DANZ QUARTERLY No 2 December 2005

Reviews

An Interview, Book and Performance Review: The cry of the guitar begins: Flamenco from Three Perspectives

Duende: A Journey in Search of Flamenco
By Jason Webster
and
Paco Peña Flamenco Dance Company
Bruce Mason Centre, Auckland
28 August 2005

Reviewed by Francesca Horsley

The cry of the guitar begins.
In the early morning,
wine glasses shatter.
The cry of the guitar begins.
Useless
to silence it.

The words of Spain's highly revered poet García Lorca seek to define “what is flamenco?” It’s the question wanna-be flamenco guitarist, Jason Webster asks throughout his autobiographical book Duende.

A chance find in a bookstore, Duende sent me on a quest to delve into flamenco’s mysteries. In the midst of winter rain, the book was an opportunity to be transported to sunny Spain. Plus I had a mission to finish it - legendary flamenco guitarist Paco Peña was performing in Auckland, and I was interviewing him.

While the author and Peña are both passionate about flamenco they are at opposite ends of the continuum. Peña is steeped in his native Andalusian traditions and his life’s work has been to develop flamenco and take it to the world stage. He epitomises charming reserve; his show a polished combination of exhilarating music, dance and song.

Webster is a rash young Englishman, who impulsively journeys to Spain and throws himself into the pursuit of flamenco. His experience is raw, at times dangerous and while he learns much along the way, he remains a guiri – a foreigner.

But the juxtaposition between the two is interesting. While Peña’s show is an authentic display of the art of flamenco with celebrated artists, Webster rips open the door to expose what is hidden to most foreigners – the passion, at times gritty, that underpins the art form. 

To describe flamenco simply is to say it is a folk tradition. Like all folk traditions, it carries the joys, hopes and despair of ordinary people. Its unique essence was brewed in the melting pot of southern Spain, and is flavoured with Gyspy, Moor, Jewish and other influences that passed through or settled in Andalusia. From ancient origins, the three elements – guitar, song and dance – developed haphazardly.

But flamenco is also a way of life – a way of being. Peña says “Its creation and its development stems from a social background which identifies a way of life, a way of being - from conditions which are difficult, tough and precarious – and with suffering.  But thank God that way of life no longer exists.”

However it is this marginalised life Webster ends up living – and he shows that despite Spain’s economic prosperity, gypsies still live hand to mouth, their songs a present-day expression of this ancient tradition.

He starts as novice, hanging out with a small group of “flamencos” in Alicante on the Costa Blanco. After a year of daily lessons from a fanatical teacher whose apartment and everything in it is red - “the colour of flamenco”- he makes good progress. But it comes unstuck when his love affair with a dancer, whose hunting husband has a sizable gun collection, is discovered. He is forced to flee.

Subsisting in Madrid for a year, he finally manages to inveigle himself into a gypsy flamenco group. With them he realises his dream to perform. It comes at a price – loneliness, poverty, cocaine addiction and car theft. When he is abandoned by them, he finally journeys to the heart of flamenco, Cordoba, but struggles to find his place in flamenco.

Duende is much more than a travelogue and rite of passage; Webster communicates his obsessive and rigorous inquiry into flamenco more powerfully than any concert or net search.

The heart of his journey is to capture the essence of “duende” – the emotional state invoked by flamenco when all elements come together.  Spanish writer Luis Antonio de Vega hints at this. “Flamenco is the means through which man reaches God without the intervention of the saints or angels.”

It is this emotion I am hoping to find at Peña’s show. He says that flamenco is not written down, but passes from teacher to teacher, and is recreated at the moment of performance. “It’s got to be yours and it’s got to be distinctive. You have to create something with the music or else you die.”

But moving from the book to live performance was disconcerting, and I wondered if it is possible to experience duende outside Spain. Webster’s chaotic encounters seemed far removed from the group of musicians and singers who took their places on simple chairs on an Auckland stage.

They began with an opening piece by Peña with the silky rhythms and melodic fingering of guitarists Paco Arriaga and Rafael Montilla, gradually building up momentum. The dancers made their entrance slowly. The two men, Angel Muñoz and Ramon Martinez, were joined by Charo Espina, resplendent in a flounced red dress. Sharp lines, twisting hands, head held proud, measured feet in staccato syncopation. As the percussionist Nacho Lopez and singers David Palomar and Maria del Mar Fernandez join them the group’s intense relationship was confirmed.

