because he is who he is, anything he chooses to do is automatically
flamenco. This is a tautological argument that–like the doctrine
of original sin–is difficult to refute. Maybe it's best to leave
the semantics and eugenics of flamenco aside and ask instead, is
it art that touches that inner place?

Watching Diego Carrasco dance his way through Naranja y oliva
like Zorba the Greek, I thought that maybe if I'd had three or four
drinks I might be having more fun at his party. But I was absolutely
sober, sitting in Carnegie Hall, in an expensive, velvet seat. And,
as a blond in blue sequins wiggled her hips at Diego, the way doctors’
wives do at conventions in Madrid, I was suddenly very bored.

More than a few people in the audience left at intermission. But
I stayed till the bitter end, a full-cast rendition of Hello
Dolly that pulled out all the stops. Always the showman, Carrasco
worked the crowd like an M.C. at a New Jersey wedding, and passed
the mike. «Hello Dooolly!… Como estás, Dooolly,»
crooned Arcángel. And I wondered just how stupid these flamencos
really thought we Americans were. On the other hand – I reasoned
– after our recent elections, they were probably justified
in thinking whatever they did. To my surprise, the audience applauded
enthusiastically at the end of the show and filed out of the theater
looking–for the most part–content.

With three or four drinks, the party
might have been more fun

A professorial gentleman in front of me, who had evidently never
heard a song performed in anything but English before, looked very
impressed. «Hello Dolly in Spanish,» this academic
Sherlock Holmes mused, and– if it hadn’t been for New York's
anti-smoking laws–he would have taken a puff on his proverbial
pipe. «How interesting. How very interesting!»
If my twelve-year-old daughter had been there, she would have turned
to him and said, in her dead-pan American way, «How very interesting?….Not.»

There's no more truth to the legend of the blues-man and the devil
than there is to most flamenco verses. And yet, there is something
about the tale, an inner truth, that transfixes us. Everyone has
his encounter with his own devil. And everyone should take heed
when they get to the crossroads.

by Mona Molarsky © 2005. All rights reserved..

Photos by Rafael Manjavacas