José Molina, 81

José Molina, 81, Who Brought Spanish Dance to U.S. Audiences, Dies
by Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, January 11, 2018

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Films coming soon: Loïe and Isadora; the Afro-Andalusian influence in flamenco

French indie music star and actress Soko stars in The Dancer.
(above and below)

The biopic--which premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival
and was first seen in New York at Lincoln Center Film Society's
Rendez-Vous with French Film Festival this past March--
receives its US theatrical release on December 1.

Lily-Rose Depp as a rivalous Isadora Duncan

The Dancer
directed by Stéphanie Di Giusto
(108 min/France/French with English subtitles)

With her first feature film, The Dancer, director Stéphanie Di Giusto helps us imagine what it must have felt like to see American fin-de-siècle phenom Loïe Fuller (1862-1928) mounting a stage, aswirl in billowing silk and saturating spotlights, a theatrical innovator of monumental spectacle. For her stubborn if put-upon Loïe, Di Giusto deploys the fascinating French indie singer/actress Soko--an early Malcolm MacDowell or Marc Bolan lookalike whose favored black bowler hat might also have you flashing back to Liza Minnelli (Cabaret) and Lena Olin (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) but just briefly. She's far more androgynous than that--one character euphemistically describes her to an ardent male admirer as "standoffish"--and her struggles around sexuality underlie what the director clearly sees as inability to cope with the heedless, cruel pace of a world about to race past her.

Our first sight of Soko shows her nearly smothered in yards of fabric. But, no, she's not performing her famous Serpentine Dance. Instead, she's being rushed by several running men from the stage to either a hotel room or a hospital room; I could not tell which. Although we later learn why, it's enough, in that first moment, to identify Loïe with calamity and vulnerability. The film rarely lets up from that initial impression of her.

Next, we flash back to her as a sturdily-built, gloomy Midwestern girl--a very emo Mary Louise Fuller--sharing rough beginnings with her French-born, alcoholic father. He quickly ends up dead, leaving her at the mercy of a religion-obsessed mother. The cinematography of these early scenes has a heavy, depressing murkiness that rarely lifts from the film even when it is actually better lit. A biopic about an artist who illuminated stages with eye-popping light and magic is taken up with an atmosphere of grim darkness. But, again, Di Giusto seems intent on showing Loïe in pain, insecurity and discouragement.

There's the brutal physical pain of maneuvering those yards and yards of fabric, a feat that leaves her gasping for breath. Despite diligent conditioning, Loïe's body breaks down, time and again, and performing at all becomes a risk. But there's also emotional pain throughout Di Giusto's story--from the loss of Fuller's father to the ultimate betrayal wrought by one Isadora Duncan (Lily-Rose Depp), a youngster more conventionally feminine, at once more graceful and choreographically adventurous in movement and more given to displaying her body before the male gaze.

Mélanie Thierry does fine, delicately nuanced work as Gabrielle Bloch, Fuller's compassionate champion at the Paris Opera. She gives their scenes life and reminds you of Fuller even when the dancer is elsewhere, because you feel how vividly present Fuller is in her thoughts.

Don't come looking for a documentary. As the film opens, we're told that it is "based on a true story." Bear that "based on" in mind, if you will, and grant Di Giusto a little running room with her creative narrative. I suppose an educational film about how the real-life Loïe Fuller first dreamt up the notion of turning silk costuming into both motile sculpture and extraordinary canvases for her unique lighting effects might satisfy some but not many. Actually, we don't get to learn a whole lot more about Isadora Duncan, significant pioneer in her own right, and Depp brings little of interest to her role.

I've long been drawn to both of these legendary artists. I really only perked up when Soko--well-trained by contemporary dance artist Jody Sperling, acclaimed Loïe Fuller specialist and choreographer for the film--dons her costumes and models the sort of transformational stagecraft for which Fuller became famous.

The Dancer opens in theaters Friday, December 1.

Also coming soon...

Gurumbé: Afro-Andalusian Memories
directed by Miguel Ángel Rosales
film screening and flamenco performance
Sunday, December 3, 7pm to 9:30pm

Gurumbé: Afro-Andalusian Memories, a feature-length documentary from anthropologist Miguel Ángel Rosales, explores the contribution of Afro-Andalusians to flamenco as the art form developed. Gurumbé (72 min, in Spanish with English subtitles) has won numerous awards in the festival circuit and it is currently premiering around the world.

