Estévez & Paños. 'Preflamencos' (Estreno, Madrid). Reseña y fotos

The dissolution of the limits of space and time was always a human dream. And Man knows very well that only art can make it come true. Turning the diachronic into synchronic, in the absence of time machines, is a superpower reserved to musicians, poets, painters, sculptors, architects, dancers. That the pure Castilian grace of the ‘majos’ (19th-century inhabitants of Madrid’s working-class areas) who used to walk along the Paseo del Prado should come back to life in 2011, that Boccherini’s night music should be reborn as electronic sounds, that the bullfighting round-table of Curro Cuchares, El Tato and Juan León should re-open, that the beautiful Goyaesque bolera should keep on swinging… are some of the fantasies that materialize in ‘Preflamencos’, the new show by choreographers, bailaores and dancers Rafael Estévez and Nani Paños.

Rafael Estévez and Rosana Romero, 'Preflamencos' (Photo Silvia Calado)

Nani Paños and Artomatico, 'Preflamencos' (Photo Silvia Calado)

Flamenco dancing, Spanish classical and bolero school, as in ‘Flamenco XXI’ and ‘Sonata’, are the three dance pillars which the show stands upon. But now a certain air of ‘tanztheater’ is added to them imported from the direct exchange they are developing with some of the guests of Sasha Waltz. And this new space-time is possible for them through the creative dialogue they maintain at the studio and live with experimental musician Artomatico, author of all this evocative sound universe. This isn’t a collaboration to premiere, since they’ve already racked up a lot of jam sessions, which led to the more complex show ‘220v’, premiered at Madrid en Danza 2010. And the journey now makes the rapport a solid whole: the creative route of music and dance is the same.

The sounds of bells, folk dances, noisy streets, coplas of the blind, military drum rolls… which Boccherini captured in ‘Música nocturna de las calles de Madrid’ (1780), plus a ‘Playera’ from 1866, cañas, boleros and caracoles mutate here in digital landscapes enveloping the transtemporal spiral of danced fantasies. Designed by Estévez and Paños for four dancers (the two of them, Jesús Perona and Rosana Romero), the choreographies imaginatively and elegantly unite dance manners selected from a period of a little over three centuries in scenes endowed with plastic art whose subtleties are enhanced by the elegant lighting.

'Preflamencos' (Photo Silvia Calado)

Artomatico and Rosana Romero, 'Preflamencos' (Photo Silvia Calado)

It is now a language of their own which these creators have forged, a lexis of theirs that works naturally, despite their lofty rigor and demanding technique. And the quartet performs grasping not just the numerous formal textures, but also the many emotions of the background. There are moments when the dancers stop in time, there are others when they are stalked by speed and the convulsed, there’s a floor and chairs, there are instants for playing and for courtship, there’s virtuosity in percussion and aerial feats, there are solitudes in the fluent collective dancing, there is a really woman between the man, there’s distance and feeling, there’s past and future. Now you might be wondering if electronic music fits into this historical-emotional journey. And the answer is yes. There are machines with a soul and with a memory. There are preflamencos who are postflamencos at the same time. Even though there are no time machines.