Whether showing off or exposing their souls, flamenco dancers are mostly soloists. Locking eight of them within a boundary – an area demarcated with tape on the floor – has the flavor of a social experiment. How are they going to share the stage?
This is the conceit of ‘Fronteras’ or ‘Borders’, which Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana debuted on Tuesday at the Joyce Theater. You don’t have to read the program note to understand that the choreographers, guest artists José Maldonado and Karen Lugo, are against the imposition of boundaries, social and artistic, and want to transcend them. But the boundaries they have imposed on themselves and their fellow cast members are fruitful. This is an unusually deft balance between the individual and the group in flamenco, and solid entertainment to boot.
In some ways “Fronteras” is a standard flamenco show, with standard strengths, especially an original score by José Luis de la Paz, who plays live with fellow guitarist Calvin Hazen and the excellent singers Francisco Orozco and El Trini de la Isla. But the premise – no dancer ever leaves the stage – forces us to make interesting choices. For a brief moment, the dancers split into opposing gangs, but soon the show settles in the conventional form of a series of solos or special twists.
Or almost conventional. Each dancer has an identifying prop from the trunk of traditional flamenco items (a fan, fringed scarf, walking stick) and a different flamenco style or singing form (jota, granaína) to express his or her personality. Maldonado has a scarf that he pulls between his teeth and thighs in an attractively comic-sexy way. Lugo wears a long-tailed bata de cola skirt with punk energy, swinging her body from side to side as much as the dress.
But within this conventional arrangement are some unusual features. One is that the turns of Maldonado and Lugo come in the middle. It’s not the stars. There are also no stars or weak links. The eight dancers are remarkably similar, each holding the attention in a distinctive way. No one burns a hole in the show. Nobody lets it sag.
Continuity also arises from conceit. During each solo, the other dancers, fixed on stage, periodically repeat or lengthen the soloist’s movements in clever and inventive group choreographies. Often they do it with a comedic spirit – mocking Emilio Ochando and his castanets before wowing us with footwork and spinning as fast as his fingers, or making cartoon noises when the classy Adrian Dominguez drops his hat.
The comedy, while not laughing out loud, keeps the tone light and unpretentious, although Maldonado and Lugo also manage to make serious points. After the solos, the dancers start mixing your-chocolate-with-my-peanut butter style, ingenious combination of hat and tambourine, scarf and walking stick. As they trade items, Ochando ends up wearing Lugo’s skirt, crossing the boundaries of gender.
This mixing and trade works so well that it’s baffling when the production veers into a glow-in-the-dark section where the dancers arrange their objects in a smiley face. It feels like a clip from another show, maybe a preview of the Momix spectacle coming to the Joyce next month.
But then, satisfyingly, if predictably, the performers put down their props and pull up the tape, ending with a dance party, with everyone taking turns supporting and celebrating the others. This is how most flamenco shows end. “Fronteras” refreshes the meaning.
Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana
See you Sunday at the Joyce Theater; joyce.org.
