(noticia) Ole! It's the flamenco revival

Flamenco Festival, Sadler's Wells, London

By Jenny Gilbert
Published: 19 February 2006

You have only to look at the men's hairstyles to see what's happened to flamenco. Fifteen years ago, when Sadler's Wells began championing the art form, the typical male bailaore was a weaselly type in an ill-fitting jacket and out-of-date perm. Now there's a touch of the catwalk about him: he's young and sleek and looks as if he hangs out in Madrid's coolest clubs - many of which, incidentally, now host flamenco nights. At home in Spain, what was once a music-and-dance form obsessed with old people's memories has been reborn as a vibrant focus for fashion and creativity, and the stupendous opening event of this year's Flamenco Festival London broadcast that status delightedly.

Sara Baras, the emerging queen of the current generation, is neither a moderniser nor an outright purist. While she favours a slick, tightly choreographed presentation, framing solo numbers with sharply synchronised chorus work and ditching traditional frills for a streamlined look, she takes care not to blur the old distinctions of style. In Sabores ("flavours"), 13 numbers - whose titles simply describe their musical form: tangos, solea, buleria and so on - run on one after another without a break. It makes for a hefty evening - almost two hours without interval - but the way Baras modulates the show's energy minute by minute ensures that the dynamic never flags. In fact, the excitement builds to such dizzying intensity that your normally sober critic was heard to emit an involuntary yelp.

(leer +) [vía the independent]