|
8th
of May, 2000. Teatro Villamarta. Jerez. "Color Dansa" dance company.
Feminine
gear
"Color
Dansa" presents a symbolist avant-garde show in black and white including
a musical collage. Afterwards, Terremoto
(Earthquake) made Jerez tremble.
A theatre like
the Villamarta was too big for the project "Pa que… pa na" (For what...
for nothing), one of the last avant-garde shows trying to catch the "compas" (rhythm)
flamenco (of which the best one is "El jardin de los gritos"-The garden
of screams, by Ramon Oller). This time it was Rosa Maria Grau who directed, from
within the personal attitude of the Color Compañia de Dansa, seven dancers-bailaoras
with a non-flamenco music by Eduardo Arbide and in the dances of the absurd with
the fantasy guitar playing of Pedro Javier Gonzalez (producer and composer of
multimedia projects). Rhythms that can be flamenco or not are made contortions
in a flamenco style. The first actress comes on stage from within the audience,
the second dances with a veil to the sound of the beating of the heart: "El
latido de dos mil años" (The heartbeat of two-thousand years) was
the subtitle of "Pa que… pa na". "Where am I, and how do I feel?"
were questions asked as doubts of being and feeling flamenco.
White stylized
dresses, with the exception of the black costumes from neck to ankle in the plaintive
moments. The dancers in white throw themselves on the floor and cry and shortly
after a "seguiriya" sounds with an electronic background to it. They hug each
other, they caress their hair, the clap their hands, they scream at the crowd.
(Even more dramatic was the show presented last year at the festival by Color
Dansa, about the theme of war, called "A ras de tierra" (On ground level).
Feminism? Symbolism.
The dancers carry their chairs, place them in order, throw them away, use them
as "cajones" (percussion instrument), stand on them and come back down in a military-like
sermon with slides, they make a round tire with them and use them, with background
sounding horns, like the teeth of the car gear... the seven of them then sit on
the chairs to sing the "Seguiriyas de las locas" (Seguiriyas of the
crazy ones) with a fiesta including "tanguitos" and all.
The women make
signs implying they can't hear, see, or talk, and then they turn and make a fiesta
"por sevillanas". While one laughs dancing "por solea", the other says that she
has a "humid soul". The insecurity of the where and the how was continuous. Left
"frozen" after the final phrase of Gomez de Jerez "por bulerias": "Gitanita
deja el campo / que lo trabaje quien quiera" (Little gypsy girl leave the
fields / let whoever wants to work in them).
|
