THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

THE TIMES

FIRE and passion swept an audience up into an unforgettable experience of raw power and energy.

On a miserable, overcast and rainy night in Birmingham , the stage of the Hippodrome Theatre glowed with the heat of Spain fired by the Paco Peña Dance Company and its new show, Flamenco – Voces y Ecos.

Virtually everyone who has spent a holiday in Spain over the past 40 years has seen a Flamenco dance performance.  It is virtually compulsory in order to get a ‘real taste’ of Iberia .

However, anyone watching the performances at the Hippodrome this week will have no doubts they were seeing something special, a rare experience to savour.

Paco Peña, flamenco guitar exponent par excellence, who has been at the forefront of the art for many years, is perhaps better known to British audiences for his solo appearances.

With his deep understanding of flamenco, and aided by director Jude Kelly’s stylish production, Peña and his Company take the audience on a journey to where flamenco came from, and where its future lies.

The stunning performances by the company of five dancers and a nine piece flamenco band, led by Peña, dazzled the audience with consummate skill and sheer personality.

While staying faithful to the traditions of flamenco, the company is pushing the boundries, happily incorporating modern dance styles and movements which never seem out of place.

The bursting enthusiasm on stage gripped the audience, shaking the British reserve to the extent that at times shouts of ‘olé’ were distinctly audible.

The two hours flew by as rapidly as the staccato sound of the dancers feet on the boards, leaving an audience happy in the knowledge they had witnessed a great performance, and thirsting for more.

GRIT and pain, passion and resilience – flamenco holds them close to its heart and soul… releases them in music, song, dance that a world-wide audience has increasingly come to relish and applaud.  But yesterday’s horrendous news about the bombings in Madrid somehow brought home to a busy Theatre Royal a heightened sense of how flamenco can be a form of coping, a means of garnering identity, a statement – like the dignified precurtain words of Paco Peña himself – that people “are bigger than any of these criminals and the show must go on”.

The gist of Voces y Ecos (Voices and Echoes) is the where, when and how of flamenco’s ongoing evolution.  The opening section, Home, puts its roots in a domestic context – one of those informal family and friends get-togethers that spark folk into singing and dancing, flirting a little, showing off, putting their own character into steps that others will pick up, reiterate, alter.  By the turn of the 20^th century, when flamenco was gaining celebrity on the public domain

of the café, its folk roots finessed into virtuoso displays of percussive footwork and nimble-fingered musicianship – even when (as Peña does) you can put a sock on the fingers that scamper over the frets.

Fully fashioned stage shows followed – acknowledged here by breath-taking displays of (the by now) stylised dance styles.  But its when Peña and his team look to the future that this show reveals unfamiliar sides to the relationship between form and performer.

Casually dressed, the dancers and musicians seem to lose themselves in exploring new rhythms, new combinations – whisper-soft steps, jazz-funk motifs – with a focused intensity that suggests flamenco’s time-honoured expressiveness can accommodate new griefs, new challenges, new visions.  A performance of undaunted brilliance, generosity of spirit and life-affirming energy.

STARTING in the 19^th century bar set, and finishing on a modern, starkly lit stage, Paco Peña’s Voces y Ecos traces flamenco through its history and into its future.

The lights go up to reveal Peña sat in front of a computer screen while a fragmented voiceover tries to describe the meaning of flamenco – a term which covers the dance, the music and even a state of mind.

Each scene begins with a snatch of recorded music, voices and sounds from flamenco’s past, which is then taken up by the musicians.  This is no tourist friendly, castanet-clicking extravaganza.

Though Peña’s show is far from pure – the scene at the beginning of the second act features jazz, rock and even Stevie Wonder – the dancers and musicians capture the passion, aggression and humour of flamenco.

For me, its all about the movement of the dancers.  If anything flamenco is sexy – the swing of the hips and the exaggerated curve of the back creating a sense of intimacy.  This is far from picture book-pretty Spain , and is all the better for it.

depicting a past of great dancing, singing and music of profound character, masterly performed by all: and then after intermission drawing us briefly and reluctantly, with a shock, into the mundane present with modernized Bach, missing depth and character. However the dancers, performing modern movements in modern clothes, bounced back to business when the singers joined in, giving it weight once more.

A great pity that Peña, always a great teacher, offered no detailed

programme, especially since the music was fused in so many ways. He always plays only one solo, invariably excellent and leaving us wanting more. This time he made magic with heavy music from the mining areas.

