Javier Barón reopens Seville's Torre de Don Fadrique

Sara Arguijo
Photos: Antonio Acedo

Baile: Javier Barón Cante: Antonio Campos and Miguel Ortega. Guitar: Juan Campallo. Bajo: José Manuel Posada. Percussion and palmas: Israel Katumba and Roberto Jaén

With the sky as back-drop

Javier Barón reopens Seville's Torre de Don Fadrique, the venue for ‘Septiembre es flamenco’.

Serving as prologue for the new series ‘Septiembre es Flamenco’ which aims to cover the off-years of the Bienal, and in which the historic artistic heritage of Seville will be highlighted, dancer and choreographer Javier Barón last night reopened the Torre de Don Fadrique which had already been one of the venues for the Bienal decades ago.

The thirteenth century structure, located in the patio of the Santa Clara convent, stands defiantly in an outdoor space in which the stage is surrounded by the 200 seats distributed around a garden where orange trees complete the magical setting.

For the occasion, the dancer revived pieces from early works of his in a program that included martinete, seguiriyas, tangos and alegrías, and this winner of Spain's National Dance Prize had the sole objective of showing the essence of a style of dancing that exhibits masculinity, creativity and mastery.  Nevertheless, possibly due to the peculiarity of the venue, Barón seemed lost most of the time, and distant from an audience that was indeed cold.

Despite images projected on the tower at the start of the show, this ‘Encuentro en el Baluarte’ didn't manage to maintain a dialogue with the surroundings, not in the lighting nor the staging which gave the feeling of being in any standard theater, with only the sky to remind us otherwise with a sunset that surpassed any manmade set.  We missed the complicity with the artist, and got distracted in the neverending interludes.  It's hard to build art upon art, and this time the work of the dancer from Alcalá was swallowed between the walls.

---