2006 JEREZ FLAMENCO FESTIVAL.
ROCÍO MOLINA, ‘EL ETERNO RETORNO’

Philosophy for beginners

Silvia Calado. Jerez, February 28th, 2006
Photos: Daniel Muñoz

‘El eterno retorno’. Rocío Molina: baile. Teresa Nieto (baile), Manolo Monteagudo (actor): guest artists. Pasión Vega: special collaboration. Juan Requena, Jesús Torres: guitar. Juan José Amador, Antonio Campos: cante. Sergio Martínez: percussion. Luis Cantarote, Carlos Grilo: clapping. Juan Carlos Romero: original idea and musical direction. 10th Jerez Festival 2006. Teatro Villamarta. Jerez (Cádiz, Spain), February 28th, 2006. 9 p.m.

Agencia Andaluza para el Desarrollo del Flamenco (Andalusian Agency for the Development of Flamenco), a public organization dependent on the Culture Council of the Andalusia Junta, “backs” Festival de Jerez 2006 by including in its program the show ‘El eterno retorno’ (‘The Eternal Return’), premiered at the biennial Málaga en Flamenco 2005 and already presented in the ‘Flamenco Comes from the South’ Series at Seville's Teatro Central. This type of support, the same as any private producer but with the money of all Andalusians, is the kind which, as the flamenco agency's director Alberto Bandrés explained at a press conference prior to the gala, is going to be given to other festivals; “a formula of collaboration, not subsidy”. He therefore wanted to make clear that it is not a show by the Rocío Molina Company, but of the agency itself, which in Bandrés's words, “is obliged to be on the market like any other product”.

In this production, the agency has wished to translate the lofty philosophy of none other than Nietzsche to a banal show narrated in a comic tone by an actor and danced by Rocío Molina in more or less flamenco passages seeking to express infinity, repetition of the instant... Hardly anything. And that was despite the fact that the author of the original idea and the music, Juan Carlos Romero, and the creator of the stage design, Pepa Gamboa, wanted to play down the philosophical motif by insisting that here, “the theory that everything's going to be repeated is just a little game that explains what happens with flamenco; its need to look at the past”.

Rocío Molina (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

The show is structured in six passages, each about one flamenco style and one idea, always preceded by the actor's monologue: ‘The Mask of Infinity’ through soleá, ‘The Instant’ through abandolao and malagueña, ‘Behind Memory’ through seguiriyas, ‘Myth, Time’ with a live copla by singer Pasión Vega and a dance for two with contemporary airs together with dancer Teresa Nieto, the collage of different styles ‘From One Infinity to Another’. All of them are danced by Rocío Molina, a very young bailaora with obvious self-assuredness seeking to find herself. She already has the training, technique, experience and certain personal marks. Now she needs to elaborate, break the linearity, excite... and have a project of her own.

With the support of a versatile central revolving door, the comings and goings of the bailaora, cantaores and guests were worked out, two planes being marked differentiated by a wall which was opaque or translucent when the light so required. On one side and the other, singing was the unusual voice of Juan José Amador, as well as guest Pasión Vega, who put the sought-after oddity of her voice into a copla and a bit of the popular song ‘Los cuatro muleros’, already sung throughout time by other female flamenco voices. “Everything returns”, which the actor would say. And as far as returning goes, even the Marín dolls returned, which made a funny circle for the Málaga-born bailaora for her to sketch out some movements through alegrías. And the thing is that nearly everything is a sketch: philosophy, baile, flamenco...

Rocío Molina and Teresa Nieto (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

magazine@flamenco-world.com