MÁLAGA EN FLAMENCO 2007. CARRETE,
‘YO NO SÉ LA EDAD QUE TENGO’
Heelless heel tapping
S.C. Málaga, August 27th, 2007
‘Yo no sé la edad que
tengo’. Carrete: baile. José
Luis Ortiz Nuevo: actor, script. Juan José Amador,
José Valencia, Laura Román: cante. Juan
Requena, Paco Iglesias, Joaquín Losada ‘Carretillo’:
guitar. Diego Suárez: piano. Carmen Ríos,
Cristóbal García: baile. Pepa Gamboa: stage
director. Juan Requena: musical director. Málaga
en Flamenco 2007. Teatro Cánovas. Málaga,
August 27th,. 9 p.m.
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Carrete (Photo Daniel
Muñoz) |
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They say it’s true. That he still
has the wheat ears stuck to the soles of his feet. From
when Carrete
was a boy and his mother used to ask him to be the thresher
and the floor. “Dance, Carretillo”. And the
kid used to dance with that habit of his of doing so barefoot.
That might be why now - when he is many years of age,
but he doesn’t know how many - when he taps his
heels, he does so furiously, painfully... as if shooing
away grief from the past. And the thing is that years
went by with hunger, at the reformatory, escaping, dancing
at taverns for two ten-cent pieces, classes and tablaos
along the Costa del Sol. Carrete’s memory was waiting
for someone to raise his voice. Until José Luis
Ortiz Nuevo, who is a comic, scriptwriter and even director
of this festival, arrived to put everything in its place.
The memories, the personage and the person.
‘Yo no sé la edad que tengo’
is a liberating show. And not just for this Carrete, but
for all those ‘carretes’ which flamenco is
full of. Persons and personages who remain on the sidelines,
feeding the outsider edge of this artform. Time carries
them away and only a rumor remains of many of them, an
anecdote spreading by word of mouth … and sometimes,
nothing. That’s why now they don’t have to
tell us that there was once a bailaor who took away Carmen
Amaya’s sadness by dancing for her in one of
her costumes, who as a boy dreamed of being Fred Astaire,
who performed at a royal Norwegian wedding with a troupe
of flamencos, who became a rich old American lady’s
boyfriend, who used to dance on wheat barefoot…
José Luis Ortiz Nuevo tells us now. And Carrete
himself dances it for us, performs it for us, gives it
to us already enjoyed, with the intensity of dreams.
The show is strung together with anecdote
after anecdote. Sad ones and comical ones. And amidst
jokes, seriousness, laughter and pain; amidst soleares,
alegrías, seguiriyas, bulerías, rumbas,
‘yalis’ and sharp words from the rhapsodist,
we embark upon a cathartic journey. And that’s what
his baile is like; a release which hurts. In an Oslo newspaper
many years ago, it was written with very good judgment
that the strength of his footwork shot out of his head.
And that’s just the sensation he creates when he
taps his heels (now with boots), twists his bird gesture,
knots his old fingers and tosses his sweat-drenched hair
in the air, that which he had to have cut in the faraway
lands of Norway for him to be able to enter the palace.
An artist ‘sui generis’, with no mold, with
no affiliation. A surreal artist of the crude, of the
moment. An artist and personage, who mocks his story by
dressing up as a king or as a dancer in the movies. How
funny when he comes in through the seats wearing his splendid
dress coat, with his top hat and his cane. How sad when
he writhes in the taranto. How funny when he flees from
the nun wanting not to suffer any more. How sad when he
tells about how his legs were frozen still that winter
the snow fell in Málaga.
And as the star and his memory experience
it, so do those accompanying him at the back. Everyone
gets involved in the story to the max, not just in their
mission on cante, baile or toque. If they have to end
up acting like Fred Astaire’s dance corps, well
then, that’s what’s done. But the requirements
of the script and the staging -conceived by Pepa Gamboa
-, don’t tarnish the quality of the cante by monsters
such as Juan
José Amador and José
Valencia; or the musical ability of guitarist Juan
Requena. They all devote themselves entirely, aware that
they are contributing to the story not being watered down.
And the ovation is great, even though it comes with big
signs (“CARRETE”, “CARRETE”, “CARRETE”).
But we’ll see if it’s true about the twenty
shows.
Carrete (Photo Daniel Muñoz)
