FLAMENCO FESTIVAL USA 2007. SPECIAL FEATURE
Bulerías in Manhattan
Rosalía Gómez. New York, February 2007
One of the greatest pleasures
about attending Flamenco
Festival USA is to observe, night after night, how
some of the most mythical stages in the history of show
business such as Carnegie Hall, the City Center and Town
Hall are filled with a noisy crowd who, unbiased, enjoy
and fervently applaud all kinds of flamenco shows. And
it isn’t that this artform is unknown in the city
of New York, or in other cities in the United States,
where over seventy years ago the businessman of Russian
ancestry Solomon Hurok made La Argentinita and Carmen
Amaya triumph, among others, before thousands of spectators.
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Paco de Lucía
(Photo archive Daniel Muñoz) |
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But those times ended and it has taken
Miguel Marín, director of this blooming festival,
seven years to reap in such ripe fruit as what we’ve
been able to observe in this month of February which has
just finished. Seven editions marked by a sign of risk
and precariousness - that of not knowing what means and
what support the next edition will have - which can and
must make way for economic stability and with it, greater
solidity.
Marín knows that in the United
States, where he worked for a few years before beginning
this adventure, it’s necessary to play by the rules
laid down by its renowned theaters which, in turn, contribute
their own following. Faithful spectators who for the past
few years have been joined by a growing audience of the
Festival itself, capable of excitedly following every
event in its schedule.
The present edition of Flamenco Festival
USA, the seventh one as has been said, has offered eight
varied shows at four theaters in New York - the three
aforementioned ones and the cozy Skirball -, at two in
Boston and at Lisner Auditorium in Washington D.C., three
of which have traveled to other states and to Canada in
what its director has called the Flamenco Festival On
Tour.
The inauguration took place on February
3rd at Town Hall with a glamorous Estrella
Morente who knew how to completely win over an auditorium
which, at the end of her show, surrendered to her unconditionally.
It was followed by Paco
de Lucía, always a sure bet, as he has demonstrated
in the ten concerts, all of them sell-outs, which he has
done in the setting of the Festival. In his performance
at Carnegie Hall, the Algeciras-born artist went back
over his most famous songs until the audience forced him
with their applause to do several encores, including one
of his special versions of the immortal Entre dos
aguas. He brought together in its twenty-eight hundred
seats numerous international music celebrities as well
as Spaniards as beloved as writers Elvira Lindo and Antonio
Muñoz Molina, who has just left as director of
the prestigious Cervantes Institute of New York.
Joaquín Grilo
(Photo archive Daniel Muñoz) |
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Coming to the City Center along with
the snow on the fifteenth was the Bienal
de Sevilla Gala, together with its director, Domingo
González. Undoubtedly dedicated to the youngest
crowd on the flamenco scene, it was split up into two
parts. The first one starred Manuel Liñán,
Marco Flores and Olga
Pericet, a trio used to performing together and therefore,
besides their respective solo bailes - seguiriya, cantiñas
and soleá - brought a fresh, well-applauded choreography
together as well as the merit of having among their musicians,
as on other occasions, Antonia Jiménez, one of
the few female Andalusian guitarists fighting to make
a place for herself in a profession so far dominated nearly
exclusively by men. In the second part, Marín gathered
a threesome of bailaores who in their appearance at the
last edition of Bienal de Sevilla left magnificent moments
of baile, and who to a large extent represent three great
centers of Andalusian flamenco like Granada, Seville and
Jerez. Curiously, it was Granada-born Fuensanta
la Moneta, the youngest one, who danced por alegrías
wearing a bata de cola while Sevillian Isabel Bayón
- winner at the Bienal for her show La puerta abierta
- devoted herself to a winding seguiriya full of nuances,
accompanied by the mighty voice of José Valencia,
who had been preceded by a trilla sung by young Jerez-born
Carmen Grilo. The baile from Jerez, represented by Joaquín
Grilo in an unhurried, solemn soleá which, as could
be expected, ended with classical, vibrant bulerías,
put an end to a long evening which satisfied the expectations
of the attending audience, judging by their reaction.
Arriving on the sixteenth was the show
by Rafaela
Carrasco, Una mirada del flamenco, an example
of her highly-stylized flamenco which was not only admired
and applauded by the adult crowd at night, but thanks
to an exemplary program by New York City Hall in collaboration
with the Festival, it was put on for over two thousand
attentive schoolchildren in a somewhat shortened version
in a matinée, after the pupils had received a visit
at their respective schools by six teachers who initiated
them in the mysteries and rhythms of flamenco art.
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Sara Baras (Photo archive
Daniel Muñoz) |
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Sara
Baras with her latest show, Sabores, the star a few
days earlier at the private gala which Turismo Andaluz
(Andalusian Tourism) usually organizes for the most important
tour operators in the area, also had sell-out crowds two
straight nights at the City Center, on the second one
starring in one of those unforgettable scenes of collaboration
between artists when rock musician Tim Rice got up on
stage and improvised an exceptional duo with the Cádiz-born
artist.
The last three shows took place at the
Skirball Theater, a pleasant venue with very good acoustics
located at the famous Washington Square, somewhat smaller
than the previous ones, which with the same affection
welcomed guitarist Gerardo
Núñez and his quintet (with marvelous
touches of baile by Carmen Cortés), and the following
night, El Pele (with the collaboration of Edu Lozano on
baile), who was really thrilling in a memorable concert
which the artist from Córdoba had to end, following
several encores, with his usual hit, Vengo del moro.
Finally, the icing was put on the cake
of the Festival on February 24th with the show Biznagas,
conceived and performed by José Luis Ortiz Nuevo
with the participation of nearly thirty artists, all of
them from Málaga, including the verdiales gang
of Santo Pita, whom the entire theater greeted by clapping
to the beat when, at the end of the evening, they crossed
the audience with their violin music and colorful hats.
Personal tastes aside, and judging by
the massive response from the public, there’s no
doubt that Flamenco Festival USA, which made way for the
also successful Flamenco
Festival London, has not only been a big hit in itself
but also opens new roads for the development of flamenco
art in the U.S. New ways which its director intends to
explore year after year and which he has already begun,
on the one hand, with a sort of off festival in which
there was a performance this year at New York’s
Joyce Theater by the Metros Company directed by Ramón
Oller and their show Carmen, a small masterpiece
of contemporary dance which has dancer Cristian Lozano
(ex-member of the Ballet Nacional de España) in
the role of Escamillo, and on the other hand, with a series
of activities (lectures, workshops...) realized in collaboration
with institutions such as the Cervantes Institute of New
York and the Juan Carlos I Center, including the presentation
of Bienal Málaga en Flamenco 2007 by its director,
José Luis Ortiz Nuevo.
