FLAMENCO THURSDAYS 2010. RAFAEL ESTÉVEZ & FUENSANTA
LA MONETA
Symbiosis
Silvia Calado. Seville, January 28th, 2010
Translation: Joseph Kopec
Photo gallery. Rafael Estévez
& Fuensanta la Moneta, by Daniel Muñoz
Rafael Estévez &
Fuensanta la Moneta: baile, choreography. Miguel
Iglesias, Paco Iglesias: guitars, music. Miguel Lavis, El
Galli: cante. Patricia Guerrero, Eduardo Leal: clapping,
compás. Cajasol Flamenco Thursdays 2010. Sala Joaquín
Turina. Seville, January 28th, 2010. 9 p.m.
The dictionary says that symbiosis is the
“association of individual animals or vegetables from
different species, especially if the symbionts take advantage
of their life in common”. So let’s say that
Rafael Estévez and Fuensanta la Moneta are symbionts
and that the association which both bailaores sealed last
summer at the Corral del Carbón in Granada is being
fed reciprocally. She gets from him, as others have already
done, the courage to imagine alternatives and to deconstruct
the mold starting with deep knowledge and a nervous ear.
He gets from her the confidence that there’s still
another drop of strength left, that knowing how to be on
the edge without breaking down, that giving oneself without
restrictions.
Seeing them together at the Sala Joaquín
Turina in Seville meant appreciating that transfer of gifts
and, of course, enjoying what each one is for himself or
herself and in relation to the stage, with the cante and
the toque. That’s what this simple show is about which
nevertheless knocks the small-scale baile show up a notch
with twin stars. Far from being the typical you-one-me-one-later-both-of-us,
there’s no fear here about skipping turns, nor about
doing compás for a colleague, nor about stringing
some pieces together with others, nor about spending as
much time on stage as is needed. There’s no fear in
general. And that’s only positive for this artform
which, paraphrasing Belén Maya, is so isolated.
All of it is captured in a continuous good
alert to the intensity curve. The first peak was the very
start, some two-way alegrías linked with tonás,
in which strength and nuance were combined, speed and stillness,
curved and sharp movement, gestures and global body language,
dialogue and monologues. And at the end, she rocked her
drama por seguiriyas. Another climax was reached by Estévez
- who, let’s recall, is half of Dospormedio - in a
very original granaína-malagueñas solo, in
which he forced the guitar of a very inspired Iglesias to
explore itself drop by drop, as if possessed by the plastic
waves of his hands and arms. Afterwards, his feet were the
ones to let themselves be possessed by the ways of the six
strings, making music… seated, standing or inside
the soundbox.
La Moneta got the impulses from those echoes
to move her bata de cola back and forth, black like all
of her night dresses. Dancing with her eyes, with fierce
power and personal foreshortening which fits between stretching
herself to heaven and nearly grazing the ground with her
combs. And shortly thereafter, the curve straightened out
once again with high-voltage tangos for two. The bailaor
and bailaora are at the center once again with fierceness,
with a wink at the old-time, with meditated silence, dry
taps, dense hips. The gesture of beautifully uniting their
heads was more than symbolic. The show could have ended
there, but the colombianas remained to be taken in and above
all, the challenge to improvise a soleá… and
one ending up in the other’s chair and fade out.
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