2023-09-30 14:46:53
Concept error and failed result in the second of the eight events of the 27th Flamenco Fridays of the Barakaldo Theater, which reached the quarter of the entrance. The choreography ‘Origen’, by the Marco Vargas & Chloé Brûlé Company, premiered in the Basque Country, and its 88 minutes on stage, from the theatrical and Lorca beginning to the final toast typical of Danish dogma cinema, were dilated and slow, without ideas. , without fanfare, without even resources (there were three songs, all canned).
Because? Let’s theorize: we assume that the Canadian Chloé Brûlé and the Sevillian gypsy Marco Vargas know how to dance very well, they could do it beautifully, but they have come to the conclusion that to repeat the same thing as always, they better investigate, dismantle, deconstruct flamenco dancing and try to mutate it. in contemporary dance (the proof of this: some dancing on the floor), and there was the failure: his choreography ‘Origin’ did not go beyond the hollow scaffolding, the poorly transmitted and even pedantic message. According to the official program it is “a contemporary flamenco dance show that proposes us to enjoy simple things, pays tribute to rural life and enhances its cultural poetics”, and there the conceptual error crystallized, because there is little flamenco, neither in the dance nor in the touch (even blues contributed by Raúl Cantizano).
The three dancers on the table. Oscar Cubillo
The roster was sevenfold (two guitar players, five dancers – more than bailaores – and no cantaor) and, thinking that the brief promotional photographs did not do justice to what could be seen, we went with high expectations. And there was nothing in 88 minutes. Okay, almost nothing: the final, brief and genuine dance by the octogenarian Manolo Marín (the most applauded, and not because a worthy and small man attacked him, but because it was the coolest, and people prefer the usual, the classic, which cannot be improved), and the falsetas of the guitarist Raúl Cantizano (he usually goes with El Niño de Elche) in the central dance of the couple more than the co-leading protagonist, a dance where among other ingredients included the zapateado and some short running that made us think of Kukai.
Neither Vargas, nor Brûlé, nor his two subordinates lack technique, but we ask ourselves: why deconstruct what is already beautiful and established? So as not to repeat yourself ad infinitum and err on the side of purism and get stuck in the cliché of the tourist tablao? Ok, it is understood, but the way is not to stretch the numbers and the vignettes without grace: in the first scene, the one with the wheat ears, Lorca and liturgical, there was nothing so static, not even a dance movement; in the second, behind that long and annoying table in the middle of the stage, a long table that they don’t know how much of a hindrance it was, a table that was first funerary, then colorful and commercial, at the end of a domestic and solemn white tablecloth, leaning on that transgressive table beaten with knuckles they moved, more than danced, in a robotic, physical, mimic way, not break dancing because they were even grotesque.
Then the movements of the three dancers on the table went nowhere, with less art than theatricality. And the number derived from this, with Carmen Muñoz dead and resurrected, dancing between Kukai and a broken ‘Blade Runner’ toy, seemed like a contemporary sketch (and the other guitarist, Miguel Vargas, participated as a featured actor). And another number that was not finished at all was the one starring the Afro-Londoner Yinka Esi Graves (with a Jamaican father and a Ghanaian mother), with little flamenco and which did not go beyond the suggested and unfinished swagger, like almost everything in this ‘Origin’ .
Final greetings from Raúl Cantizano and Miguel Vargas (guitars), Chloé Brûlé, Manolo Marín, Marco Vargas, Carmen Muñoz and Yinka Esi Graves. Oscar Ciné
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