Flamenco performance by dancer Yinka Ese Graves and live musicians

Roundtable with the performers and the director, moderated by
K. Meira Goldberg, author of Flamenco on the Global Stage and Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco (forthcoming, Oxford University Press)

TICKETS

La Nacional
239 West 14th Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Ana María Matute, 88

Ana María Matute, Spanish Novelist Marked by Civil War, Dies at 88
by William Yardley, The New York Times, June 30, 2014

Summer begins with Spain's Buika in Central Park

BUIKA

and

MARQUES TOLIVER

In association with

Blue Note Jazz Festival

Presented by SummerStage

Central Park, Manhattan

Sunday, June 22 at 7:00pm

FREE admission

Buika

Since her introduction to the American marketplace in 2007 with her album Mi Niña Lola (My Little Girl Lola), Buika has experienced a meteoric rise, earning lavish praise from The New York Times, The Miami Herald, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as NPR which quickly included her in their "50 Great Voices" radio gallery. Her next release, Niña de Fuego (Fire Child) paved the way for relocation to Miami in 2011. After achieving success in Europe, her works were compiled on the 2-CD set En Mi Piel (In My Skin) to coincide with the Pedro Almodovar movie of the same name in which she appeared. Buika was nominated for a Grammy for best Latin Jazz album this year, for her latest album La Noche Mas Larga. 

Marques Toliver

Marques Toliver burst onto the scene via the UK with an arresting television performance in 2010 and a declaration from Adele as her "new favorite artist." Toliver has played live and on records for the likes of Holly Miranda, Grizzly Bear, and Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson. After a move to London, Toliver signed to Bella Union and released his well-received debut EP Butterflies Are Not Free. Following worldwide tours, he began work on the mixtape Studying For My Ph. D, a cornucopia of music, speech, loops, and news reports from the London Riots. Through the mixtape he would also delve in to some of the themes and ideas that would eventually influence his full-length debut Land of CanAan, a work brimming with his own unique R&B and Classical music influences.

For more information on this show, click here.

Paco de Lucia, 66

Spanish Flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia dies at 66
BBC News, February 26, 2014

Paco de Lucia, Renowned Flamenco Guitarist, Dies at 66
Reuters, The New York Times, February 26, 2014

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)

Flamenco tourism, flamenco export

Flamenco's Foreign Saviors
by Raphael Minder, The New York Times, March 16, 2013

See video here.

Globalfest producers announce multicultural music lineup

Zimbabwean to Headline Globalfest 2013
by James C. McKinley Jr., The New York Times, November 13, 2012

"If I can make it here...": Spanish Consulate offers help

Want to make it in New York?

Spanish cultural professionals interested in presenting arts projects or making a career in New York City can download a new series of pdf guides--covering everything from funding resources to media outlets--directed to professionals in architecture and design, film, gastronomy, literature, humanities and science, music, performing arts and visual arts.

These How to Make It in New York guides should be useful for any newcomer--Spanish or not. So, click here for more information on this project and to download links for each of the covered arts and culture disciplines.

Financial crisis hits Europe's arts

The Euro Crisis Is Hurting Cultural Groups
by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, March 24, 2012

Spain's Neanderthal cave paintings

Cave paintings in Malaga, Spain, could be the oldest yet found – and the first to have been created by Neanderthals.

Read more: First Neanderthal cave paintings discovered in Spain by Fergal MacErlean, New Scientist, February 10, 2012

Moving images

Breath Made Visible (2009)
directed by Reudi Gerber
Argot Pictures
English; 80 min.

Anna Halprin

"My greatest love is dancing in the natural world. The birds dance and the clouds dance. Everything is in motion all the time," says Anna Halprin--movement shaman, the subject of this affecting portrait and chronicle by filmmaker Reudi Gerber.

Through vintage and more recent footage of performances and workshops as well as interviews with Halprin, her colleagues, her late husband, the landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, and daughter, the dancer and psychologist Daria Halprin, Gerber traces the arc of a life that remains, in this woman's ninth decade, open to the deep currents of the natural world, of society, of relationship and of the body.

