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| Saturday & Sunday 15th/16th June 2002 Mayte Martin (singer) and Belen Maya (dancer) were in concert for MedFest 2002 in the Pit Theatre at the Barbican. Mayte Martin is one of the new wave of flamenco singers, poetic, melodic and tuneful, and with a beautiful voice. Her CD "Querencia" is highly recommended and is available from www.flamenco-world.com (delivery 48 hours!). Belen Maya is well-known as a modern flamenco dancer, incorporating contemporary dance and much innovation into her style. This show was generally regarded as the best flamenco show anyone had ever seen. The intimacy of the small dark venue created an atmosphere which made the event an emotional experience. There was a tangible chemistry between Mayte Martin and Belen Maya. We were dragged from a weeping solo violin, through the highest expression of dance in white bata de cola, to painful heart-rending song. It all ended far too soon with both artists leaving together, in a bulerias with pretend rose petals being scattered from gathered skirts. Wonderful!
CARMEN La Cuadra de Sevilla by Salvador Tavora. An Andalusian Folk Opera - passionate flamenco dancing, a 26-strong Spanish band of bugles and drums and a beautiful white stallion performing a dazzling display of dressage - we were told! Well, how bizarre was that? The prices were extortionate, the sound hurt your ears, and the choreography was dull to put it kindly. The band was on stage the entire show and sounded like a very bad high-pitched brass band - when I visited Almuñecar earlier this year, each evening we could hear a similar band playing tuneless aimless music. It turned out to be teenagers meeting up in the local park to play their bugles and drums. Presumably this type of band is an Andalucian custom, but did we really need 20 odd buglers? At one point they descended from their raised positions on both sides of the stage and we thought (hoped) they were going off - but no, they walked around a bit and went back up. Presumably they needed to stretch their legs from standing in one position for one and a half hours. There were 3 female singers, of the old wailing kind of flamenco school, whose voices also hurt the eardrums. There was very little difference between the voices and one was constantly sharp. The 3 guitarists just played in unison (in funny hats) which put paid to any expression. At the rear of the stage was a huge square arch, embroidered with gold on black velvet. The arch also incorporated about 20 bells up the sides and across the top, which I didn't notice at first - until they all started ringing (more assault on the eardrums). Towards the end of the show, when Don Jose killed Carmen, the whole arch tipped forward (bells ringing) and then tipped back again. (Why??) The story of Carmen was not the story as we know it from the opera, but the original "legend" based on fact, about a worker in a cigarette-factory in Triana, Seville, who fought for women's rights as well as being a flibbertijibbet who was killed by her lover. The deviser of the show was trying to get this across using traditional Andalucian dance and music. So why did he intersperse it with Bizet's music on a scratchy tape? A man was hung in the middle of it, which seemed to upset everybody - and it was not obvious who this was. You had to buy the programme to find out that it was a political figure. The lead male dancer, Marco Vargas, was very good and made the best of poor choreography. He danced an excellent Alegria, but even he was compelled to become a tin soldier when he joined the other men playing soldiers who goose-stepped their way across the stage and turned stilted circles as if they were clockwork figures on a musicbox. The female lead, Lalo Tejada, was forced into contortions of over-acting which spoilt the grace of flamenco dance. The best bit was what appeared to be a representation of the sexual act which entailed Carmen lying on her back on the floor, pulling up her skirts and arching her back, while Don Jose stood astride her, performing footwork. The saving grace was the magnificent white stallion which thoroughly enjoyed his display of dressage, even with Carmen dangling from his forelock.
SADLERS WELLS last year played host to Eva Yerbabuena.
On
my way to London on Friday 8th March 2002, I wondered how a prominent
flamenco gypsy family from Granada, accustomed to performing in cramped smoky
bars and tiny low-ceilinged caves, or at best purpose-built tablaos for
tourists, would translate to the large impersonal modern theatre setting of the
Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank. I need not have worried. What we saw was
a flamenco show in the best tradition, brought up-to-date with contemporary
dance steps blended with modern flamenco music. We heard sympathetic
accompaniment by guitarists and palmas to modern dance rhythms, and the show
sparkled with humour and melodrama. There
were two guitarists, not named in the programme, but one was recognisable as the distinctively thin-faced Emilio
Maya. There were two singers, one also unnamed, but the other the veteran Toni
Maya. The dancers were led by Juan Andrés Maya, currently considered to
be one of the greatest young contemporary flamenco dancers. With him were the
captivating Madrid-trained Mari Paz Lucena and the wild gypsy contrast of Jara
Heredia. Most of the company are teachers at Granada’s school of language and
flamenco, Carmen
de las Cuevas, and
members of the extended Maya family. Mari
Paz From the beginning we had a taste of Mari Paz Lucena Samaniego’s graceful dancing, in the opening Soleá por Buleria performed as a duet with Juan Andrés Maya. Dressed in an elegant, slim-fitting black velvet dress topped with a short gold-edged jacket, she had caught my attention. I remember her teaching me some basic tangos in the cave studios of Carmen de las Cuevas, in the steep narrow streets where the Albaicín, the Arab quarter of Granada, meets Sacromonte, the hill where the gypsies live. She would dance like a dream in the atmospheric tiny white-washed cave, drilled out of the hillside, and then paradoxically put her helmet over her flowing black hair and whiz off on her motorcycle. For me the highlight of the show was her Soleá in which she used the simplest of steps to stunning effect. Less is more, a lesson to flamenco teachers and students everywhere. I am constantly impressed that professional dancers use simple steps effectively, whilst we students are struggling with complicated footwork. And she had the deepest backbend I have ever seen.
There is no doubt that the elder Toni Maya stole the show, with his lyrical tenor voice and enormous presence. Sound engineers in this country have a tendency to assault the eardrums by turning their PA equipment up too loud, and this show was no exception. The danger with flamenco is that the music can drown out the footwork despite the mike aimed at the feet. The moment of truth for both the sound engineers and the audience came when Toni Maya left his chair and his microphone and approached the front of the stage, smoothed back his hair at his temple with his left hand, and sang unamplified, clear and strong to the back of the theatre – and the guitarists moved away from their microphones too. His buleria punctuated with his own footwork and palmas was glorious and excited the audience. One got the impression he was more relaxed when moving freely round the stage without amplification. It was only then that the duende began to flow. The top of the billing was Juan Andrés Maya, a young rising star. True, he did not set the theatre alight, an opinion confirmed by what I have heard at the time and since. But he was technically very competent and there were some nice touches which, possibly more importantly, the audience will remember. He strutted elegantly round the stage like a young matador, sank into very deep lunges in the buleria, crossed himself before manic footwork in the Alegría, and took his bow on his knees. While Toni Maya recited a poem about bull fighting in Granada, accompanied by melodic guitars, Juan Andres danced Soleá in slow stylised movements. There is definitely something very sexy about a man in a suit dancing zapateados. When Juan Andrés removed his jacket it was even sexier! He used it as a matador’s cape, shaking it at the imaginary bull, enticing it and dodging it in slow motion, until finally putting the jacket back on over one shoulder as a cape would be worn. At the end of the first half, I heard mutterings from the audience that they expected more from him. But by the end of the Soleá at least one member of the audience wanted to have his baby.
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Copyright © 2001 FLAMENCO NORFOLK
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Her show at the Barbican in 2001 was a
triumph. This year she had 4 other dancers with her, with a musical group
of 3 singers, 2 guitarists (including her husband), a percussionist and a flautist. 
Juan Andrés Maya and the Gypsies of Granada.
Friday 8 March 2002 at Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank, London
Emilio
Jara 
