2005 JEREZ FESTIVAL

Israel Galván plays around with time in
‘La edad de oro’

The bailaor's guests for his new show are Fernando Terremoto and Alfredo Lagos

Carlos Sánchez. Seville, February 2005

After the huge success of his previous show ‘Arena’ at the last Festival Bienal de Sevilla, Israel Galván felt the need to do something a little different for the 2005 edition of the Festival de Jerez. The bailaor from Seville goes back to the roots of flamenco, but with his contemporary treatment. A good guitarist and a good cantaor are the only ingredients the artist needed for his new show, ‘La edad de oro’. Alfredo Lagos, Fernando Terremoto and Israel Galván. Guitar, vocals and dance: the three cornerstones of flamenco, brought to life here by three very different and unique artists. ‘La edad de oro’ will be showing on 26th February as part of the ‘Novísimos’ season at Sala La Compañía.

Israel Galván's new show revolves around the mythical era known as the golden age. Artistic director Pedro G. Romero applies three different definitions of this concept to each of the three stars. In this project, guitarist Alfredo Lagos is linked with the idea of an imaginary time when death was locked away with no chance to do its work. The Jerez-born guitarist's seguiriya is like a song dedicated to that time. And this is how Israel Galván sums it up: “Alfredo Lagos plays and interprets his music in his own unique manner, without making it an exercise in purist, orthodox flamenco. His guitarwork flows in the most natural way. He doesn't try and force artificial things to happen.”

‘The golden age’, a bygone era better than today, a time that is regarded as a source of influences and setting of artistic standards, strikes up a conversation with Fernando Terremoto. For cante flamenco, the golden age was around the fifties and sixties, somewhere between José Manuel Caballero Bonald's recordings for the ‘Archivo del cante flamenco’, issued on the Vergara label, and the TV series ‘Rito y geografía del cante’ filmed by Mario Gómez and José María Velázquez. The stars of the time were Tío Borrico, Juan Talega, Manuel Agujetas, Manuel Soto ‘Sordera’, Perrate, Tía Anica la Piriñaca and, of course, Terremoto de Jerez, the father. Fernando Terremoto, the son, stands up to the comparison. “I wanted to dance with a cantaor who respects and nurtures the legacy he's inherited. His flair and his approach to cante make Fernando Terremoto a great artist”, confesses Galván, who walked away with the Giraldillo prize for best leading dancer at last year's biennial flamenco festival in Seville.

“I dance to an era”

‘The golden age’, as if it were a new era, like the one in the movie L'Age d'Or by Luis Buñuel, that gory portrait of the borgeois, is the one that Israel Galván brings to life here. A strange time when portrayed via his habitual approach: there's always an arm breaking out of its natural line of movement, the floor is just a blur underneath his shoes, he's on the point of losing his balance and his body seems to have already fallen. This is Jesus Christ side-by-side with the Marquis de Sade, in a sequence that seems to be a pas de deux between the two. What was once golden now seems to have turned to rusty scrap, later to be transformed back again and shine in all its original splendor. And this ground-breaking artist's dance doesn't mark a new era, but rather exposes new aspects of baile flamenco that date way back in time, with truly baroque touches. The production features a scene from the movie in which a child plays incessantly in the fields until his father, the gamekeeper, can no longer stand his disobedience. The father raises his shotgun, takes aim, and fires; the child's fall is represented here, mortally wounded in the middle of the immense meadow. In slow motion, each movement, each gesture is repeated here in this 'Edad de oro' by Israel Galván. “I dance to an era within my own framework, with the musicality of a cantaor who's a leading artist in his own right”, the artist remarks.

But all of these influences are forgotten during more than sixty minutos that the show lasts. What shines on stage is the reference to time itself, passed around in the intimacy of the trio: toque, cante and baile. This playing with eras results in a clear, brilliant piece, where the most important element is the adhesion to the different flamenco rhythms, supplied by Alfredo Lagos's nimble fingers, Fernando Terremoto's powerful vocal chords and Israel Galván's furious footwork.

Fernando Terremoto, Alfredo Lagos e Israel Galván
(Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

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