Halprin's early-career decision to leave New York for California--to join Lawrence--removed her from the center of the dance world but presented intriguingly different environmental and social realties and rhythms to explore. Much later, a cancer diagnosis brought Halprin to another critical decision--to turn away from choreography and performance for the public and refocus her efforts on dance as a powerful modality for personal and societal healing.

Gerber has an eye for stunning imagery, a sensitivity for human feelings, and an awareness of the mythic quality of Halprin's narrative. He gives us a sweetly humble yet heroic woman whose concern for people and loving engagement with life are instructive and inspiring. Breath Made Visible brought me to tears.

Purchase Breath Made Visible here.

Find a theater screening of Breath Made Visible here.

*****

Lovers of dance film, hang on. Next year, shockingly, is not that far off! The 40th Annual Dance on Camera Festival will open at Lincoln Center, January 27-31, celebrating "the immediacy, energy, and mystery of dance combined with the intimacy of film."

Look for director Ron Honsa's Never Stand Still--a grand, kaleidoscopic exploration of the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, down through the ages and up to the minute, narrated by Bill T. Jones and featuring...well, featuring just about everyone and every kind of dance you can imagine. It's a beauty. (2011. 74 min.)

If you've already enjoyed Check Your Body At The Door, producer Sally Sommer's fantastic documentary about underground house dancing, you might want to follow up with director Ina Sotirova's freedom2dance. Going to Dance on Camera Festival? See both on the same night--January 31. Far more conventional in structure than GYBATD, Sotirova's documentary puts the struggle around New York's nightlife culture and social dancing into historical and political context. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Rudolph Giuliani!) Check out the Facebook page for freedom2dance. (2011. 20 min.)

Mis Caminos a Través de la Danza (My Paths Through Dance), written, directed and produced by Daniel G. Cabrero, tells the story of a young Spanish girl's early training in classical ballet in 1920s Paris and the fortuitous diversion of her career from ballet towards the Bolero and diverse regional dances of her homeland. Influenced by the legendary Antonia Mercé "La Argentina," the youngster grew up to become Mariemma (1917-2008), performer, choreographer uncompromising educator and ensemble director of international renown. She was a dancer of great verve and warmth, dedicated to a dramatic, sculptural clarity of movement.

This film marks Cabrero's full-length feature debut, and he has a charming story to tell and a treasure trove of documentation--vintage photos, footage and prints--as well as contemporary interviews with colleagues, students and dance critics. Instead of injecting cutesy (and cringe-worthy) animated elements into the story's flow, Cabrero would have done well to place more trust in his wonderful historical materials. They are more than enough. If you can overlook these occasional lapses in taste, and the often awkward, sloppy English subtitles, there's a lot to learn and to enjoy. (2010. 90 min.)

For full information on the program and schedule of the 40th Annual Dance on Camera Festival, visit these links:

Dance Films Association

Film Society of Lincoln Center

Tendu TV's Dance on Camera channel on Hulu

José Maya at Skirball

It's rare for me to abandon a show at intermission, even if I'm not having a good time. Last night, as I grappled with a tenacious respiratory infection, I decided to bail out on José Maya and Company midway--partly due to physical discomfort and partly because I was still waiting to be blown away by the man repeatedly described as "one of the most explosive dancers in Spain today."

I've seen enough flamenco in New York, among enough flamenco audiences, to recognize that almost every flavor and approach to the art can find an enthusiastic niche audience here. The folks gathered at NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts for World Music Institute's ¡Festival Flamenco Gitano! certainly seemed wowed by Maya and receptive to what I found to be a fair-to-middling production padded out with lengthy, if undistinguished, music and vocal segments. WMI has brought far better.

Much is made of the fact that Maya has opened for the likes of Marc Anthony, Beyoncé and Björk. Think about that for a moment. He really does belong in the world of pop and not in the world where, as you keep digging beneath the surface of a dancer's moves, you find true grit.

I had high hopes for the evening--called Red, after the gitano word for network, or community, and the color of life and survival. It opened with simple, but marvelous, staging--the performers clustered downstage around a small, wooden table, rapping out intricate, rolling flamenco rhythms with their fingers, knuckles and palms. Gorgeous sounds!

