La Tania’s Light-Footed Flamenco Charms

If you think of flamenco in terms of weather, it’s usually partly cloudy with intermittent thunderstorms. For La Tania Flamenco Music and Dance, however, the forecast is a bit sunnier. What this meant for “Anillos en Mi Sangre,” La Tania’s Friday night concert at Beckman Auditorium at Caltech in Pasadena, was the privileging of airy, graceful design over forceful emotion. Not that the angst of flamenco was entirely absent, just subservient to neatly accomplished outward forms.

Based in Northern California, La Tania herself is a luxuriously beautiful dancer, poised in slow, painterly moments and flashing to life most when her long, ruffled train needed taming in the festive solo, “Linda Cubana.” Isaac Fernandez, her guest from Spain, has a close-to-the-body style with a light touch that crystallized in breezy turns and buoyant footwork.

For brief duets, the pair used perfect unison, cool lines and smooth interweaving steps to politely complement each other. In a world where male-female partnering so often highlights conflict, La Tania and Fernandez danced out a kind of sweet cooperation.

It was left to singers Jesus Montoya and Antonio de Jerez to raise the emotional stakes in a sort of “dueling laments section.” To the thoughtful strumming of guitarists Guillermo Rios and Chuscales, each voice reached something primal, De Jerez with his guttural throat accents, Montoya with his resonant head tone in a drawn-out cry that made you keenly regret whatever you were likely to regret most. In a pleasant, fair-weather flamenco program, that was lightning striking brilliantly.