The dancers moved in and out of solos, duos and trios – often beginning in the same way – a teasing adagio, demonstrating the curve and line of the body, accentuating the sensuality of movement, their stamping feet almost stroking the floor, soft clapping. The pace would gradually increase into rapid, virtuosic moves. Sometimes the dancers appeared remote, their bodies turned towards the stage wings, at other times they directly engaged with the audience.

The distinct personality and style of each dancer was accentuated in the choreography. Peña allowed time for the soloists to show off a little, to improvise within the form – both musicians and dancers. And unlike some concerts there was no theme or story to tell.

There was no doubting flamenco’s growth – especially for male dancers - as tradition gave way to extraordinary rapid turns, flowing movement with curving hips, upward balletic leaps or loose jazzy style. The variation was endless, with solos lasting a spellbinding 20 minutes and the two men’s expression effortlessly shifting between pain, bravado, comedy and tenderness.                                              

From Espina, the range of expression was more limited although no less artful. Her elegant, stately presence, twisting neck and hands, and arching back had a dramatic, theatrical presence. Her skirts, a wonderful accessory – were haughtily tossed to one side, at other times gathered to show off her flashing legs and dainty, syncopated feet. 

The guitar pieces were soft in contrast; beguiling delicate fingering and sweet melodies, often moving into the passionate cante - or as Webster refers to it – deep song. “Deep song is imbued with the mysterious colour of primordial times,” Lorca says “its notes carry the naked, spine-tingling emotion of the first Oriental races.”

Peña says the three elements, dance, guitar or song, communicate with one another, inspiring each other - it is this collaboration that makes flamenco.

“Dance is the most flamboyant as it is most visual and immediate; the guitar is also interesting and easily understood and the least understood is the song.”

“But it is the most important because it provides a philosophy, a way of life, a way of expression which is unique; the song holds the essence of flamenco more than anything else.”

As the show came to a close I felt a hint of duende. I suspect the performers experienced it because of their integrated perfection. Sitting amidst an Auckland audience, our reserved clapping stifled my goose-bumps, but I did feel transported to another place. Ole!

Book review: A Delightful Dance History

Dancing With Delight: Footprints of the Past: Dance and Dancers in Early Twentieth Century Auckland
by Cherie Devliotis

Reviewed by Francesca Horsley

“The Art of Dancing is the oldest of all the Arts – it was born in he Dawn of the World, before even Pan played his Pipes.” This inspiring quote prefaces an advertisement for Miss Bettina Edward’s School of Dancing, published in the programme for Pavlova’s Auckland visit in 1926.

This gem from Auckland’s dance history is recorded in the newly published Dancing with Delight: Footprints of the Past.

The culmination of five years of research and writing by Cherie Devliotis, the book traces dance developments in Auckland from the 1920s to 1950s. While these are its parameters, the history encompasses dance throughout New Zealand, and the time-frame often extends through to the present day.

Dance is firmly in Cherie’s blood - the daughter of passionate dancer and teacher, Isabelle Brook, and niece of dancer Mardi Brook - Cherie no doubt took her first steps in her mother’s studio. As a youngster she was performing, and “bringing the house down”; absorbing dance gossip after school at her grandmother’s house. To add to her pedigree, her cousin is famed New Zealand ballerina Rowena Jackson.

Dancing with Delight details the changing dance styles and the impact of social and technological developments. It covers ballet from the early days of fancy dancing to the advent of teachers such as Cecil Hall, Bettina Edwards and Beryl Nettleton who were instrumental in developing high standards. It outlines the careers of well-known dancers of the time - Doreen O’Leary, Margaret Scrimshaw, Harold Robinson and Da Kapita, together with dancers who went on make their careers overseas such as Peggy Sager and Yvonne Cartier.

Cherie not only conjures up the early memories of performers and teachers; she also encapsulates the way early Auckland landmarks and theatres played an important role in the development of a distinct dance identity – for example, the Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber which hosted the Auckland Competitions for decades.

Dancing with Delight has extensive reproductions of photographs, programmes, newspaper articles and advertisements, is fully indexed – and it is alive with wonderful anecdotal details. It is a must for anyone interested in the development of dance in New Zealand. Priced at $44.95 (plus $6.00 for p&p), you can order Dancing with Delight from Cherie Devliotis, P.0. Box 31807, Milford, Auckland 1309.

