XXX Festival de Jerez: Dances that inform tales | Culture | EUROtoday

With a gala led by native dancer Manuela Carpio, the XXX version of the Jerez Festival started final Friday, an occasion devoted to flamenco dance and classical Spanish dance, which is able to run till March 7 with greater than 40 performances. At the beginning of the occasion, the reveals of two teams, each personal, stand out – the Nuevo Ballet Español (NBE) and Estévez/Paños y Compañía -, with works by which dance and group choreographies are protagonists as expressive autos of the tales that encourage them, one thing that’s not new for the reason that beginning of flamenco dance-theater, however whose train is at all times admirable.

The NBE, created by Ángel Rojas and Carlos Rodríguez in 1994, was already within the first version of this Jerez occasion (1997) and on three subsequent events, till 2011, as an organization renewing Spanish classical dance. That identical impulse, described by them as “pioneer and groundbreaking,” encourages the work with which they return to the cycle. None of its founders is now straight linked to the group, though Rojas, at the moment devoted to administration, has given it his newest choreographic creation and his personal creative route. It’s concerning the present Borders within the aira piece that the writer acknowledges because the longest inventive course of (two and a half years) of his profession and maybe – as could be seen from the phone dialog held with him – probably the most intense and dedicated because of the subject material that fuels it: immigration.

With an intercultural present that named it, the subject was mentioned in 2004 by the Company of dancer Ángeles Gabaldón, which featured choreographies by Javier Latorre, amongst others. In the case of Rojas, the differential part within the dance lies in its choral configuration: the work was at all times born with the thought of ​​a large-format group, a complete of 13 female and male dancers that has been fashioned all through the inventive course of and that Rojas describes as very dedicated: “The cast is fundamental, the work is already theirs. The stage movement is very powerful, I would say my latest effort, with a very strong emotional part, never sentimental, and with a lot of light.”

He additionally appears to have a private part in his remedy of the topic: the choreographer, adoptive father of a Haitian lady and two African boys, says he has Africa at residence: “This has made me see another continent, with its land, its folklore, its customs…”, along with upsetting the necessity to switch ideas akin to shade or the desert to bounce. “All of that is within and the making of the work has been a healing process, with the need to tell the story in a way that the public can read and draw their own conclusions. There is nothing doctrinal, it is an exercise of freedom for the viewer,” he says.

Within a narrative by which the oral testimonies of three Senegalese immigrant mates are built-in, the intervention of the Guinea-Bissau singer Alana Sinkëy appears basic, who, along with her enveloping track, locations us within the land of origin of migration. She was invited by Rojas to one of many three inventive residencies he held, and she or he built-in naturally with the group: “She only sings in her language, Creole,” Rojas warns, “but her singing can fit like a glove in soleá key.” It is accompanied by music composed by guitarist Joni Jiménez, carried out in Jerez by Víctor Franco, and by percussionist Bandolero.

In its presentation in Jerez (Teatro Villamarta, February 21), the corps de ballet was as cohesive because it was highly effective and, above all, with the power to transmit the emotion of a narrative that can’t conceal its tragic tinge. Beauty and power in choreographies that inherit all the Spanish dance custom and renew it with modern model. The energy of the group finds its complement within the solo participation of the dancer Helena Martín, with a fragile and stylish dance. As Rojas had anticipated, she is Europe, she symbolizes the hope of welcoming arms, the long-awaited objective and, additionally, she is Africa, the origin. “When I called her,” says the choreographer, “her character did not exist, it has been created over time with great generosity on her part.”

The Company of Rafael Estévez and Valeriano Paños, created by each in 2003, got here to this competition in 2008, additionally beneath the banner of renewal of the Spanish basic, with the work Flamenco XXI: Opera, espresso and cigar, Revelation Award of the occasion. His profession, acknowledged with the National Dance Award in 2019 within the creation class, has gathered greater than a dozen productions that mix chamber works, and even intimate ones, with choral choreographies of the overwhelming magnitude of The Consecration (2012). In this version they current, as an absolute premiere, the present Maidens (Permanent Revelry) (Teatro Villamarta, February 24), a piece that, like all his creations, relies on a deep investigation right into a interval, dances and music.

On this event, their journey has been directed to the time of the legendary guitarist Don Ramón Montoya (1879-1949), whose sound universe evokes what they name “choreographic fantasy, a hymn to fun and revelry”, with the added intention of tribute and vindication of the legacy of the person who is taken into account the daddy of the flamenco live performance guitar. Also, on the root, beats the spirit of Federico, who included in his Cante jondo poemone by which he names the guitar strings as “maidens.” To play them, Estévez & Paños have chosen their best exegete of Montoya on the present scene, the guitarist from Alicante Alejandro Hurtado, who in his first recording carried out a part of his repertoire with the maestro’s guitar.

Always between rescue and reinvention, custom and avant-garde, the basic and the experimental, the work desires to recreate an evening that they describe as uchronic, as one thing that’s not recognized if it occurred, however might have occurred, in a really very important Madrid, the interval between the wars (1918-1936). A celebration in a colmao or in a sane room, the place the artists went. A name to the occasion that fights towards “the widespread thought that we live in a dystopia,” in his phrases.

With seven visitor dancers, Estévez and Paños didn’t need to disclose to EL PAÍS their function within the work, though it’s straightforward to guess that, choreographically, it’ll swing between the person and the collective, with the theatrical part in between. Nor is something recognized about singing, solely about Montoya’s guitar music, the solo live performance music or these he created to accompany the singing of Don Antonio Chacón or El Niño de Marchena and for Faíco’s dance. From the emblematic rondeña, portico of the present, to the kinds of Levante and Granaína, Guajiras, Milongas, Colombianas, Farruca and Garrotín.