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Eva Yerbabuena “Lluvia” |
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Text: Estela Zatania / Photos: Ana Palma Eva Yerbabuena Ballet Flamenco “Lluvia” The thirteenth Festival de Jerez, with its 59 shows and 38 courses, last night got underway with the world premiere of Eva Yerbabuena’s work “Lluvia”. At the press conference the day before, the lady had commented, “I know there are people who love me, and those who don’t”. In actual fact, there’s a third group, the most numerous of all I’d say: those of us who love and admire Yerbabuena, but do not enjoy the outdated “modern” dance with which she tends to fill the first half of her shows. We’ve learned to accept it as the price of admission to the greatness that inevitably comes at the end. You could speak of an independent genre, “Spanish modern dance”, made up of pantomime, floor-writhing and silent movie gestures in a context sprinkled with Spanish references. All in all, it’s a proposition that is not very convincing, aggravated by hackneyed staging: the dark street, the steamer trunk, the table, the tiresome off-stage voice… Reserved but polite applause confirmed these impressions. It is a flat, depressing approach, and not that flamenco has no place for suffering, but flamenco suffering hurts good, it’s a sort of pain that is brimming with life and energy, a head-on challenge to the laws of nature.
But when the company shuffles all the chairs and microphones in a frenzy of movement that is frankly amusing, leaving the classic semicircle for a cuadro flamenco, the starchy environment suddenly oozes flamenconess, and all that went before is forgiven. There is light and color, there’s compás, the wonderful music of Paco Jarana shines, and the cante of Enrique el Extremeño, Pepe de Pura and Jeromo Segura, and plenty of gentle humor. Tanguillo de Cádiz, a dance that has been very little developed, last night found its language in the excellent choreography of Eva Yerbabuena who filled it with Caribbean Andalusian sensuality, and an aroma of the past. Now the applause is spontaneous, loud and heartfelt. Alegrías, with the singers taking turns, and again classic flamenco scores a goal. Soleá. It’s not that Eva dances well por soleá, which she does. It’s that here she surrenders to the forms developed by countless maestros who went before, decades of slow evolution, the bata de cola, the compás as cozy as your old slippers. Here, Eva Yerbabuena has only to fill up the container with her extraordinary talent, and so she does, so sublimely in fact that not even the cameo appearance of Miguel Poveda, so admired in Jerez, singing “Se Rompió el Amor”, can take away from the intensity of the experience. Moraíto “Homenaje a la Paquera” Jerez is the only flamenco territory where local artists are appreciated as much or more than outside, and Manuel Moreno Junquera “Moraíto” is just such an individual. He uses his guitar to administer the elixir known as the “Jerez sound” which moves the flamenco machinery in this city where the ghosts of great artists of a glorious and recent past continue to circulate. Stars for example like La Paquera, the singer from San Miguel whom the guitarist from Santiago decided to honor with this recital. Compás, that endless pulsing band that moves things flamenco, as natural as breathing in and out. Solid siguiriyas, with traditional falsetas as well as original ones, ending in major key to evoke siguiriyas cabales.
Four regulars arrive on stage to keep compás with their palmas, and a beautiful introduction leads into classic soleá. Bulerías, authentic and hard-hitting, and Moraíto’s face is aglow. Singer Jesús Méndez, nephew of Paquera, interprets soleá por bulería with original verses written by Moraíto for the occasion. The young singer does lots of “Ali ali ali anda”, but it reminds us little of his unique aunt Paca. Violin, bass and percussion, bulerías in a variety of positions and scales, and nothing sounds like anything else thanks to the creativity and musicality of the interpreter. Once again Miguel Poveda makes a cameo appearance, this time with a bulería song in minor key that Paquera used to sing. The recital closes out with “Rocayisa”, a classic composition of Moraíto’s, and everything winds down to the fiesta finale of a fiesta that really has no end in Jerez.
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