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EVENING STANDARD
Love and death cocktail
After the success of his last production, Paco pena has returned to London, this time for a month, with Musa Gitana, his latest show inspired by the painter Julio Romero de Torres, who lived in Pena’s home town of Cordoba and died there in 1930.
The painter’s themes are love and death and, from huge projections of his paintings, we see a man who idealises women in a cheery symbolist style.
One looks as if she has wandered in from Jay Gatsby’s, another, like a pin-up, rests four oranges on an arm below a bare breast.
If naked flesh traditionalists wince, they will be shocked by the exciting dancing, which flamboyantly draws from Western dance. The women have the most mobile torsos in flamenco and the deepest back bends. In a solo, I thought the high kicks
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might crumble the ceiling. It is not quite flamenco fused with other dance forms, but it is not too far off.
None of flamenco’s spirit is lost, however. The disillusionment, anguish and sense of futility is there but the movement style is opulent. Most striking are the women with rotating wrists, grinding hips and earthquake feet. Javier Latorre’s choreography is unprecedented in flamenco for its innovation.
Pena’s earthy cocktail of acoustic Spanish guitar, drumming and stamping is irresistible.
The party piece belongs to a male soloist, who drums up a rainstorm with his tornado heels and slows to create the pitter patter of a tap dripping. This is flamenco at its finest – modern, sophisticated and tantalising.
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HIGHBURY AND ISLINGTON EXPRESS
Spain’s pre-eminent flamenco guitarist
BRITISH culture has many things to be proud of, but folk dancing is not one of them. Seriously now, when did you last watch morris dancing let alone take part in this decidedly unsexy synchronized stick bashing? And as for the May pole, anyone suggesting you make a show of it at a mid-scale London theatre would very quickly be locked up.
Compare that to flamenco. Spain’s wholly authentic folk genre, something we love to watch even if we haven’t quite got the hang of doing it ourselves.
In fact, when it comes to filling theatres, flamenco is the magic word. At least it is where Paco Pena is concerned. The 50-something musician opened to a packed Sadler’s Wells on Monday night and quickly confirmed his reputation as Spain’s pre-eminent flamenco guitarist.
Based very loosely on the life and work of the Spanish painter Julio Romero de Torres (1874-1930), La Musa Gitana (The Gypsy Muse) is Pena’s first evening-length story show that describes the life of the painter and his fatal passion for the Spanish gypsies.
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I say loosely because unless you read the programme note La Musa Gitana could just as easily have been about Northumberland pig farmers or Chilean freedom fighters. The plot really was a muddle. Who did what to whom, when and why was far from clear. But it doesn’t matter. The appeal of Pena’s show is not narrative clarity, although it should have that, given it is telling a story. What makes it a joy to watch is the troupe’s stunning technique and unpretentious, unplugged style. There is nothing remotely slick or forced about these performers. They are simply some of the best flamenco dancers and musicians committed to their work rather than the glory, although with this commitment the glory comes anyway.
Undisputed star of the show was dancer Angel Munoz, the male lead who portrayed the artist. Close seconds were Mayte Bajo and Noelia Vicente who played his society ladyfriend and gypsy muse. These three are stunning dance artists. Full bodied and open hearted, they were transformed by the music and in the process transformed the audience. Not something you could ever say about morris dancing.
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ISLINGTON GAZETTE
I came out of Sadler’s Wells on a complete high wishing I was a flamenco dancer.
Musa Gitana is a feast of swirling skirts, clapping hands and stamping feet. I felt like I was at a party and the audience were the guests to an impromptu, seamless perfomance packed with passion and energy.
The show is a tale of fascination, love, jealousy and death. Inspired by the life and work of the Spanish artist Julio Romero de Torres, a selection of his paintings are used as backdrops for a stirring rendition of passion and murder.
The show opens with mourners around an open coffin. A young man stands apart and is shunned by the other mourners.
