Winter 2014-2015 Ball et Review

Flamenco New York by Robert Withers from Review Winter 2014-2105

Cover Photograph by Damir Yusupov, Bolshoi Ballet: Maria Alexandrova and Vladislav Lantratov in Don Quixo te .

©2015 Research Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved. 4 Barbara Palfy – George Dorris 5 Birmingham – David Mead 7 Berlin – Darrell Wilkins 10 Sarasota/Miami – Leigh Witchel 13 New York – Susanna Sloat 14 Toronto – Gary Smith 15 New York – Karen Greenspan 17 StuXgart – Gary Smith 18 Boston – Jeffrey Gantz 20 Toronto – Gary Smith 22 Boston – Jeffrey Gantz 78 24 Isle of Wight – Gary Smith 26 New York – Karen Greenspan BalletReview42.4 28 Washington, D .C. – Lisa Traiger Winter 2014-15 29 Zurich – Renée E. D’Aoust Editor and Designer: 31 LeXer to the Editor – Edward Villella Marvin Hoshino Joel Lobenthal Managing Editor: Roberta Hellman 32 A Conversation with Vida Brown Senior Editor: Robert Withers Don Daniels 85 42 New York Associate Editor: Henry Danton Joel Lobenthal 50 In Defense of Petipa Associate Editor: Sophie Flack Larry Kaplan 59 Boston at FiWy Webmaster: David S. Weiss Susanna Sloat Copy Editors: 64 From Morocco to Armenia Barbara Palf y* Robert Greskovic Naomi Mindlin 66 Elizaveta Pavlovna Gerdt Photographers: 94 Tom Brazil Joseph Houseal Costas 74 A Conversation with Molissa Fenley Associates: Jay Rogoff Peter Anastos 78 City Ballet Summer Robert Greskovic George Jackson Alexandra Villarreal Elizabeth Kendall 85 YAGP 20 14 Paul Parish Nancy Reynolds Photographs by Tom Brazil James SuXon 87 Danspace Project 20 13-20 14 David Vaughan 87 Susanna Sloat Edward Willinger Sarah C. Woodcock 94 Inside Out Cover Photograph Jay Rogoff by Damir Yusupov, 102 Hot Diggity Bolshoi Ballet: Maria Alexandrova and 106 London Reporter – Clement Crisp Vladislav Lantratov 109 Marg ot Fonteyn – George Jackson in Don Quixo te . 110 Music on Disc – George Dorris Flamenco New York the modern so strongly. It’s as if flamenco re - capitulates the history of Western dance and music,fromcourtdancesthroughballet,mod - ern, and postmodern ; from blues to jazz to Schonberg and Cage – within 150 years, some - Robert Withers times within the same performance, some - times through the same performers. In a dusty, sunbeaten clearing in the outskirts A few decades ago, many had strong opin - of a dirt-poor village in Andalusia, a few men , ions on this question, though the urgency women , and teenagers start a rhythmic hand - has faded somewhat as Spanish dance and clapping pattern – the palmas – to a traditional flamenco live and thrive into the twenty- beat and rhythmic form – a compás : tra-tra- first century. Fusion, adaptation, and appro - TRA, tra-tra-TRA, tra-TRA, tra-TRA, tra- priation of other dance styles and traditions TRA . They build energy and complexity, toss - have become the way of the world, especially ing counterpoints of beats against beats, as flamenco travels around the world, even stamping feet and thumping hands on tables though you can still find moments and per - to the accents. Onlookers shout jaleos in ex - formers where the old puro feeling breaks citement. A woman begins to croon a word - through. less song : aiee, aiee, aiee – ahaa-haha-ah . . . In fact, for centuries Spainish dance has a-ah . . . a -ah . been a scene of fusion and appropriation. The That’sournotionofhowflamencolived,be - foreguitars,beforethetavernsandtablaos ,be - foretheperformancesforthewealthyontheir patios, before the gypsy dynasties of dancers, singers, and guitarists – the children growing up through years of practice and apprentice - ship, their stints in ballet companies . Before the stages of Madrid, New York, Buenos Aires, and Tokyo. Before Broadway and the Flamen - co Festival of New York’s City Center, where virtuosic ballet-trained dancers enter spotlit circles as the stage fills with fog. * Troubling, provocative questions seemed to haunt the flamenco of the late twentieth cen - tury : What was authentic ? What was pure ? How can flamenco live, preserving its roots, its soul, its heritage, and how far can it go into our time ? How does it live among artists who surftheInternet ,watchTheRedShoes ,TheBlack Swan , and Crouching Tiger at the movies ; see Antonio Canales. (Photo: César Moreno Linde) the Russian companies, Balanchine’s , National of Spain is not real - and a panoply of global dance styles and tra - ly a