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Text: Juan Diego Martín Cabeza DANCING POR ALCALÁ Dance: Javier Barón. Cante: Miguel Ortega, José Valencia. Guitar: Javier Patino, Ricardo Rivera. Palmas and dance: Juan Diego, El Choro. Staging: David Montero Artistic director Javier Barón You dance the way you are…Javier Barón dances the way he is…yesterday, a little more than usual, and he danced in the highest point of his hometown. From where I was sitting you could see Seville on the horizon, and closer, the white-washed houses of Alcalá, the caves of the Castle where Joaquín el de la Paula cooked up his immortal soleares. Other artists, other dancers, arrive on stage and need some time to make a connection with their dance, with the audience, with the surroundings…but Barón comes on already full of emotion. A simple, human, flamenco emotion, that of a man, a dancer and his town. For someone like me, who has always found a strange exquisite magic in the cantes of Alcalá de Guadaira, attending a show like this reveals a little more of the expressive enigma of this town. An ethereal elegance, a silent movement, a very bearable lightness of being. Elegance, dance and good taste. Above all, Javier Barón has exquisite taste in the way he lays out the show. The two guitarists (Javier Patino and Ricardo Rivera) are top-flight musicians, a very flamenco way of playing, and adding just the right personal touch at just the right moment, whenever required. Singers Miguel Ortega and José Valencia are the kind of singers that get you hooked, their varied cantes full of flavor, and their well-chosen verses, complementing each other, helping, challenging… The palmas of Juan Diego and Choro are very good, without being showy. They know how to take a subtle step to the back, helping and coddling the dancer just the right amount. Just like it ought always to be.
The musical and scene transitions of this flamenco recital are simply extraordinary. In less than an hour and a half, we are taken on a trip through more than twenty different styles: from Barón’s farruca (so personal, it deserves to have his name), to the romances, passing through fandangos de Lucena and Frasquito Yerbabuena, mirabrás, tangos de Málaga and Triana and some particularly moving alegrías de Córdoba. All a declaration of love for flamenco. In the staging, the secret is in the able handling of space and time, the narrative rhythm of what is being told, and how it is told. And it’s told singing, nothing more is needed. In the music, rhythm is also the key, the measures weave us into a skein in which flamenco forms are interconnected. Javier Barón ties it all together with his dance, the weaver of a universe of rhythm and styles that filter through his own particular vision of flamenco. And the flamenco that Barón plotted out last night, is a dance of Alcalá. Perhaps tinged with personal experience, perhaps remembering good and bad moments. He took on an entire tradition, a form of expression that continues to be a mystery, and he added his own personality in an exercise of personal and artistic reflection worthy of a dancer of his stature. More information:
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