Dance: Flamenco Festival, Sadler's Wells, London

Rhythm reborn
By Jenny Gilbert
Published: 04 March 2007

Once, if you wanted to hear and see proper flamenco, the opportunities were limited, even in Spain. As a theatrical producer from Madrid once told me with startling frankness, "the only flamenco you get here is either rubbish for tourists or museum exhibits for old people". The real thing, he declared, had literally gone underground, a secret shared by tiny groups of aficionados in basement rooms, inaccessible, dying on its feet. That was flamenco in the early Nineties. How times have changed.

Sadler's Wells is now on its fourth annual season devoted to flamenco reborn: nine days of performances that aim to show just how far and fast the art form has travelled in its native re-instatement. You want flamenco puro or flamenco nuevo? You want low-tech performance or the production values of an upmarket rock show? You want guitars and bare hand-clapping or flamenco touched with the spirit of Bach? All of that was here for the choosing.

(leer +) [vía the independent]

tags: flamenco, baile, cante, flamenca