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Not only has Cherie devoted her time to writing Dancing With Delight, she has also been instrumental in gathering the senior dancer members together for reunions. The first was held in March last year, when 11 elderly but sprightly dancers gathered to mark the book’s near completion and have a catch-up. This gathering was fortuitous, because by the time of Dancing with Delight’s launch this October a number were housebound.

Notwithstanding, it was a very lively affair, with Margaret Pellow (nee Scrimshaw), Tally Frater (nee Nettleton), Rona Von Zalinsky (nee Brewer), Lenore Truscott (nee Upton) and the irrepressible Harold Robinson.  Many notables from the Auckland dance community also attended such as renowned ballet teacher Dorothea Ashbridge and DANZ Auckland Project Manager, Susan Jordan, as well as Minister for the Arts, Hon Judith Tizard.

Performance review: Experimental Night Owls

Late Night Choreographers
Galatos. Auckland, 4 September 2005

Reviewed by Sue Cheesman

Sitting in the audience of Late Night Choreographers, I am interested to see how this experimental interdisciplinary collective has developed and if the same philosophy still provides the platform for their kaupapa. 

Galatos was a great venue for the staging of the various sections and the dancers used the space to the full. Different areas such as the floor, stairs, stage and a screen in one corner, provided for seamless transition between pieces, making the production tight. The audience sat on giant cushions and was able to have a drink - the ambient crowd seemed mostly from the arts and dance community.

Dance films were interspersed with music from Anbaric Chambers and live performance, choreographed by night owls Rachel Atkinson, Julia Milsom and Matt Gibbons. Short dance videos by former UNITEC students made a familiar but engaging start to the evening. Mes Mer, a short film by Morag Brownlie, set in central Auckland and based around the genie in the lamp fable, stood the test of time.

The three live performances were very different to each other in subject matter and treatment.  Rachel’s piece Unkempt unpacked the trappings of womanhood. Exaggerating several gestures such as nail brushing and hair and face touching, to obsessive proportions, it commented on female neurosis. It seemed more performance art: full of snippets of ideas. But this avant garde work, with further development and exposure, could transform into a substantial solo.

Duet a solo performed and choreographed by Julia Milsom was a very strong piece danced with full-on physicality and drama as she ascended and descended the stairs - her inert partner. On occasions we revelled in her physicality as Julia, parallel to the stairs, jammed her body between the wall and a banister.

Home Movey by Matt Gibbons, cleverly took us through the rituals of getting up. He danced his way through different spaces in the house including the roof, ornamented with a TV aerial. A green man appeared and we were transported into the world of slap-slick comedy peppered with different characters such as a film crew, an audience and a captured woman. A pastiche of events evolved and dissolved with clever twists and turns of action – finishing with Superman carrying a cordless TV.

I hope Late Night Choreographers can be sustained in order to continue to provide a platform for experimentation and that these avant garde night owls can push boundaries even further.

Performance review: Peering Across the Great Divide

We Are Gathered Here Today
Raewyn Hill
Repertory Theatre, Christchurch, 16 September 2005

Reviewed by Bronwyn Judge

There is a well-recognised gothic element in the psyche of New Zealand filmmakers and performance artists and Raewyn Hill’s latest dance creation is in keeping, dealing as it does with death as the subject.  She takes us with her from deathbed to funeral, her own, and on this journey devised in conjunction with Duncan Sarkies we encounter Swan Lake, landscapes of ruined buildings, a film montage of her life, sheep farms, wails of anguish, gently understated monologue, and the plight of the lone traveller at an empty airport. The supportive score, chiefly by Richard Long is equally diverse.

Theatrical effects are an integral part of the structure of the piece.  A live chicken immediately draws audience reaction. That the chicken, by being bred to be slaughtered, is a potent symbol of death is more an intellectual conclusion that the audience might come to. This chicken was obviously ordained for higher purposes and is a calm collected performer. Swan Lake is death as transformation. Here Hill emphasises the delicacy of her movements by dancing to the dainty tinkling of a music box rendition of Tchaikovsky’s famous melody.

The development of the choreography suggests death is a great freeing of the body from the burden of life.  The burden is aptly represented by a small colonial woman struggling across various evocative local landscapes carrying as baggage an ever increasing number of modern suitcases.  This excellent cinematography is by Richard Bell.

