DANCE REVIEW : Two Generations Perfect Spanish Dancing

Forget the father. At 31, Jose Greco II is not only perfectly proportioned for Spanish dancing, he uses stance and, especially, gesture with consistently astonishing eloquence.

At Ambassador Auditorium on Sunday afternoon, Greco Jr. made each angle of the head, each sweep by those long, supple hands into supremely powerful movement theater. In “Amor Gitano” (co-choreographed with his sister Carmela), merely placing his hand around the waist of Pilar Serrano fully expressed the blocked desire and the consuming, somehow hopeless, need shaping this increasingly intense duet.

In his Farruca solo, Greco incorporated everything from complex flamenco heelwork to balletic air turns, but it was his volatile shifts in mood that made his performance so eventful, as if he were dancing his way through the deepest crisis of his life.

Now 73, Greco Sr. looked elegant and ardent partnering four of the company women in his “Recuerdos,” while his choreography for the “Goyescas” intermezzo provided Serrano with her most satisfying showpiece on the program. Sunny and bold in most of her assignments, she moved through this 18th-Century style duet (opposite Jaime Coronado) with a new finesse and pliancy.

Other featured dancers in the Greco company included Miguel Cara Estaca, an almost alarmingly gutsy performer with two overused signature steps: stamping on the edge of his turned-under right foot (undeniably weird) and an air-turn with knees held together and arm flung high.

A woman called La Tormento nearly matched Estaca in feisty flamboyance, but the company as a whole proved more appealing in Goyo Montero’s “Three Classic Spanish Dances (Escuela Bolera)” from the 18th Century. Here Marisol Figueroa, La Chispa, Alicia del Sol, Valeriano Mayorga, Jaime Coronado and El Gitanillo blended courtly formality with vibrant rhythmic interplay, their castanets and footwork ideally intricate but without any hint of vulgar display.

Taped music accompanied the suite--in arrangements by Jose Luis Greco, another family member prominently involved with the company. Guitarists Roberto Castellon Jr. and Guillermo Rios joined singer Luis Vargas in lending the flamenco sequences their soulful urgency.