The Next Night - Flamenco in Seville

Guitar and singer

SEVILLE

To round out our Flamenco experience in Seville the next night we attend the 7:30 performance at the Flamenco Museum theater.  We’d visited the museum earlier in the day.  It was as dramatic as the art form with lots of complex overlaying video of dancers, fabulous costumes, music and “sets.”  The theater is small – maybe 150 seats, not sloped.  The seats wrap around three sides of the bare wooden stage, which rises a few feet off the floor.  The boards on the stage were once painted but now show exposed raw wood. We enter 20 minutes before the show and find all but a few seats occupied.  Our fellow audience members are Americans, Europeans and  Japanese (Flamenco, we learn is VERY popular we learn in Japan and Finland; in fact some of the best Flamenco dancers and schools are in these countries!)  The audience whispers.  They rearrange seats.  The bar is open and some have drinks.

At 7:30 sharp the lights dim and two hostesses welcome us, one in Spanish and the other in English.  They leave and out walks a man with a guitar and chair.  He is in shirt sleeves -- all black -- and has curly brown hair, a round face and glasses.  He sits down in the wood, spindle-backed wooden chair and, without further ado, crosses his leg high and begins to play rhythmic, soft, strong guitar.  He exudes confidence.  After several minutes a woman appears next to him but in the shadows.  She taps her feet in rhythm to his guitar so we hear her before we really see her.  Then she moves out onto the stage.  She is tall with, red highlighted black hair held tight to her head with pins reminiscent of a 1920’s style.  Her skirt, layered with ruffles, falls straight to her ankles.  Her sash is pink and she wears a black blouse.  Her dancing interacts with the guitar.  It is not clear who is leading.  And her feet serve as a percussion section.  They slide and scrape, they tap and stomp.  They can sound like a machine gun and then are unexpectedly silent.  She moves around the full stage, turns.  Her shoulders are back.  Her arms move around and above her head like a dancing couple in themselves.  The guitarist watches her feet closely.

With the end of the piece we applaud and she disappears off stage.  

Our guitarist now pulls his chair out to the middle of the stage and performs a fabulous piece that crescendos to a climax which includes his rhythmic rapping on his guitar and stomping feet.  We are very enthusiastic.  This is a real, professional performance!

Our guitarist moves back to his original spot at the back of the stage and is joined by a woman and a young man who each bring out a black, straight-back chair.  They sit in a line.  Our guitarist starts up joined by the singer.  Her voice is sharp and penetrating.  The song has episodes, verses.  It builds, subsides, builds again.  She taps and stomps her feet, the young man adds precise clapping like I saw last night and foot taps.  Then again from the shadows appears our dancer.  She is in a new outfit, a splendid long, bright green dress with deep red frills trailing several feet behind her.  She adds to her previous repertoire the maneuvering of the train of the dress – this way and that – with twirls and kicks to the train.  She picks it up with her hand, flips it, spins, stomps and before she trips over it has kicked it free again.  (Later Abby tells us she has fallen in love with the dress.  Lily spent the piece worried about the dancer tripping over the train.)

Our guitarist and singer now perform a piece together.  While we can’t understand the word it feels like the Andalucian version of Billy Holiday.

Our dancer joins them now on a chair. A new piece starts and our young clapping and stomping man arrives on the floor next to the stage.  He is now in a black suit jacket and vest with a silk scarf.  His feet rap away, warming up to the guitar and clapping on stage.  Then wow!  He steps up on stage and stands tapping away, building the tension, acting out the story of the music.  Then he begins strutting about the stage, spinning, tugging at his jacket.  His stomps and moves become faster and more forceful. The jacket comes off.  His feet are aggressive on the floor.  He nearly backs into the singer as, like a bull, he paws at the floor and attacks the front of the stage again.  His exit is a rush off the stage.  We love it.  It’s been 90 minute of intense music and dance.  We applaud and they bow.  They come back for an encore. Now it is both dancers.  This couple dancing is different from last night's.  They are two stars dancing on the same stage.  Each fabulous but without the intimacy seen at Casa Anselma.

We leave the theater buzzing with the energy and exquisite performance.  I leave caught by surprise by the difference between last night’s intimate Flamenco party and tonight’s performance.  And its only 9:30, time for and early dinner.


Peter