I also wanted to like Maya as he initially took minced sideways, dashed in a few pivots and slow burns, and whipped off legwork so rapid and evanescent--a flurry, a thrust--that it seemed something I might have imagined not seen. But, unfortunately, the man went on to rely too much on his loosened, flowing hair, a tomato-red suit, and zapateado that seems disconnected from his body, which is engaged in its own showy, rock star thing. His overplayed footwork drama reminded me of how a few of my college students referred to flamenco footwork as "tapping" until I corrected them. What he's doing really does seem more like tap, but you can definitely find tap with more duende, more soul, than this.

As usual, World Music Institute has a dizzying array of programs coming up over the next several months. Today's Skirball-hosted Water is Rising: Music and Dance Amid Climate Change (where "performance and purpose collide") sounds great as do shows by the magnificent singer Lila Downs (November 15) and legendary composer-guitarist Paco Peña (March 31), both at Carnegie Hall. Whether you're in love with Celtic ballads, Cape Verdean morna, the music of the Sufis or the Garifuna, or pretty much anything your ears can imagine, WMI has something for you. Click here for complete details on WMI's 2011-2012 season.

Haruki Murakami opposes Japan's nuclear policy

Novelist Murakami slams nuclear policy
The Japan Times, June 11, 2011

Flamenco singer Enrique Morente, 67

Enrique Morente, Celebrated Flamenco Singer, Dies at 67
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, December 15, 2010

Leilah Broukhim's journey

Leilah - Casa Sefarad Israel

Leilah Broukhim | MySpace Music Videos

Persian-American/Jewish dancer Leilah Broukhim presents her work-in-progress, A Sephardic Flamenco Journey, at the 92nd Street Y on Thursday, November 4 (8:15pm).

Set to Sephardic and Persian music, this piece tells the story of Broukhim's ancestral journey from expulsion through the Middle East, and her personal journey from New York back to Spain.

For details and ticket information, click here.

92nd Street Y
1395 Lexington Avenue (between 91st and 92nd Streets)
New York, NY 10128
212-415-5500

What's hot in flamenco?

Here is my Dance Magazine review of the 10th Annual New York Flamenco Festival!

Alicia de Larrocha, 86

Alicia de Larrocha, Pianist, dies at 86
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, September 25, 2009

Soledad Barrio: Caught between two lovers

photos of Soledad Barrio

La Dama del Mar is the world-class jewel in the crown that is El Mar, Noche Flamenca's currrent touring production. Presented at Theatre 80 Saint Marks, the two-hour program delivers the stripped-to-essentials, traditional flamenco music, song and dance that this Spanish company, under the direction of Martin Santangelo, has taught smart New Yorkers to expect and crave. But La Dama del Mar introduces something new from Noche Flamenca--dance theater that expresses a powerful narrative, modernizes the movement, and requires some sustained physical acting from its star, the electrifying Soledad Barrio.

La Dama del Mar offers a spare impression of Henrik Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea, offsetting the surprising subtlety and range of Barrio's dramatic abilities. There's no need for dialogue or the support of extensive program notes. Barrio's mercurial glances and expressions, her supple body language, the fresh responsiveness of her interaction with rival partners Antonio Jimenez "El Chupete" and Alejandro Granados--both excellent, heartful performers--are quite enough to tell this story of conflicting desires and hunger for freedom. This role is a profound revelation; Barrio exceeds her own sky-high standards.

Fans of the troupe--and we are legion--will find fresh joy in the familiar conventions of flamenco, particularly the delectable work of cantaors Emilio Florido and Manuel Gago and guitarristas Jose Valle "Chuscales" and Salva de Maria. And it's wonderful to meet new company members like Sol La Argentinita and Rebecca Tomás--who bring spark and spunk to their solo moments--and Jimenez, with his feral appearance and dark, trance-like performances, especially in his Solea por Bulerías. "El Chupete" has got true soul. Watching him, I wondered what a flamenco/tap jam with the late, great Gregory Hines might have looked like!

The Theatre 80 Saint Marks presentation of El Mar runs through August 14 on an irregular schedule. For schedule details and to purchase tickets, visit TheaterMania.com. For further information on the company, visit Noche Flamenca.

Noche Flamenca video

Flamenco: Keepin' it real

New Book Flamencos de Gañanía Looks at Historical "Real" Flamenco Venues
reviewed on World Music Central