ballet company. You will certainly see ditions? The Broadway show Flamenco Puro of that look like European ballet coming 1986 was a grand gesture toward furthering from this company, but also versions of so- this discussion. called “Spanish classical ” styles – the escuela Perhaps there is no other art form where bolero, flamenco, and regional dances like the we can feel the tensions of the traditional and Aragonese jota . This particular company was 42 ©2014 Robert Withers Carlos Rodríguez. (Photo: Jesús Vallinas) in fact founded in 1978, by Antonio Gades, a Canales, virtuoso Carlos Rodríguez , young flamenco choreographer and virtuoso . masters Karime Amaya and Jesús Carmona. A Individual dancers/creators continue to dancer has glitter on his black pants , but glit - emerge from local and national Spanish dance ter flamenco is nothing new. styles and traditions, as they have for a few Exquisite, virtuosic rhythmic technique, centuries. When a flamenco show visits New more purely percussive than the traditional York, especially at Broadway venues, you melodic aires , take us back to origins. Fog ma - know it will first of all be a show, with the fla - chines make the stage appear exotic , lighting menco flavor up for grabs . from above by David Perez creates tall sculp - * turalconesoflight,eachisolatingaperformer The City Center’s Gala Flamenca is a quin- at the stage level. Raised arms writhe in sil - tessence of big-stage, Broadway- and opera- houette, then blur in speed. house-style theatrical flamenco, beginning There is a newness to this stripping away: with the dramatic pools of light that silhou - the solo dancer surrounded by darkness that etted from above the individual dancers in the exacerbates the risk of the solo without the blackness as they each solo to the individual support of the ensemble or even onlookers. cantaors .Thiswasdefinitelypuro ,ifnotantiguo The spare staging heightens the virtuosity – until the machinery begins to fill the stage and of the dancer/creator – with fog, and an unseen violin soars above alone, apart from any orchestra or company, it. the origin of all music and sound. The puro Spare yet intense staging modernizes; the impulseinthesong,thedrum,thepalmas takes violin romanticizes. Four principals join the over. stage with balletic turns: maestro Antonio Then cantaors and cantaoras appear, singing winter 2014 –2015 43 a capella to their solo dancers, one on one, a tradition, piece together bits and routines out partnership of intimacy and engagement, be - of the basic vocabulary . We see nothing spec - yond the usual forms of background song or tacular or surprising ; it’s a familiar flamenco dance adornment. groove. The lights come up and Antonio Canales be - Theintermixingofsong,dance,andtheper - gins to channel a romantic poet in his fifties , sonalcreateonethemeofthisgala.RocioBazán recites a long , laughing , sighing text, a recita - is a maestra of traditional flamenco and a tion with the rhythms and emotions of song. famed interpreter of Manuel de Falla’s El Amor Hebeginstodance –themaestro –easily,light - Brujo. Staged as some kind of flamenca singer - ly, playing with us, tossing off wry, quirky, ec - star , she reclines resplendent on a couch, at - centric (but always flamenco) gestures. Cana- tended by flamenco beauties . Then she grad - les ,alwayshisownman,hisownartist,works ually rises – you think she will dance – and comfortably between flamenco and theatrical becomes a force of song. Although “Senora ,” styles. a kind of Euro/Spanish torch song , is an odd Melodic instruments in contemporary fla - choice. Was this picked to target the New York menco, even playing the classic rhythms and Hispanic contingent in the audience? They go chord changes, wander into strange and com - wild for her . plex chords, modern chords, away from the Carlos Rodríguez , in his thirties , first com - classic melodies, but never lose the feel. Back pels with his elegance of simply sitting in si - in the twentieth century, guitar maestro Paco lence. We can’t take our eyes off him. Rising, de Lucía made purists uncomfortable with his he begins to show his tricks, explodes into excursions into jazz collaborations; now the energy,astounds withhis heelwork, shows off colors of jazz tonalities have firmly inserted his theatrical personality, grinning and nod - themselves into the flamenco