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text: Kate Edbrooke
Dance: Centro Andaluz de Danza. Direction and choreography: Blanca Li. Original music: Tao Gutiérrez. Guest artists: Andrés Marín, Carmen Linares, Encarnita Anillo.
Rafael Águila: Sax and flute. Pablo Báez: Bass. Gerardo Catanzaro: Keyboard. Salvador Gutiérrez: Guitar. Tao Gutiérrez: Percussion. Nicasio Moreno: Cello. David Tabares: Guitar. Javier Viana: Percussion.
Every year there is a show produced especially for the Alhambra under the umbrella title: “Lorca y Granada en los Jardines del Generalife”, the theme is Lorca, and it is almost always specifically flamenco. Flamenco had its place in this year’s show personified by Federico himself as a spectator wandering around New York, from Wall Street to the Bowery at night and the black nightclubs, infusing the dance routines, which ranged from Jazz, Charleston, Hip Hop and Cubano, with a flamenco flourish. This is an ambitious production and at times had all the ingredients of a big Broadway show complete with chorus line, yet with surreal effects which left the audience open-mouthed.
At times the music had a tendency to engulf the narrator's voice making it difficult to hear the poetry in this beautiful open-air setting, and unfortunately the program did not list the poems that inspired this production, although Carmen Liñares’ voice came through clearly as she opened the production with a flamenco version of «Vuelta de Paseo», and that haunting line «Asesinado por el cielo».
Next stop was Grand Central Station and Lorca arrives with his suitcase to encounter the thronging multitude with suitcases for heads, no doubt inspired by the surrealist Magritte and his uniform bowler hatted businessman.
A mixture of Cuban dance and Noh theatre, with Lorca as ever the voyeur
Then to the city at night as the singer Rob Li creates a surreal lullaby from Lorca's «Ciudad sin Sueño» surrounded by pimps and prostitutes and street fights which end in a bloodbath, literally, as the bleeding dancers throw themselves at the white backdrop, staining it red. Then the rain comes in what is certainly the most visually stunning part of the entire production, if you can imagine a mixture of Cuban dance and Noh theatre, with Lorca as ever the voyeur. (I think the implicit homo eroticism made
many in the audience uncomfortable, as people began talking and shifting in their seats).
The New York Stock Exchange is a fit setting for «Paisaje de la Mutitud de Orina» (Landscape of a Pissing Multitude), and the Wall Street crash is depicted by dancers climbing and falling down ladders accompanied by the poem «Oda a Walt Whitman».
«None of them could sleep
none of them wanted to be the river,
none of them loved the huge leaves
or the shoreline’s blue tongue»
Still in keeping with the sleepless city, a barrage of industrial sounds, hip-hop dancing interspersed with the Charleston and jazz accompany the poem «Vuelta a la Ciudad».
«This is not hell it is the street»
Then we return to the intimacy of the poem «Nocturno de Hueco» ( Nocturne of Emptied Space) sung by Carmen Liñares while Blanca Li, dressed appropriately in white, dances alone to be joined by an ensemble of flamenco dancers for «Vals en Las Ramas» ( Waltz in the branches).
The finale is the vibrant «Iré a Santiago» (I'm going to Santiago) with the flamenco dancers on one side of the stage and the Cuban dancers on the other, a nod to the two gangs dancing in West Side Story, before the rain falls again appropriately filling the Alhambra hill with the sound of cascading water.
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