SARA BARAS, ‘ESENCIA’. PRESENTATION IN MADRID
…and ten.
Silvia Calado. Madrid, March 23rd, 2010
Translation: Joseph Kopec
Photo gallery. Sara Baras ‘Esencia’,
by Daniel Muñoz
‘Esencia’. Sara
Baras: baile, choreography, directing, stage design,
wardrobe. Alicia Fernández, Ana González.
Charo Pedraja, Carmen Camacho. María Jesús
García, Raúl Fernández, José
Galán, Daniel Saltares, David Martín, David
Nieto: dance corps. José Serrano: guest artist. José
María Bandera, Mario Montoya, Jesús Núñez:
guitar. Saray Muñoz, Saúl Quirós, Emilio
Florido: cante. Paco de Lucía, Manolo Sanlúcar,
Joan Valent, Jesús de Rosario and musicians of the
company: music. Teatro Calderón Haagen-Dazs. Madrid,
March 23rd to April 11th, 2010
Sara
Baras, although it might seem unbelievable, takes
a breather. After twelve years of non-stop work heading
up her successful company, with an average of two hundred
performances annually, the bailaora wants some time for
herself and perhaps to knock her own formula up a notch.
But first, she’s wanted to weigh things up, of course,
on stage. And the way she has to reflect about what’s
been done is to do something new… or nearly new. ‘Esencia’,
which has reached Madrid after premiering in Paris and London,
is a compilation. But she wanted to give that selection
of pieces from her nine shows a shape of its own. And it
thus becomes the tenth.
The show is purely faithful to the style
which Sara Baras has made her trademark. And with a single
glance, you can recognize the starting point and the development
of its style. But always towards itself. The simple but
effective choreographic concept remains and is extolled,
the stage flashiness as a premise of each piece, the direct
control of stage-seat communication and the star’s
dazzling magnetism. And the thing is that Sara Baras says
see you later at a moment when she’s at her prime
as a performer. She still has that more than prodigious
footwork, she’s starting to combine form and substance
proportionally, and continues to foster, as record company
executive Tomás Muñoz would say, “the
clean, natural smile, the half-a-million-dollar one”.
Although she’s the one the crowd
is waiting for and the one the crowd adores at this theater
with popcorn and ice cream - and at any theater she goes
to -, her intention of giving a role to everyone making
up her project is visible: the dance corps, the group of
musicians and her guest artist, José
Serrano. They all have their solos and their place,
even if they’re group ones with the dance corps or
instrumental passages, including the collaborations in off
by Paco de Lucía and Manolo
Sanlúcar. Highlights include ‘Farruca’,
which was ground-breaking when it was premiered back in
1998, and, in general, the pieces from shows without a storyline,
inasmuch as the excerpts from drama shows like ‘Mariana
Pineda’ and ‘Juana la Loca’ are somewhat
out of context here since the reference is lacking. Even
so, there is a palpable effort to string along every remnant
of this anthology which evokes the past and leaves open
the mystery of what the future will hold.
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