FESTIVAL DE JEREZ 2008. RAFAELA CARRASCO,
‘CONCIERTO GUSTO’
The strategist
Silvia Calado. Jerez, March 1st, 2008
Teatro Villamarta.
Eva Yerbabuena, ‘Santo y seña’. Review,
photos, video
‘ConCierto gusto’. Rafaela
Carrasco: baile, choreography, directing. Antonio
Campos, El Pulga: cante. Jesús Torres, Canito,
Juan Requena: guitar. Nacho Arimany: percussion. 12th
Festival de Jerez 2008. Sala Compañía. Jerez
(Cádiz, Spain), March 1st, 2008. Midnight
Rafaela Carrasco (Photo
Daniel Muñoz)
It didn’t premiere at the Teatro
Villamarta, but it should have. The Sala Compañía
was terribly cramped for Rafaela
Carrasco to present her new creation, ‘ConCierto
gusto’. And the thing is that in the Sevillian bailaora
and choreographer, an intimate format doesn’t mean
a small scale. The venue was too small not just for the
company, but above all for the audience. In fact, it was
one of the first shows to hang up the ‘sold out’
sign. Even when, to make it harder, it was Eva Yerbabuena’s
night at the Teatro Villamarta. So many emotions in so
little time!
Rafaela Carrasco wanted to reveal her
flamenco side once again. She’d never lost it, but
in her previous show, ‘Del amor y otras cosas’,
she opted more for the contemporary. She now has the pleasure
of dancing por granaínas, soleares, mineras and
fandangos, without any other reason than the one her musicians
offer her. But bearing in mind the relevance of what sounds
in her dance, they aren’t just any musicians. The
guitars of Jesús
Torres, Canito (what a solo, by the way) and Juan
Requena, the cantes of Antonio Campos and El Pulga, and
the percussion of Nacho
Arimany intertwine with the bailaora’s movements
and body music in a show which, yes, is a concert... A
good concert in which she proposes challenges to them,
one by one.
Rafaela Carrasco and Nacho
Arimany (Photo Daniel Muñoz)
So it isn’t about accompanying,
but rather dialoguing, proposing, on friendly terms, with
daring, with devotion. And how. The granaína with
a shawl, dancing all the subtleties of Torres’s
guitar, capturing all the shuddering of Campos’s
cante. The conversation struck between her, wearing trousers,
and Arimany using the beats of nature, including African
pumpkin, seeds of the land … and the floor of the
stage. And how she gathers them all afterwards to let
them do their thing and accompany them on clapping, then
bringing out all her intensity por soleá. And how
about the fandangos, which she makes the cantaores sing
at different rhythms for her, in the middle, to dance
them in a bata de cola in a way only she can do. She dances
well … and thinks well.
And besides the quality of the music
and dancing, the quality of the show’s staging is
dazzling (despite the venue’s technical difficulties).
Each piece is presented, developed and ended with so much
subtlety and so much elegance. There are incredible endings.
One lets the last note of the guitar fade out. Another
ends in the repetition of a turn in sound. The stage is
like a chessboard. And each number, a move, a combination
of pieces strategically positioned. The queen rules.
Rafaela Carrasco (Photo Daniel
Muñoz)