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We then move back in time and the audience is treated to a vibrant flamenco party where the dancers take turns to go centre stage and strut their stuff to the accompaniment of guitarists and lots of hand-clapping.
Romero is at the party and is captivated by the elegance and beauty of the Gypsy girl played by Noelia Vicente. He is accompanied by a sophisticated high-class woman named Dama – played by Mayte Bajo – who wants to learn to dance.
The second half of the performance gets even more dramatic as Dama attempts to win the painter’s heart. But be warned, there’s tragedy in the air.
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THE HERALD
THERE’S a moment, in the first half, where guitarist Paco Pena is singing softly – and there, in a pool of mysterious half-light, Cecilia Gomez is spiralling and dancing like a wisp of smoke. And you can understand, absolutely, the twin fascinations – flamenco and women – that so gripped Julio Romero de Torres, the Spanish artist whose ife and work are the source and inspiration of this piece.
Born in Cordoba in 1874 – he died in 1930 – Julio Romero adored women, celebrating them on canvas with an opulent sensuality that none the less carried symbolic nuances of social satire and critical comment. You catch sight of this element in Musa Gitana – examples of the artwork are used as occasional scene-setting back projections – but the heart of this episodicdance-drama is the artist’s almost-obsessive love of flamenco and the tragic fate of the gipsy dancer who was his muse.
In truth, it’s not just the artist who appears fascinated, fixated. Alongside the gipsy girl, the Musa of the title (danced by Cecilia Gomez) there is another woman, Dama (Mayte Bajo) – a high-society lady who longs to learn flamenco….A dream sequence sees her, in endlessly swirling folds of silvery-pale satin, edging her contemporary, elegant long kicks, spins, and leaps closer and closer to the
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impassioned vigour of flamenco – while, like a vision, Musa herself is simultaneously dancing with that sought-after air of proud abandon. It’s such a telling image this: full of the class divide, the associated notions of sexuality and morality – which the artist challenged so provocatively in his work.
There’s scarcely room to do anything like full justice to the way these philosophical issues are woven into the piece, or to the sheer poetry of Angel Munoz – who eloquently portrays the torment of Musa’s jealous lover – or indeed to the exceptional ensemble caliber of Paco Pena’s company of dancers and musicians.
Musa Gitana is ambitious, different – not least in its unflouncy costuming – but, always, like Julio Romero, it holds the best traditions of flamenco close to its heart.
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EDINBURGH FESTIVAL THEATRE
The Spanish art of living
HAVING conducted exhaustive research into the subject, it appears having the hots for flamenco dancer Angel Munoz is an exclusively hetero female weakness. Gay men and women do not so easily succumb to this affliction. None dispute, however, that at 25, Munoz is one of flamenco’s greatest dancers. And here he was, appearing with one of the greatest flamenco guitarists, Paco Peña.
Paco Peña first visited Britain in the sixties, when he spearheaded the movement away from frilly silly tourist flamenco , and centered the art form fairly and squarely back in its gypsy roots.
In Musa Gitana, Peña pays homage to the life and art of Andalusian painter Julio Romero de Torrés (1874-1930).
Images of the paintings themselves, crackling film footage of the painter at work and Spanish serenades eulogizing him are interwoven throughout an innovative flamenco-driven storyline, underscored by music to flirt to, and, if need be, to die to.
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The authentic wailing takes a bit of getting used to, but Peña’s own haunting serenades bring flamenco to the brink of its most tender and vulnerable. Elsewhere, rhythms build up to a plateau of sound, upon which strut those magnificent peacocks who speak volumes with just the flick of the head, or the defiant raising of one eyebrow. From huge, fleshy self-confidence to dignified restraint and reserve, the dancers deliver all the promise of flamenco.
It wasn’t all fireworks and humour. Slower sections allowed the attention to wander but for the most part the Peña/ Muñoz combination results in flamenco which is a vibrant reflection of the art of living.
It takes everyday and banal activities and transports them to the heights and depths of passion, with a refreshing helping of humour thrown in.
Magnifico.
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