Sadlers Wells Flamenco Festival 2010: Nuevo Ballet Espanol, Cambio de Tercio

First blood! I am fairly reeling with the lipsmacking anticipation of a ruby-red duende feast. February is a month to sink your teeth into in London, with luscious flamenco treats every week at the Flamenco Festival.

This year Sadler’s Wells claims that it’s the women in the driving seat of flamenco generally, and thus the festival reflects that. This is all well and good, but at the same time the festival programme tells quite a different story: topless dancers, Eva Yerbabuena in a white dress arching her back in the pouring rain, dresses with the fronts cut out, Rocio Molina in a backless mantilla dress. It’s not all of it, but it’s a lot and a big change from previous programmes. I’m all for sexiness, sultriness and sass but you don’t need to add this kind of FHM styling to flamenco – its own sensuality is enough.

However the boys from Nuevo Ballet Espanol would definitely disagree. It seemed a bit strange to open a festival dedicated to flamenco women with a duo of men, Rojas and Rodriguez (albeit supported by four female dancers), and the show was a real camp oddity. I’ve seen NBE once before and it didn’t really ring my bell. It felt a bit cheesy. This time it was definitely more fun, but the cheeseometer was again set to maximum. It’s not deep flamenco, no cante jondo here, but I don’t think it’s meant to be. They say they’re all about mixing old and new and opening flamenco up to new generations: their approach to doing this is to add a Disneyish pop sensibility. It’s cartoonish and brightly coloured, a bit Wizard of Oz. There’s skill and style on display but it’s all too frequently drowned in cheesy showbiz flourishes. The show – entitled Cambio de Tercio, Change of Direction – is described as a departure from the duo’s testosterone-fuelled works of the past. If this means swerving directly past testosterone, through macho and straight on to camp, then this is definitely true.  These guys are the David LaChapelle of flamenco.

I’m not saying it was all bad. The opening sequence – after a bit of unnecessary posing and preening by the boys – featuring the whole company dancing in exact time to the beats of the music, was fast, precise and sassy. The purple and black dresses were simple and stylish. Then a nice piece of stage magic saw the lights snap off on the ensemble, and almost instantly snap back on again in a series of spotlights to show the band, who had materialised at the front of the stage.

The two female singers offered a lovely husky quality to their voices – unfortunately they didn’t offer it often enough, rarely dropping below jet-engine volume and harsh screeching. Fortunately they were balanced out a little by the use of a violin as well as guitars, which thanks to the wonderful violinist added a beautiful depth and richness and emotion – at least for the music. A full drum kit added drama, and the cajon playing was rich and beautiful.

The second piece timewarped us back to Torremolinos in 1975. Rojas was dressed in red trousers with a red checked shirt, and the women in eye-searing hot pink, orange and lime green stripes and frills with fans. It was just way too much. Unintentionally, I think, it did actually start to work when the lighting became all red: it gave the scene a hyperreal, acid-trip feel, Flamenco In Wonderland, which could have been interesting – what happens when you turn all the dials up to 11?  But in general it was like a sherbet saucer: achingly sweet, artificially coloured and frothily insubstantial.

The next sequence, featuring just Rojas, was really enjoyable – he is by far my favourite dancer of the pair. Clad in tight chocolate silk, he showcased fast, furious footwork with impressive control over light and shade. He’s great at drawing the audience in – and when he doesn’t let this slide into cheese, it’s a great place to be.

But then, after we’d been lulled into a false sense of style security, came the horror. The horror. Even now this is seared across my retinas. A choreography with castanets – and the women in cropped, polka dot dresses that were surely designed by Minnie Mouse on crack. They were like Disney toilet-roll dollies. Rodriguez sported tight white budgie-smugglers, a red shirt and waistcoat with polka dots the size of Wagon Wheels.  This is the only photo I could find – it’s slightly blurred but indicates the level of trauma on offer. (You can see it in living colour in the video below – but don’t say I didn’t warn you.) On top of this the choreography was dull, the castanet-playing was just too Costa del Tat and one of the dancers lost an earring: instead of just leaving it or kicking it out of the way she insisted on retrieving it and faffing around with getting it back on – it was distracting. I sat there willing it to end, and soon.

Two forgettable pieces followed, a solo by one of the women and the violinist, which had great potential to be moving, and started well as she appeared out of nowhere wearing a bata de cola made out of roses. But it lacked passion, power and storytelling. Then Rojas and Rodriguez pranced about for a bit in brown leather embroidered chaps, and it felt a bit by-numbers and smug.

Things improved radically as two female dancers  slunk onto the stage in dramatic and beatiful white bata de colas with red underskirts. They looked pretty but also a little unnerving, like snow queens from a Grimm tale – the red like blood. They moved like predatory animals, hunting the males, swishing and flicking their long skirts menacingly, like angry cobras or strange aliens. I’ve not seen bata de colas worked in quite that way before, and it was brilliant. The following section where four of them whirled red and white mantillas around was visually arresting in terms of colour but they weren’t in time enough, so it looked messy.

Next up Rodriguez had another surprise for us, with a fun and inventive piece. It started with the singer doing those funny noises that teachers do for you when you try and get rhythms, singing the shape of the compas and what your body needs to do. It’s hard to describe, you get a lot of “tak-a-tak-a-ta” and “doma doma doma” – if you go to the R&R site they have it playing in the background. He sang and looped it Matthew Herbert-style, building up a fabric of beats and sounds. Then the castanets and palmas and drums joined in, the energy rising with each percussive beat. Then the singers started half singing, half-talking, almost rapping in a sassy way – it was like a disagreement or argument in a rhythm I recognised from somewhere. Rodriguez seemed to dance to their commands or to each part of the argument, ending with a showy-but-fun spin across the stage, doing full 360 turns on his knees. For me this was the only genuine innovation of the show – playing with rhythm, with kinds of percussin, with singers.

The “whoops there go my bloomers” finale we won’t speak of again: the women had to wear gypsy pirate outfits with no top, so their bras were on show. The dancing was forgettable.

So, a patchy performance, with some nice moments, but overall an uneasy mix of cheese and sugar. With rare exceptions, this is not innovation: if anything it’s going backwards. There is talent here, as evidenced by their armfuls of awards, but unless they rein in their cartoonish tendencies, it will remain a bloodless Disney ride.

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~ by aflamenca on February 21, 2010.