by Leigh Witchel
Noche Flamenca may not have found Goya when Searching for Goya but it did find a good show. For the artists, the messages and social relevance of Goya’s art may have been the impetus. Sitting in the seats, you’ll likely notice more the seamless pacing and solid performances. And you won’t be disappointed.
As the pandemic waned, company director and choreographer Martín Santangelo became obsessed with Goya’s drawings and their vivid topicality and commentary. He created a flamenco evening based on them, and the run at 122CC will be followed by an encore of the show at The Joyce Theater at the end of April.
The production used the core group: four lead dancers led by co-founder (and Santangelo’s wife) Soledad Barrio, two singers, two guitarists and a drummer, here augmented by four younger dancers, who formed a chorus.
The second floor theater at 122CC (what we old-timers knew as PS122) is a thrust stage, and smaller than The Joyce. It brings the audience closer to the action, more like a flamenco tablao setting. Despite the fact that Noche Flamenca has always done theater pieces, it’s good to see the company this way. The fans egged on the performers, and it felt more natural here than it does over the proscenium at The Joyce. Flamenco isn’t really a proscenium form.
At the outset, a singer sat at one of four small tables, surrounded by the chorus holding wings as if they were birds or angels. The wings spread round the singer, feeling almost like a flamenco fan dance.
The singer started drumming his table and music and clapping began. The main dancers, Barrio, Marina Elana, Pablo Fraile and Jesús Helmo, each went to a table and sat, head in hand. Barrio got the first solo turn.
Santangelo has always had a knack for making a smooth show, but it was less logistically easy here. Tables had to be removed and the theater didn’t have wings; the tables had to go out a door. But that felt atypical.
For The Bullfighter, one singer stood on a chair as if he was about to be hung, while Fraile stamped violently as the singer watched him. The musicians went into a military song while the full cast stamped and lunged like soldiers. Group work was both tight and free; all four leads came to a line in front, looking at us in a flamenco Anna Sokolow moment. Still, Santangelo didn’t milk that moment, so the cliché didn’t feel like one.
The dancers were working with the same leg movements, but their arms were freer and more individual. Fraile had another short solo while the others faced the back as he crossed the stage.
Even when turning Flamenco into a theatrical form, Noche Flamenca kept reminders of the itinerant Romani roots of its originators, who traversed South Asia and the Middle East before arriving in the Mediterranean: The two singers started to syllabify as if they were performing Carnatic bols, even with similar rhythms. Rodriguez was playing a shallow wide drum that produced a variety of effects with similar influences.
Regulating the pacing, the leads came back into a tight stamping moment to produce both pressure and drama, then Barrio did another solo, which gave her room to play in the moment. A dreamlike section where the singers met the dancers ended in darkness. It was a moment you could see how Santangelo’s artistic impulses are guided by practicalities: An interlude for the singers and drummer with the corps observing gave the leads and the guitarists a chance to rest.
Fraile has a fancy matador jacket that’s appeared in earlier performances, and showed up in his solo here, but Helmo also had a fabulous jacket, appliqued with roses. The corps crouched in a corner to observe his solo; another smart pictorial moment.
The two solos built steadily to a crescendo of frenzied virtuoso stamping at the close; Helmo ended transfixed. The corps reached to him, he headed in their direction, again to rise to a crescendo and a moment at the end, once again spellbound, to end the act. Flamenco solos, like ballet variations, come in several genres, carefully codified. It would take an outsider as much work to crack flamenco’s code, but as with ballet, you don’t need to know the rules to appreciate what you’re watching.
Until this point the connection to Goya felt tenuous at best. Nobody requires a tableau vivant, but expectations needed to be managed. The production was relying on familiarity we may not have had, and logistically, a page of QR codes placed closely together is hard to access. And once you actually looked at the drawings used as the impulse, the dances’ connection to them was more a matter of inspiration than illustration.
To open the second half, the singers and corps arrived costumed and masked to do a grave minuet; a good effect delivered with economy and one that was at least painterly.
The drummer cut them off, then Elana entered in white lace for the first of three substantial sections by the leads. She embodied another, delightful side of flamenco: the woman of unshakable confidence. As the masked players reacted and reached towards her, she flirted and teased. Showing off at the end as the others surrounded her, they all sang a happy folk tune, a contrast from the complicated wails, as they all went off.
Helmo and Fraile danced an ambiguous duet. Was it sensual, or wasn’t it? Did that reach to one another mean something? It seemed like that embrace did . . . by the time they touched one another’s faces, the duet felt both emotional and weirdly chaste. At this point, sexual repression is a hard artistic sell in New York City. If you’ve got something to say, say it.
Reflecting the many influences on Spain as well as flamenco, an extended wail from one of the singers sounded like a call to prayer. It moved into a final solo for Barrio, who wore a long, filmy skirt of cream silk. Its mobile lightness suited her forceful, freestyle virtuosity.
Barrio is a fierce performer, like a Graham goddess. Suddenly she looked out towards a mysterious point in the sky. The brief reverie dissolved into stamping. The musicians paused and Barrio created her own accompaniment, stamping and slapping her hands against her torso.
Each of the turns in the second half was long enough to impress and show how all four leads could hold a stage. The solos seemed almost free-form from the improvisation, but that was within a tightly corseted structure.
You see hints of the build in how the solos moved from quiet to frenzied; Barrio went into a skipping step so ferocious it seemed turbocharged. Her skipping escalated round the stage to center like an exclamation, then froze in a single spotlight.
Her solo seemed over, but was not over. She delivered a long coda, again with that wavelike build, from calm to furious to calm to furious again. The singers, up and screaming, receded, and Barrio headed to a light at the corner to reach for it as it finally extinguished to close the show.
It may take a curator’s eye to track the transformation from Goya to the stage, for the rest of us with only a glancing acquaintance of the artist’s work, not so much. This show’s form looked a like the show from 2022, at least one section (“Rain of Bulls”) was in the earlier show.
Santangelo did the well-crafted work he always does. That’s not the same as a deep metaphor, but if the product is consistently solid, how much do we care about the process? If Searching for Goya didn’t deliver with real focus on the advertised concept, it still delivered a strong, well-paced evening.
As a curtain call, the company delivered a charming, traditional encore of improvisations by the dancers and singers. It was a lively, joyous connection to wind down, which gave the fans a taste of both familiarity and virtuosity. Informal and personal, Helmo stared out into the audience to finish his bit. Elana, swaying, cupped her buttocks, deliberately and playfully advertising the merchandise.
Barrio came in with pleasure to meet Fraile, then one of the singers joined in. Finally the corps all joined in. And like the traveling band of performers they descended from, they all walked off, presumably to the next performance.
copyright © 2024 by Leigh Witchel
Searching for Goya – Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca
122CC, New York, NY
January 11, 2024
Cover: Noche Flamenca in Searching for Goya.í Photo © Jesse Rodkin.
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