An odd title, yes. Especially considering I'm in Jerez de la Frontera, if not the birthplace of flamenco, as close to that as anything gets.
But the thing is, so far, we've been so busy with classes and practice (and the consequent sore toes [me], blisters [Carolyn] and the odd strained muscle or joint [both of us]), we've pretty much stuck to the shows at the Teatro Villamarta. So far. Because the Flamenco Festival is not limited to the theatre, no sir. There's flamenco all friggin' over, all friggin' day and night long. Official festival programming all over town, plus the usual peñas, café cantantes, juergas and all other shape, manner and form of flamenco imaginable and unimaginable in this world (and, likely, others).
Still, the shows at the Villamarta are free for us students, so it's not something to be passed by just 'cause. The tricky bit is that, it being the Festival de Jerez, it's a showcase of old and new, traditional and innovative, puro (pure) and fusion. And, so far, the only traditional (puro) flamenco we've caught at the theatre was on our first night, with La Farruca's fantastic show...
On Day Two, we had that Japanese guy's flamenco / balleticky rendition of the Spanish traditional play, La Celestina.
Day Three = dark stage
Day Four (yesterday) = Rubén Olmos's very strange, very fusiony show, which had very little flamenco, but lots of modern and fusion and ballet and... Carolyn loved it, self-admittedly because of her ballet background. I mostly hated it, self-admittedly because it seemed to me just a crazy mix just for the sake of making a crazy-mix show. There were bagpipes at one point on stage, for crissakes! BAGPIPES! And a marching band. And a cross-dressing principal dancer in a fluffy-sleeved bata de cola. And... did I mention the friggin' bagpipes??? I'm not saying the dancers weren't talented, or that the show didn't earn kudos for its courage and inventiveness, but... Bagpipes and a marching band? There's flamenco / modern fusion. And there's somebody's crazy dream turned into a stage production. In all fairness, though, there were a couple of the group choreographies I did enjoy: a foursome of women doing an amazingly in-sync piece with mantones, for one thing, and crazy Rubén's use of his very own mantón (or is it a MAN-ton?)
Day Five (today) = A cute, enjoyable more-play-than-dance-show production by Javier Latorre and his company. I felt bad for the non-Spanish speakers because there was a lot of dialogue and some of it was pretty poetic. Overall, I enjoyed it because it was fun (and, self-admittedly, because of my theatre background) and cute and clever. But I still want to watch some "real" flamenco pretty soon...
The program for next week looks promising, though! Manuela Carrasco, Mercedes Ruiz... I can't wait!
And there's, of course, the other flamenco. The peñas, the café cantantes, the odd construction worker breaking into song or the person reviewing their footwork in the middle of the street. Or the car going by, stereo blasting flamenco out of the open windows...
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