mainstream, dingtothecrowd.Whyshouldn’thebepleased without changing its fundamentals. with himself? He’s a peacock in red shoes, red After a little fusion and theater, we are sud - cummerbund, red tie, khaki coat – a coy Euro- denly back into a traditional, light-hearted guy dazzling with his long legs and technique. caracoles dance .Onawell-litstage,threeladies He poses and pirouettes, the violin carrying inredwhirltheirlong-tailedtheatricaldress - him, and then he spins off into his own mo - es, the exaggerated trains called batas de cola . mentum, jittering, stopping , showing Broad - The soloists double each other, as in ballet or way how to strut. The crowd loves him. jazz dance. For this standard number, the tra - Yes, dancers can do this. But what do we ditional ensemble of musicians , palmeros , and feel? He’s worked so hard, he’s having a good singers ranges across the back of the stage. time, he’s got amazing moves, he’s a young IsthereanotherWesternartwhereheritage good-looking man. And that seems more than and family are so strong ? Carmen Amaya was enough for most in this crowd. But we are agreatinternationalflamencostarofthe19 30s missing something – even a hint at duende, and 19 40s and her nieces, granddaughters, that je ne sais quoi of flamenco, a feeling larg - and cousins still command attention, but er than the performer. without her scary Callas-like edge. This year WethinkagainofAntonioCanales ,whosig - Karima Amaya, still in her twenties , carries nals the same self-amusement, the same com - on the tradition with strong, solid, connec - fort on the stage, close to winking, reminding tion to the ground and accomplished tech - us how beautiful he was, toying with the nique, unafraid to show her powerful thighs. moves.Tremendouslycomfortableinhismid - Jesús Carmona, also of Karima’s generation , dle-aged body with a big man’s belly curve , he mountshistraditionalsolos withalivelyspir - does not need to work so hard. it and impeccable technique. These dancers , Flamenco is sometimes about personality their own choreographers in the flamenco as much as technique. In the end, it is a show 44 ballet review Eva Yerbabuena and Eduardo Guerrero with singers and musicians. (Photo: courtesy of EYBF) by pros, everyone swinging off together to the In Lluvía (Rain ), she stages traditional solos, bulerías , the traditional close, as if the compa - duets, and group dances to traditional fla - ny turns the corner to another street in the menco aires , using all the resources of stage - barrio and leaves us behind. craft, fog, lighting, the big spaces of City Cen - Was this about generations, the passing of ter’smainstage.Theyareaspolishedandchal - the torch? A showing of the stars of Spain? lenging as any aficionado would expect. Perhapsthemostpuro andevennuevo moments Yerbabuena also invents flamenco-based, were at the beginning, with the spotlights and modern-inflected choreography that puts fog, the solo virtuosos moving, through styles soloistsandgroupsonstageinadance-theater of their own invention, enacting lone chore - context,withmovesthatshiftfluidlybetween ographies, drumming with their heels, alone flamenco and modernist, expressionist styles. in the dark space as if no one were watching . Lluvía begins with fog and stillness. A huge Then a masterful singer approaches each of black wall towers above the stage. Eva the fla - them, the paired cones of light, the inspired menco star , dressed in a flamboyant red dress, dancers and the singers who inspire them, ac - dances , then stalks away from her own solo knowledging their grace. and physically collapses to the floor, Graham- * like. A few nights after the City Center Gala, Eva Now we see a dozen or more individual Yerbabuena Ballet Flamenco brings her vi- dancersstretchedonthefloor,eachinherown sion,herexperience,andacompanyofskilled, spotlight. Dancers lying on the floor is some - charismatic professionals, to the same house. thing you never see in flamenco. Individual winter 2014 –2015 45 legs shiver, arms float up, two to three others spectacular, heightened, stage artifice of dancers start to move, spring to their knees, Broadway/opera/ballet is visually dramatic , rise on bare feet. Yes it’s flamenco ; no/yes/no but the singers and players seem too far it’s in flamenco bodies. away . We miss their presence and the sur - When they’re in a happy mood, flamencos