The great Soledad Barrio at The Joyce Theater

Martín Santangelo's vision for his renowned flamenco ensemble, Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca, continues to prove that superb music, dance and human voice, unadorned and with fidelity to tradition, can be enough, can archive and share rich experience. The stage at The Joyce Theater, the touring group's home through December 15, has been stripped to bare brick walls and several chairs for guitarists and vocalists. Apart from lighting designer S. Benjamin Farrar's moody poetry, everything needed is carried in the performers' skillful bodies, pulling us into the essence of human loneliness, attraction, pain and exuberance.

The current season reacquaints New York's fervent Noche Flamenca fans with the dreamy, sinuous beauty of Eugenio Iglesias's guitar work, sound quietly floating out to us like delicate incense and shaping images in the mind. Singer Manuel Gago's supple, buoyant way with his cante verses in Zambra Caracolera and guest dancer Antonio Jimenez's mischievous, in-the-moment freshness in Solea por Bulerías feel more authentic--meaning true to the actual person, not some persona--than much that passes for and is lionized as exciting flamenco performance.

I am, once again, delighted to see these three worthy performers surrounding the jewel in this company's crown, Soledad Barrio, Santangelo's wife and muse. She needs no dramatic froufrou. She is drama, so vibrantly alive as a body, even when merely stretching herself against the long line of partner Juan Ogalla in El Calzador, that you can imagine there's meaning, at least for her, in their connection.

What I notice in Barrio's Siguiriya, especially, is an active mind trained on something besides just performing. Not, What is the next step? How do I look right now? How does my footwork sound? (All of that has been well attended to and can be laid aside.) But rather, Who am I in this contained, gloom-threatened swath of light called my portion of life?

I notice a strong body determined to carve its singular mark in space and to exert magnetic--and enlivening--influence upon everyone within reach. Barrio's close interactions with the company's singers can be tender, or she can bear the sacred and humbling touch of a priestess. No conventional beauty and not possessed of meaningless charisma, she is a diva of flamenco by virtue of her willingness to reveal, as Teilhard de Chardin would have seen it, the spiritual being within as it has its human experience.

Choreography: Martín Santangelo, Gabriela Goldin Garcia

Dancers: Soledad Barrio, Juan Ogalla, Antonio Jimenez, Marina Elana
Guitarists: Salva de María, Eugenio Iglesias, Hamed Traore
Vocalists: Manuel Gago, Carmina Cortes, Jose Jimenez, Mayte Maya

See Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca at The Joyce Theater through December 15. For complete program and schedule information and to purchase tickets, click here.

The Joyce Theater

175 Eighth Avenue (corner of 19th Street)

(directions)

New triumph for Barrio and Noche Flamenca

Martín Santangelo's Noche Flamenca, with master dancer Soledad Barrio in the lead, is acclaimed for its stripped-to-the-core vision of flamenco music, song and dance without trimmings, tricks or modernizing gimmickry of any kind. Best savored up close in small spaces, Santangelo's array of excellent performers have delighted New York audiences with annual visits to the East Village's Theater 80 St. Marks. This season, the current cast is brightening winter at the West Village's Cherry Lane Theatre in Esta Noche No Es Mi Día, now through January 12.

The sensuous poetry of Esta Noche No Es Mi Día arises from darkness. In the lead-in to Amanecer (Dawn), we cannot see the singers, but we hear them clapping, stamping, calling to one another as they proceed onto the little stage. This dramatic opening in the dark stirs the heart.

And then we see them--black-clad Manuel Gago, Emilio Florido and Miguel Rosendo beneath a faint, warm glow of light. One after another, they take up the cry, stretching and slanting the notes and telling their truths. The rhythm moves with an insistent if stately roll, holding both resilient dignity and the weight of the painful history of Andalucia. Santangelo has put gitano song front and center--and weaves the singers throughout the program's action--to remind us of the human cry as the fundamental channel of flamenco's soul.

Barrio enters, dressed in tomato-red satin ruffles and flanked by her guys--Juan Ogalla and Antonio Jiménez. Right away, you understand that this woman is in charge, all about business, no phony baloney. The intimacy of the Cherry Lane's low-rising, unadorned stage, with its red brick walls, fits the increasingly charismatic Barrio to a T. 

This season, her performing reveals more maturity, dramatic range and emotional openness than she has ever shown. Dancing the Alegrías (her choreography) with Ogalla, she alternately leans against him and tries to lock eyes with him, pouring meaning and chemistry through her facial expressions as if to try to pull this frequent high-flyer down to earth. Ogalla, whose Farruca is one exception to the program's tight pacing, tends to rely on slick, cock-of-the-walk showiness even in excess of flamenco norms. Dancing beside Barrio, he vacillates between light flicks of attention to her and a clearly more comfortable focus on how good his technique is looking. In Farruca, freed of Barrio's presence, he indulges this tendency--which is not to say that it doesn't work for a less critical audience, because the man can genuinely dance like a demon and shimmy like your sister Kate.

I much prefer the dark odd-duckery of Antonio Jiménez. His dancing feels like it comes from a place of deep thought, jarring conflict, haunting memories. His Solea por Bulerias seems to say, "My world is spinning out of control." His pacing and overall execution are quirky, eccentrically truthful. They have nothing to do with how he looks in the moment or who's looking at him.

Barrio dances with abandon in Siguiriya, and I have never seen her dance like this--her face tranformed, her whole body wrenched as if suffering the greatest pain, her attention fixed on a world we cannot see, simply gone. At the end of this intense, shocking solo, Barrio faces into a beam of light and appears to gather it to her like a splash of water to cleanse her head. The fever breaks. This solo is followed by the ensemble performance, Esta Noche No Es Mi Día, for which the evening is named. With roses in their hands, all of the performers offer tribute to their colleague Antonio Vizarriaga who died earlier this year.

Though I have not yet mentioned Noche Flamenca's esteemed, veteran guitarists, Eugenio Iglesias and Salva de María, both men coax honey and shimmering gold from their strings. The company's designers--S. Benjamin Farrar and Christopher Thielking--use atmospheric and tenebristic lighting with painterly magic. My companion was reminded of John Singer Sargent's El Jaleo.

If you have seen Noche Flamenca's past shows, go now: This might be Santangelo's best presentation ever, and Barrio gives her crowning performance. If you have never seen this troupe, what's keeping you? Go now, and hold onto your heart.

Ticketing 

Tuesdays: 7 pm
Wednesdays – Fridays: 8 pm
Saturdays: 2 pm, 8 pm
Sundays: 3 pm

Cherry Lane Theatre

38 Commerce Street, Manhattan

(west of 7th Avenue, south of Bleecker Street; map)