When I saw Hill’s first solo show I was struck by its sheer physicality and commitment. Until that moment such energy and abandoned risk taking seemed the sole domain of male choreographers in this country. Here was a woman with ideas to communicate pertinent to herself, her sex, and society, but expressed with such verve, it devastates. In We are Gathered Here Today Hill again dazzles with her dancing.

The highlight comes as Hill is suspended by harness and with deathly quiet flies out across the proscenium and back; black crinoline billowing then gyrates and spins deftly repeating her grounded sequences.  The most memorable image though is perhaps the vista of the Southern Alps and glaciers with a small white crinoline clad figure disappearing into the distance over a snow slope, eerie in its starkness, suitcases finally left in the land of the living. Hill’s view of death as a blessed release could be questioned but there is no doubt her vision is inspired with this spiritual ascent into a landscape of supreme loneliness.

Performance review : A Fabulously Royal One Night Stand

A Right Royal Gala
Opera House, Wellington, 21 September 2005

Reviewed by Jo Thorpe

It was right, it was ‘royal’ - with a queen and duke decorously applauding from the boxes - and it was most definitely a gala, full of festivity, finery and show.

It was also a full house. The auditorium buzzed with people who had come to see some of our most celebrated older artists from the worlds of ballet, modern dance and musical theatre.  The promise was that we would be ‘enchanted’ and ‘engaged’.  This one-night stand was to be all about entertainment.

Paul Jenden’s fittingly entitled A Very Special Evening makes up the first half with a series of contemporary-styled ballroom dances.  There is poise and elegance, musicality and focus in the skilful interweaving of the eleven dancers.  In one memorable moment during the foxtrot’s glide-and-swirl, Louis Solino and Sherilyn Kennedy sweep forward to present themselves to the audience with such elegant fluidity that I mentally curtsey in return.  Throughout this piece the timing is spot on and the performers vividly convey their sheer joy in dancing.

Sir Jon Trimmer and Kerry Anne Gilberd excel in the tango, bringing drama and intensity to this most sensuous of Latin dances.   In the graceful and witty waltz, Solino is sartorial (and very Limon), Leigh Evans slinky in high heels and long black gloves, and Jenden’s phrasing lifts me with his fine sense of suspend-and-hold.

The second half moves from ballroom to Broadway, with choreography by Leigh Evans.  This is jazz with a cabaret feel. Bye Bye Blackbird begins all soft and sultry, then moves into hippy slink with a great deal of style and humour.  In Broadway Baby, Ellie Smith’s unmistakable voice accompanies five dancers spinning with feathers and fans, and the Gershwin medley showcases some lovely dancing by Gilberd.

Time for some satire.  Jenden loves making people laugh.  “I think there’s nothing more wonderful.  Feeling an audience’s laughter wash over you is the most magical, magical thing.”  And laugh we do.  Solino - a confused and forgetful Carmen clenching a rose between his teeth - has the audience cheering for more.  As smoke machines and Tchaikovsky herald Swan Lake Act II, Jenden enters using his hands to depict a bizarrely contorted swan’s neck. After hilariously manipulating his lanky doll-partner into exaggerated arabesques and multiple pirouettes, he tosses her offstage and variously dons and discards a tutu (the swan), a cape (Prince Seigfried), all the while adopting signature poses of the corps de ballet.  This piece demands multiple skills - mime, dance, timing and musicality - and Jenden, a born performer, has command of them all.  The audience roars and I delight in seeing his work appreciated by such a huge crowd.   Irreverent and clever, this parody is nevertheless based on a genuine love of the classics.

Doris Humphrey’s Air on the G String has been reconstructed by Solino – who danced with Limon, who worked with Humphrey, who attended the Denishawn School.  So it is fitting that it is performed by five influential figures on the NZ dance scene - Anne Rowse, Jennifer Shennan, Kilda Northcott, Lyne Pringle and Dawn Sanders.  Each brings her own history.  Clasping, curving and smoothly encircling, they remind me that Humphrey worked from the principle of ‘dancing from the inside out.’

Back comes our lady in red (Ellie) with all the raunch of Sondheim’s I’m Still Here.  This is the perfect finale.  “At least I was there,” she sings.  And she was.  As they all were, these celebrated performers who have created - and are still creating - a vibrant part of our cultural life.

People go to the theatre for all sorts of reasons - to be challenged, transformed, wowed by virtuosity, entertained. It is rare that the latter is afforded equal status.  Leaving the theatre and walking home, I am smiling all the way.

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