The most satisfying first half was so complete. With the family in period clothes, the scenes moved historically and cleverly through time starting in a home, signified by a bureau with open drawers and clothes cascading from them, chairs and tables to the left. The transition to the Café Cantante was seamless, the bureau in the home disappeared and the chairs and tables served to seat the spectators, banners descended proclaiming a bygone era. Muñoz¹s Bulerias de Cádiz ³chassed² into an Alegrias/Livianos which was completed with filigree lightness by Alicia Márquez.

Muñoz was stunning when the scene moved to the theatre, starkly staged with lowered lighting bars. Magnificent and traditionally dressed in black traje corto, his masterful and unforgettable Martinete was unaccompanied except by faintly lit hands clapping palmas rhythms. Joined by Espino in a nostalgic ensuing Caña they ended the first half.

The exciting Fernando Romero presented inventive choreography. The show, tastefully costumed by Maya Schröder and lit by Teatrek, came to a graceful dynamic end with the lovely girls in swirling red skirts and men in black, playfully laughing their way home with us in their Bulerias. All greatly appreciated by the vociferously enthusiastic audience.

Today, with the performers on one side of the proscenium, and an audience on the other, the problem is how to take flamenco forward without losing the give-and-take of this earlier world. The great flamenco guitarist Paco Peña, working with director Jude Kelly, brings us as close as possible to the original world of the cafes cantantes and then shows us the future: voices sound, then echo back and forward across time.

Kelly and Peña have structured a show that in less able hands would be corny, but instead is a revelation. They begin in flamenco’s 19th century café past, lit in a

Suddenly Angel Muñoz appears in formal dress in front of a set of stage lights being readied for performance. We have entered the 20th century, and he and Charo Espino perform a gorgeous pas de deux in high-glamour early cinema pastiche. From there, the deep range of expression in flamenco is explored, until the finale, a starkly theatrical backlit explosion of black and red.

Peña and Kelly’s show never feels like a procession of numbers, but instead gives full reign to the emotions behind flamenco: loss, longing, pain, and, of course, sensuality. It would be invidious to pick out any single dancer or musician – each brings a remarkable talent to the group, which in turn becomes more than the sum of its parts.

And flamenco as a natural expression of Spanish passion is evident right from the opening selection of songs, dances and tunes in this highly entertaining production. The feeling is so strong, that it touches you right down on the inside.

For the first 15-20 minutes of the show, the 13 members of the Paco Peña Flamenco Dance Company act as if they were the only people in the Festival Theatre. It is hardly even a performance, except for one another, as they behave as people must have done in Andalucian taverns for centuries.

Swirling

One dance slides into another without pause for applause. Dance steps are traded and rhythms are swapped, as those not on their feet shout vocal encouragement from the sidelines and gesture how the dance should go, or get up to join in and show them how its done.

Then, from his guitar, Paco Peña himself allows his instrument to perform a mournful, heart-rendering duet with a singer. There is no sense of one accompanying the other – voice and guitar have equal billing. It is a concrete example of the way the individual

elements of flamenco can be interchanged.

If that were not enough, the singer then goes on to allow his voice to perform a duet with one of the dancers. She, in a swirling skirt,

After this opening salvo, every ensuing embellishment is merely a change in emphasis, a product of presentation. Whether it is the extra flounces added to the costumes, the increasing complexity of the dances over the evening, or the lighting-quick variations in the music, nothing extra is performed. It is just put differently.

Not that you’d want to leave straight away. It is just that each half of the evening builds from a loose, open introductory scene until it finishes with a tightly controlled performance.

It is a format which allows the company to show off the different sides of flamenco in a natural, flowing way.

Whatever way it is put, the central juxtaposition of flamenco is never far away.

It is epitomised by the contrast between the tight control of the dancers’ bodies as they glide menacingly round one another, and the unfetted clattering of their feet in ever more complex rhythm.

It would be all too easy to overdose on flamenco. But this evening manages to get the balance just right.

On the other hand it is exciting and liberating in a way that could teach hip-hop kids a thing or two, on the other hand it is a splendid and glorious pageant. And bringing the two sides together is what makes it great.