prising closeness and of singer love to perform for an audience, smile, chal - and guitarist to the dance that can happen in lenge, and reach out with song and dance di - flamenco. rectly to viewer. As soloists or a group, they Meanwhile, Eva the flamenco star shines shift between first-person taking pleasure in darkly inhervoid,rollingoutimpeccable ,ma - the dance and a second-person selling to the chine-like rhythms with her heels. There’s no onlookers. Then there’s that other, darker fla - particular persona left, just a pure avatar of menco mood , when dancers go into their soli - dance. It’s beautiful, admirable, impersonal. tary intensities , courting the flavor of solea , Then lights and music change, and we’re on death and duende . a bright stage in a dance of two . Not a part - Yerbabuena choreographs a strange turn to nering or duet, but a dance of two. A gigantic the dark for this ensemble . The young dancers proptableinvitesinteractions.Flippedonend at first seem mostly self-absorbed in feeling, it becomes a huge door, a wall, a barrier, an enjoying their physical virtuosity until the obstacle. There are hints of a situation and re - choreography begins to still them and move lationship if not a story : Someone is blocked . them toward the back. They stand dead and Someonebangsthemselvesagainstawall .The frozen in darkness, too proud and beautiful rhythmic heelwork of the taconeado is exqui - to be zombies, but facing from darkness into site. the unknown, like statues, a backdrop of Is something going on between these two frozen bodies, while a few still live and dance and does it matter? The abstracted expres - in the foreground. Eva, especially, lives and sionist gestures recall Pina Bausch , but there dances in this foreground. is no conceptual or narrative motor for the in - We sense her mind shifting and seeking be - teraction between the dancers. Does there tween gestures that mime longing or passion need to be? Perhaps this is a kind of post - (though without a narrative context or pre - modern mime, with freely unmotivated ges - text) and those that seem pure explorations tures of feeling that don’t need to connect to of the body . What can we do with arms and relationshipsornarrativeexperiences. Again, torso while keeping the flamenco flavor? The we miss the emotional connection that fla - upper body especially shifts rapidly between menco at its best can make. expressionist modern dance and distinct fla - Then we move on to a new scene, an en - menco hand and arm gestures. Bodies synch semble of a dozen or so dancers, and a switch to the percussion like puppets. to a new gambit: ironic, self-conscious fla - The company clears the stage and Eva and mencoinaclichétavern(butwithperfecttech - a male together/apart in a way nique, of course) . Performers play with fans that is clearly flamenco, with heelwork, with and stools, a wink at clichés ; a female dances thequickstillbodyposes ,butmovingthrough with rolling hips ; a man jokes with a fan ; abstracted, other-than-flamenco poses. Eva , dancers play to each other ; the ensemble does half hidden behind her partner, makes a dou - mirrored steps like a chorus line . At the same blefigurewithfourarms,mirroringandcom - time, this is traditional and knowing, like the pounding movement . fun and funny bulerías ensemble number that Meanwhile the musicians and singers float most flamenco shows close with. It’s choreo - on a platform high above the floor, veiled be - graphed clowning around by superb dancers. hind a scrim, strangely removed – like a mys - The jokes are familiar. teriousdarkcompanyofangelsormuses.This But the show doesn’t end here. Other num - 46 ballet review Israel Galván with singer Inés Bacán and percussionist Bobote. (Photo: Félix Vázquez) bers follow – the also-familiar flamenco mys - know the compás , the traditional rhythm, but terioso moods with Eva (again the solo star he became an international star nonetheless. amid the fog) performing more virtuosic, per - So much for flamenco puro in the 1920s. fect dancing, always admirable. In one num - Galván does know the compás , deeply, and ber, Eva swings the long dress train of the bata pushes both puro and cubist, surreal fla- dicolaso that it swirls and follows her feet like menco forward into the postmodern and the a live animal . In another, Eva enacts a maes - twenty-first century . He