Versatility Is Key to Spanish Ballet Style--and Focus of Criticism

If versatility is the key to membership in the Royal Spanish National Ballet, principal dancer Juan Mata easily makes the grade.

He began his training in both ballet and Spanish dance when he was 8. At 14, he made his debut in the Jose Greco company. He subsequently danced with all the major Spanish companies and, by his own account, a few of the minor ones, too.

Mata, who will dance in Orange County next week when the company appears at the Orange County County Performing Arts Center, credits his early training for giving him the technique “to do anything.”

“The hardest training was ballet,” he said in a recent phone interview from Philadelphia. “The style is completely different (from Spanish dance).”

Going from one style to another, as he is required to do in moving from the earthy “Flamenco” to the balletic “Alborada del Gracioso,” is not a problem.

“That is like an actor going to a comedy or to a dramatic thing,” he said. “You have to get into the (role) of what you are going to do.

“My specialty is character dancing, using makeup and some (character movements). I am a very fast dancer, and I can do many things differently.”

Mata’s 10-year association with Greco’s company included some time off to study on scholarship at the Harkness Ballet in New York and also, while Greco was on extended tours, to work with smaller companies.

“You have to live,” he said.

It was 14 years ago in one of those groups, a six-member troupe that performed in nightclubs, that Mata met Ana Gonzalez, whom he married. (Gonzalez will alternate with Merche Esmeralda in the title role of “Medea” during the tour. Mata will dance Creon.)

But joining the national company was like coming home.

“Everybody was like a family,” he said. “We are working together for one thing--to have a national company.”

But despite its name, Mata says that the company has not yet attained national recognition in Spain.

“We work more outside of Spain than in Spain,” he said. “In the winter, we work in Madrid for a month, then maybe (do) nothing until the summer until the national festivals in four or five places.

“This year, when we go back (after the Orange County run), I think we have a contract to perform all over Spain, maybe for the first time since the company is together.”

Mata, who has been with the company since its formation 10 years ago, has witnessed a number of changes in the company’s emphasis.

“In the beginning, we used to do a lot of folk (dances), like jotas,” he said. “From there we started to build (story) ballets with arguments--like ‘Three-Cornered Hat’--to give it more importance, like a traditional company of ballet, more theatrical.”

Versatility, he said, is the key.

“In this company, (you) have to do flamenco, classical, character and modern. (It is) very difficult to maintain a person in this company who can dance only one thing.”

But that range of style has brought the company some criticism. Critics have unfavorably compared the Spaniards’ theatricalization of flamenco with the more “authentic” style of a group such as Flamenco Puro, seen in Los Angeles in 1987.

“That company is a little wild,” Mata said, adding that he has not seen it. “Everybody does what he wants. They don’t have a disciplined construction with a program. They don’t have a real direction. It is a company formed only for flamenco dancing. It was formed in order to tour.

“They call that more pure, and maybe it is. But I think that kind of flamenco has to be seen in a small place or a small theater to keep the flavor and vibrancy.”

Mata contrasted the differences with the Royal Spanish National Ballet, which is performing in large venues, not the small cafes where flamenco originated.

“Here (audiences) are going to see a show 25 meters from the stage and see everybody dancing perfect, everybody dancing the same,” he said. “The flamenco we do has more care for the lines (of the body). The dancers have a little more schooling. That is the difference.”

Mata believes that this approach is a result of a natural evolution.

“In the beginning, a long time ago, flamenco used to be danced without arms. They only used heel work. Emphasis was always on the rhythm. They didn’t care much about the lines of the body.

“With the passing of time, dancers began using the arms and were concerned much more with the lines of the body. That was the influence of the classical (ballet). The style of all kinds of dancing has been rising. If you look at books of Russian dancers of the 19th Century, you see the footwork is flat, they don’t go up on point, their arms are very down. Everything has evolved. Spanish, too.”

Mata added that traditional flamenco companies improvise during performances and that his troupe did, too--in the beginning. But no longer “because all the people have to be together in at the end.”

“I won’t say if it is more pure. It has more for the audience.”

The Royal Spanish National Ballet will appear Aug. 2-7 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Performance times: 8 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday; and 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets: $10-$35. Information: (714) 556-2787.