The concept is both simple yet profound. Peña has fixed on four points in the evolution of flamenco and the show brings them together as if in a living photo-album. The opening section harks back to the domestic/folk roots of flamenco with a genial, informal gathering. Phase two sees a shift in

The next thing you know, Ramon Martinez is alone, spotlit on an empty stage, as he whirls and stamps in a suberb exhibition piece that announces the arrival of flamenco on the world stage. The final section, however, peeps behind the scenes. Musicians are doodling around with other styles. Yet it is always possible to hear the roots that run, like an energizing current, through each episode. It’s a thrilling celebration of flamenco, performed by some of the finest, most intelligent artists.

The three women (Isabel Bayón, Charo Espino and Alicia Márquez) are unusually young and beautiful but already suggest the awesome sexual power that transforms earthy old bailaoras into furious fertility goddesses. They are aided in this by Maya Schröder’s splendid costumes. The bias-cut Armani favoured by Joaquín Cortés’s dollies is all very smart but it doesn’t serve the dance nearly as well as the traditional flamenco frock.

The two men complemented each other perfectly and were a fine illustration of Peña’s commitment to the evolving tradition of flamenco. The witty and expressive Angel Muñoz is a fine exponent of the more classical style, but there were new and unexpected delights from the choreographer and soloist Fernando Romero. His dancing offered all the usual slippery turns and rapid footwork but there was a jazzy spontaneity to both his steps and their delivery which is truly revolutionary. There was something about that burly frame and carefree, joyous air that suggested Mark Morris at his freest and most mesmeric – like flamenco after a couple of large martinis.

Kelly, a self-confessed, London-based flamenco virgin, helped put this new show together in Seville. She spoke no Spanish, the company no English. Yet somehow both sides communicated exactly what was necessary. ‘Flamenco operates at a most sophisticated level,’ says Kelly, ‘but anyone can take part.’

Tracing the development of Spain’s national music and dance form from hearthside to café to concert stage to contemporary rehearsal studio, the production is top-notch in every department. Anyone with an ounce of flamenco appreciation in their veins should rush to see it.

In flamenco, dancers interpret el cante – singing drawn from deep within the body – with a balance of peacock-like formal discipline and hot-blooded improvisation.

It is beautifully-judged. Peña, Kelly and company experiment with modernism while respecting tradition. There’s a subtle but sure eroticism in the passion of the singing, the sensual curves and sizzling zapateado (stamping footwork) of the dancing and the sheer beauty of the guitar-playing. At one point Peña, suddenly barefoot, even strums his instrument with a sock on his hand.

Now flamenco is daring to move on, open up, explore exciting new roads. A few month ago Eva Yerbabuena gave us a breathtaking demonstration of this. Now the guitar virtuoso Paco Peña, working with the theatre director Jude Kelly, has upped the game with Voces y Ecos, which is enjoying a month-long run at London’s Peacock Theatre.

It begins with a brief vignette of Peña in front of his glowing computer screen as a voiceover ponders on what flamenco is. Next, with the stage bathed in tawny bronzed light, we are rolled back to some archetypal flamenco scenes ranging from the sort of thing you can experience at 2am today in Madrid and Seville to a vignette complete with huge art-nouveau posters celebrating 1899.

Having been given now and then, we are next handed today and tomorrow. This is where the show really comes into it’s own. Ranging from a rehearsal studio, where everyone is now in casual contemporary clothes, to inventive, intricate, tightly-wrought production numbers, this is flamenco on fast-forward. The dazzlingly diverse dancers extend the format, expand the vocabulary, push the envelope.

His second-act solo, on an empty stage with a guitarist seated at the side, is an impromptu reverie. If Muñoz is a tornado, Romero is a balmy breeze; a Fred Astaire of flamenco, laid-back, relaxed and elegant even in the most emphatic of moments.

The women, Isabel Bayón, Charo Espino and Alicia Márquez, may not be as radically individualistic as the men, but the tiny Bayón reveals just how alluringly alive and suggestively tempting a woman’s flamenco garb can be. She wraps, slides and caresses her skirts across her body – fabric transformed into a blatant metaphor for the touch of forbidden flesh.

There are some problems with this new show. At more than two hours it could stand some pruning and, as with opera to non-Italians, you can’t help wondering if understanding the wailing words of the plangent songs would colour your perceptions.

Nothing will ever replace the intense intimacy of authentic flamenco in situ, but Peña, Kelly and their cast prove that a theatricalised version can, after all, attain it’s own sense of glory.