(noticia) Future flamenco.

MODERNISMO

by JOAN ACOCELLA
Issue of 2006-03-06
Posted 2006-02-27

Of all the forms of ethnic dance that have made their way from the campsite to the concert stage, the most glamorous and the most beloved is surely flamenco. It is also the one with the longest history of going commercial. By the mid-nineteenth century, flamenco dancers, tired of plying their trade at parties or in bars—often for little more than free drinks—had moved into the music halls and the cafés cantantes. The purists scolded them for selling out. The flamencos thumbed their noses back. Finally, they were making a living. This is important to remember. What we think of as flamenco puro, the real thing, is a product of theatres, not of hootenannies.

Even in the night clubs, however, flamenco was a limited business, a single dance—a soleá, an alegrías, anywhere from five to twenty minutes long—after which the dancer yielded the stage to the ballad singer or whomever, and maybe got to go on again later in the evening. Presumably, this restriction was built into the art. Flamenco is fundamentally a solo form, a structured improvisation.

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