reframes the classic tra , a witch, a queen, a goddess. Three singers rhythms and accents, the arms, the straight conjure the goddess out of her body. She seems posture, the curved back so that all is deeply destined to inhabit this persona, the one she familiar yet utterly strange. We see ideas of longs for. dance, ideas about flamenco, but integrated * deeply and seamlessly into the tradition . Israel Galván is thinking about flamenco in For La Curva at Pace University Galván uses the twenty-first century from the ground up, no curtain, no décor, no lighting design, no butwithasenseofflamenco’sownavant-garde fog. We can see through to the unfinished back history. In 1924 in Paris , bailaor Vicente Escu- wall of the stage of Pace’s Schimmel Center, dero presented a cubist/surrealist flamenco, with stacks of chairs, odd and oversized props mixing images of futbol with mim - (including a grand piano ) in the spirit of the icking the sound of falling chairs. His show, Judson Church school of . A La Courbe , introduced Josephine Baker’s jazz huge, rectangular wooden table will serve as dance of the year. Guitarists wouldn’t work a tavern setting for song , an instrument for with Escudero because they claimed he didn’t percussion, a wall , and a risky platform for winter 2014 –2015 47 dance. The high stacks of chairs will fall in through turn-of-the century Parisian mod - crescendos, jarringly, repeatedly until you ernism, the spirit of Satie, Stravinsky – all the cometoexpectit–untillaterwhenyou’vefor - pleasure of a classical virtuoso, but constant gotten and are startled again . surprise, change, invention . He opens up fla - Galván strolls into the playing space with - menco to a bigger universe. out fanfare, moves some furniture around. The spare yet witty stagecraft recalls Carefully, he will pull forward a chair for Inés YvonneRainerandMeredithMonk,andagain Bacán, a solid, mature, old-school gypsy fla - the stagings of Pina Bausch (but not her dance mencafromtheprovinceofSevilla.Shebrings style,notheremotional,overwroughtmoods ). the spirit of “deep song,” of cante jondo , to this There is nothing of Broadway here except the show, the strange old weirdness of melodic bare ambience of A Chorus Line . voice that shifts between vowels and cries be - Flamenco has always inspired composers, tween the quartertones of gypsy modes and fromManueldeFallatoHectorBerlioztoMiles scales , beyond major and minor. Like the Bul - Davis. But nobody plays the piano in flamen - garianchoirsorthroatsingersofTuva,Bacán’s co, or if they do it’s always wrong. Nonethe - music is more modern than we have imagined less, Galván has engaged postmodernist vir - such music could be. tuoso Sylvie Courvoisier as collaborator and This company comprises four strikingly composer, and their collaboration carries you different artists, Inés Bacán the cantaora ; José in and out of musical and dance worlds, JiménezSantiago“Bobote ,” neitherdancernor through Satie, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg , singer, but driving the compás with palmas and back to tender or driving ostinatos that mesh table rapping ; Sylvie Courvoisier , the pi - seamlesslybackintoGalván’spercussiveheel - anist/improviser/composerof twentieth cen - work and Bobote’s hand drumming on the tury and downtown knowledge ; and Israel great table . Courvoisier never quite plays fla - Galván himself, who slips like quicksilver be - menco, but sometimes slides into the tradi - tween flamenco and the modern. tional rhythm of the compás , with tonalities of Galván embodies a consummate flamenco her own invention. technique, building on traditional gestures Thesilencesarejustasimportant :thespare, – especially percussion , handsnaps, body- Morton Feldman-like chords ; the Cagean pre - slaps, teethtaps – turning what we know as pared piano. Not only does Courvoisier get her accents into an amazing tonal/technical mu - hands into the strings of the piano , striking sic. Dancing pure flamenco, modern, post - long, resonant tones, but Galván himself modern, acrobatics, the one style he eschews checks in under the hood for grace notes to is the emotional, expressionist mime, unless his bodily sound clusters, clappings and slap - withirony.Thoughthere’snothingmoreemo - pings. Then Courvoisier/piano and Galván tional than his sudden, attacking lunges pull apart again, piano and heels