Noche Flamenca starring Soledad Barrio will be appearing
at The Arts Centre in Melbourne from
Tuesday 7 July to Saturday 11 July 2009.
Bookings by phone 1300 136 166
Tickets $75/$65
by Elizabeth Zimmer, who met Soledad Barrio and Martin Santangelo in New York.
“The roots of Flamenco, going back more than 1000 years, are mysterious and deep, planted by refugees from persecution in Europe and points east. Gypsies, Arabs, Moors and Jews all contributed to the form’s plaintive music and rhythmic movement.
Its present glamorous gloss is a late edition to what was, like the tango, originally a pastime of the poor. Because of its lower- class origins, serious research about its history has been scarce until recently.
…Noche Flamenca, the small but powerful ensemble of dancers, singers and musicians directed by Martin Santangelo and featuring his wife, Soledad Barrio, performs a particularly pure form of the art, soon to be seen on an extensive Australian tour.
Barrio is indisputably the company’s star, hailed as an artist of exceptional authority.
…….The word flamenco seems to be a synonym for gypsy or expelled peasant. Deeply embedded in its history is the disruption caused by the Spanish inquisition during the late 15th century. At that time, most of the world’s Jews lived in Spain and they were expelled, murdered or forced to convert.
“Flamenco is a struggle about a people with no home,” Santangelo told an interviewer during a recent tour….
…For Barrio the call came early. “I don’t come from a flamenco family; I had to find it, but since I was two years old, I don’t know why, I danced flamenco….
…She saw, on television, the great Antonio Gades in the flamenco film adaption of Frederico Garcia Lorca’s play Blood Wedding and it helped her decide to study dance rather than go to University.
“But the desire to be an artist is since I was very little, as long as I can remember.”
……. Why, sometimes does she lift up her skirt?
………….Barrio then explains the variations in her performance, sometimes quite still and sometimes frantic with rhythmic footwork.
“When somebody’s singing, it’s not about rhythmic things. You let the song breathe and afterwards you take your moments of percussion. The most important thing is the song, the melody and what they’re saying. Flamenco is finally a ritual dance, connected to the sky, the earth, the human spirit. When people see it, no matter where, they sense something.
“When it’s bad, people think it’s about how fast they can tap, how many turns they can do. When flamenco is pure, I know that people understand it because it speaks about profound things that come from all of us.”
