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Lope
De Vega Theatre. Sevilla.
Saturday September 9th
Manolete
and El Güito
Only
the lonelies
Manolete and el Güito
‘Sólo
Flamenco’ (Only Flamenco) is the sought after title to the show of Manolete and
El Güito, side by side and heel by heel.
Breaking in on
El Güito´s paused dance comes Manolete, making his rounds on the stage. It
was the farruca, where they began photocopying each other, but it would
be the one from Granada who would be the protagonist of their long, mixed and
characteristic farruca, for life. For the closing zapateado (footwork),
El Güito returns, and will later do his veteran soleá.
In this sober and
somber show (the opening night?!), in black, the succession of scenes went on
showing bursts of rehearsed dance, with few improvisations, gypsyism or modernism.
It is taciturn dancing, it is classical style weighed down by solemn moments of
feeling in brief, six decades.
El Güito
Heating up the
show for a non-stop hour and a half, a group of 4 female and 4 male dancers soothed
the show, starting from the initial debla and seguiriya. They performed
alegrías with infuriated solos por bulerías, along
with originales, (the fandangos that strangely came into existence
by the sides of Paco de Lucía and Chick Corea in the "Zyryab"
disco) and a short fin de fiesta (freestyle dancing) at the end. Finishing
alongside were three singers, three guitarists and a flute player.
The central theme
consisted of dances for each female partner: Manolete with his daughter Judea
Maya did a very racial soleá, and El Güito performed
stylized seguiriyas with Mari Paz Lucena - and without giving a sidelong
glance, they went toward the audience with the music without any choreographic
tricks. Giving respect: Manolete spent the fifties dancing in the caves of Sacromonte
(famous neighborhood in Granada) and El Güito has been a teacher to generations
of madrileñas (Madrid women). And while they think that the young
Flamenco dancing "no va a más" (isn´t going anywhere), meanwhile
thinking in their victimization that "el flamenco se nos va"(is leaving
us), they become more and more lonely on that dark stage.
Luis Clemente
Translated
by Jessica Lorber
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