building to against the solid wooden table, his flailing percussive climax. Yah-hee-JA! ktik kik KAH! windmill arms – you can hear the whipping Kick-a-kick, tic-a-tick-kick KAH! of the air. Say the sound of the heels, tak-see, (You don’t hear it said in New York, but fla - tak-see, and Galván is shouting “Taxi! Taxi !” menco swings. When the rhythm is working in comic passion ; the sound becomes the word you can’t sit still, even if you’re in a standard becomes the sound. orchestral theater seat where all you can No matter how far he ranges, Galván builds twitch is your neck, not your booty. ) from the basic flamenco idiom – a straight Galvánsurrenderstheleadforlongstretch - back, or a bullfighter’s curve, extended sharp es to Bacán, Bobote, Courvoisier, then slides hands and arms, fleeting poses with arms and or crashes back in, dancing in tones from ab - legs, frozen frames in the flow. There are pos - surd, to comic, to deadly serious, to moody es of Nijinsky, long passages through silence, transport, carried by the long ranges of mu - 48 ballet review sical phrases and periods. Not a series of set dancing to classic bulerías . This metaphor pieces, this long symphonic development car - happens instantly, without setup, and is ries you seamlessly through the music of the dropped as casually. Another choreographer dance, the song, the piano, the percussion – might have turned this into a ten-minute set categories and instruments that don’t convey piece. Galván doesn’t waste our time: we get the sweep and scope of this orchestration of it, he’s moves on. movement and sound, the shifting, building, Then without our understanding exactly slowing dynamics. how he got there, Galván mimes a white-face I think of Cirque du Soleil, not because of Pierrot, in thin black , a character from the acrobatics, but because of the constant in - a Cocteau film, wavering to Schoenbergian vention, the shifts between energies and per - sprites in the music. You hear Courvoisier sonalities. It’s remarkable that just these four echoing Stravinsky and Satie, then in a later performers alone on stage, each with a unique passage she plays Stravinsky and Satie out - voice and instrument, can carry the solo en - right,fragmentsfromThe RiteofSpring andthe ergy for so long, playing in solos, duets, trios, Gymnopédies that drive and relax Galván’s passing the lead from one to another. dance, until she slips back into her own com - Moments of song and dance could not be positional flow. more puro , yet stripped away from theater on The shape on the stage floor you thought thebarestage ,theshowseemstobecomemore was a rectangle of light becomes an arena of modern. Or is the bareness of an unadorned sand or dust. Galván kicks , stamps, flails ; the stage our own modernist spectacle? stuff swirls in the light . Suddenly he lunges to For a dance/music piece there is so much the floor – again, never in flamenco – but now quietinthispiece,somuchstillness.Thegrand he’s down in the white dust, flinging it over piano releases single notes that drop like stars his head. into space. Courvoisier’s piano bends to blues, Galván’s black figure is covered with the to a Japanese koto sound, segues into driving white dust or flour, transforming his elegance rhythms, open , free rhythms. Galván moves to the elemental. He pulls Bobote to his feet from still pose to still pose, a visual drum and and they dance tenderly, quietly , arm in arm. a silent basso profundo to Courvoisier ’s flow . Bacán rises singing , and her voice seems to Courvoisier’s rhythms somehow lead into open into a vast echoing space. and match classic flamenco rhythm and song All exit, walking. – find and match the pulse – yet she does not Galván mounts a stunning vision of the re - play a single tune you would recognize as lationship between the puro, the antiguo , and flamenco. the modern. His formula: Keep the oldest, Bobote drives the rhythm with his power - strangest, most powerful of the old. Revel in ful palmas and shouts/ jaleos , finding classic the traditions, the diversity, and the concep - bulerías and siguriyas , unafraid to sing a few tual edginess of the modern. Forget about Mr. verses if moved. Galván pulls his coat over his In-Between. Let the edges clash, the beauties head and becomes a strange headless figure overwhelm each other.

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