Ballet Flamenco de Javier Barón
“Dos voces para un baile”
Sala Joaquín Turina, Seville.
Text: Rubén Gutiérrez
HABEMUS FLAMENCO
Dance and artistic direction: Javier
Barón; Cante: Guadiana and Miguel Ortega; Guitar: Alfredo
Lagos and Javier Patino; Palmas: Carlos Grilo and Luis Cantarote;
Musical director: Faustino Núñez.
Black shirts and trousers, palmas and singing…
These are the ingredientes needed to enjoy a good evening
of flamenco. A return to the roots, like the one undertaken
by dancer Javier Barón, who after a long stint in Madrid
decided to return to Seville.
Now that we live in the information and communication age
of new technology, globalization or whatever you want to call
it, and even moreso after everything we saw at the recent
edition of Seville’s Bienal de Flamenco, “Dos
Voces para un baile” takes you by surprise, because
it’s only flamenco. As if emerged from a time capsule,
Javier Barón opened the jar of basic essences he had
jealously been keeping.
The
tally of cantes is almost scary: twenty-three different flamenco
forms in one single show of little more than sixty minutes.
That’s something that can only be achieved with knowledge
and wisdom, and those virtues are the qualities that back
up this entire group. The watchful eye of Faustino Núñez,
musicologist and flamencologist, and the sixth sense of Alfredo
Lagos, the compás feel of Jerez natives, the ear of
the singers, one veteran and the other, as if he were, and
the relentless good taste of Javier Barón all came
together to bring us this flamenco show.
Javier Barón opened up
the jar of basic essences he had jealously been keeping.
An admirable piece of work in which each member of the group
held nothing back. A variety of rhythms, free compositions,
Andalusian cadence, mayor and minor keys, and an equally dizzying
array in the dance. From the work of the maestro Otero to
Rafael Marín, or the anthology of Perico el del Lunar,
this reviewer has never enjoyed so much good flamenco all
in one sitting.
Caña, mirabrás, fandangos de Lucena, martinete,
farruca, jaleos, tanguillos, rondeñas, nanas, cantiñas
de Pinini in addition to the most typical styles of today,
everything perfectly linked to the whole. It’s all familiar,
but also fresh. Only someone with encyclopedic knowledge is
capable of carrying off such a production.
The show was on Wednesday, and the series is called “Flamenco
Thursdays at the Monte”, but economists and lawyers
seem not to understand much about art and pushed the show
over to the previous day while they were busy fusing with
another enterprise in Seville on the Thursday the show was
to have been held. Fortunately, being a non-profit organization,
they must support social works, and thus they wash their hands
of responsibility because one of the best shows of the year
got swept under the rug.
