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FESTIVAL DE JEREZ 2008. 'MUJERES', MERCHE ESMERALDA, BELÉN MAYA & ROCÍO MOLINA
Women multiply
Silvia Calado. Jerez, February 29th, 2008
'Mujeres'. Merche Esmeralda , Belén Maya , Rocío Molina : baile, choreography. José Luis Rodríguez, Paco Cruz, Manuel Cazás: guitars. Antonio Campos, Jesús Corbacho, Tamara Tañé: cante. Sergio Martínez: percussion. Mario Maya: artistic director. Manuel Liñán: choreography (caracoles). Lighting design: Olga García. 12th Festival de Jerez. Teatro Villamarta. Jerez (Cádiz, Spain), February 29th, 2008. 9 p.m.
The ovation was huge. Several layers of applause to the beat were mixed between the walls of the Teatro Villamarta, creating a strange echo that caused chills and even tears. Merche Esmeralda, Belén Maya and Rocío Molina had just offered a monumental show without tricks, a show made from sincere love for flamenco dancing. And that means knowing how to share. If the three of them are great individually, devoted to the same cause, they are greater yet. While her colleagues are dancing, Rocío Molina is watching them from the sidelines "for me to dance better later on". And the other two are sure to do the same. So 'Mujeres' doesn't just add, but multiplies as well.
Merche Esmeralda (Photo Daniel Muñoz)
After premiering at the 2008 CajaMadrid Festival and traveling to the United States, the show comes completely assembled and both the musicians and the bailaoras are now quite unconcerned about the structure, and they devote themselves one hundred percent to the art. Even with the new moves of the pieces which, to cover the absence in Jerez of elegant singer Diana Navarro, Mario Maya has had to come up with. The fact that 'Mujeres' is a show is owed to him, that it has dynamics, rhythmics and is threaded together. Then the women take care of designing their movements and performing them.
Separately, each one dazzles in her own way. Three captivating personalities, three unmatched ways of understanding the same thing. Belén Maya applied all of her daring in the tangos, a hard piece for a soloist with minimalist ways. She belongs to the whole, but also to the parts. She's the one who began a new road, which now isn't only hers. Before Merche Esmeralda, her majesty, not even Matilde Coral could hold back the olés. A book could be written about that soleá. That slow-motion cambré can make you faint. Didn't she really float in the air? And Rocío Molina is simply overwhelming. She gets across an absolute lack of prejudices, of external conditioning. And that, however, doesn't pull her away from the core, but rather gives her freedom to be unique. What a seguiriya.
Moreover, the thing is that the show has been a laboratory. And it includes one of the most interesting pieces which flamenco dancing has created in the last few years. Rocío Molina and Belén Maya have gone back centuries to seek in primitive cante a new way of dancing, a proposal worthy of the highest contemporary school. But being flamenco. Also faultless is the granaína by Rocío and Merche, in which frolicking is done lightly, measured out, beautifully. And in the final number which joins the three of them por caracoles wearing batas de cola, room has been given to another extremely well-prepared youth, Granada-born Manuel Liñán , who has had the courage to choreograph for her majesties. The ovation was huge. Several layers of applause to the beat were mixed between the walls of the Teatro Villamarta, creating a strange echo that caused chills and even tears.
'Mujeres' (Photo Daniel Muñoz)
BODEGA LOS APÓSTOLES
Ultra High Flamenco
The group Ultra High Flamenco
presented its first album, 'UHF'
, at Bodega de Los Apóstoles. Guitarist
José Quevedo 'Bolita', violinist Alexis
Lefèvre, contrabassist Pablo Martín
and percussionists Ángel Sánchez
'Cepillo' and Paquito González gathered
in the evening at the so sacred place to reel
songs off the album, an instrumental record
which starts from flamenco and is open to
influences.
Alexis Lefèvre
(Photo Daniel Muñoz)
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And tomorrow ... Eva Yerbabuena · Rafaela Carrasco · Juan Pinilla/ Juan Campallo
Eva Yerbabuena
(Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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Bodega de San Ginés was jam-packed. The first week of courses was finishing and the women (yes, they're still the absolute majority) attended to receive their diplomas. But before the ceremony, they had the chance to complete what they'd learned by listening to two of the maestras of today's flamenco dancing: Eva Yerbabuena and Rafaela Carrasco . The Granada-born artist came to present 'Santo y seña', a show "assigned to me by Seville's Teatro de la Maestranza and which displays on stage a journey of the company's nearly ten years. And it's really simple, it has the usual storyline in flamenco and it's about being able to enjoy cante, guitar and baile". The bailaora announced that she'd like to be at the Teatro Villamarta "at my prime in everything: in precision, in technique, in strength". At the same time, she reflected on her show: "My challenge is to do things in the most personal way possible, learn from the generation of maestros that is now nearly lost and from the people who, just like me, try to be themselves". The Sevillian will be at the Sala Compañía at midnight to premiere 'ConCierto Gusto', which is a reflection of "our anxieties, our imagination, of doing at every instant what disturbs me and what I feel like". She recognized the need "to have a re-encounter with usual flamenco, with that part of me that's been a little bit dormant". Rafaela Carrasco was precisely one of the maestras who took part in handing out the diplomas, together with other colleagues such as Inmaculada Aguilar, Ángel Muñoz and Javier Latorre, who pointed out that "the festival is growing, but also the quality of the student body, whose progress is observed every year" |
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Further information:
Festival
de Jerez 2008. Index of reviews, photos, videos
All
about Festival de Jerez 2008: reviews, photos,
videos, program, courses, news, store...
Special feature. 'Mujeres'
Festival Flamenco CajaMadrid 2008. 'Mujeres', Merche Esmeralda, Belén Maya & Rocío Molina
Interview with Merche Esmeralda, bailaora
Interview with Belén Maya, bailaora
Visit the international flamenco festival
agenda
www.flamencofestival.info
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