Cortes Mixes His Flamenco With a ‘Passion’ for Posing

You might say that Joaquin Cortes does a dance formerly known as flamenco. At least he toys with the concept. A Gypsy by birth and a flamenco and ballet dancer by training, the 27-year-old Cortes has come up with his own version of “flamenco fusion.”

On Sunday night, his show “Gypsy Passion” came to the Universal Amphitheatre--one stop on a world tour of similarly large venues.

With regard to the music--almost all provided by five singers and nine musicians on stage--the “fusion” refers to jazzy overtones from flute, bongos and bass, as well as the occasional salsa beat or a melody that sounded Indian or New Age.

As for movement, ballet and flamenco were primary, and a little Las Vegas crept in with an almost perpetually smiling female corps de ballet in long, clinging Armani dresses that draped decoratively.

But Cortes’ main influence seems to be spectacle, not any form of dance or music. Although there were no special effects beyond a little smoke and a lot of dramatic lighting (by Juanjo Beloqui, Patrick Woodroffe and Cortes), there was an excess of sudden moves, showy posturing and static design.

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The evening seemed to move from pose to pose to pose. Languid stretching into position, shifting from one profile to another and Cortes’ personal favorites: raising his arms slowly, pointing to the audience with a blank look on his face or freezing like a statue in a blaze of white cross-lighting from above.

There were often catcalls and wolf whistles from the three-quarters-full house in response to Cortes’ flourishes--when his shirt was ripped off, when he grinned impishly and when he displayed his only technically clean feats: light, trilling footwork, perfectly balanced pirouettes and a few double tours en l’air. A mild frenzy was sometimes whipped up, but even the faithful eventually tired of the pauses for applause. They got excited when Cortes walked briefly into the audience--but he seemed aimless and returned quickly to the stage, using a recurring stalk-like walk that lacked any force or interesting dynamic. He was definitely designed to be looked at, but it was hard to figure out why.

Also featured on the two-hour program that ran without intermission were Cortes’ mentor and uncle, Cristobal Reyes, whose feathery-fast footwork and close-to-the-body style were perhaps too subtle for such a large house; and Marco Berriel, whose ballet-dominated solos, which he choreographed, were the most satisfying and technically accomplished of the evening.

In the first section of “Romance Amargo” (Bitter Romance), Berriel seemed to float, cat-like, on the melancholy strains of taped Spanish guitar music by Jose Gimenez. For “Suspiran” (Sighs), he wore black trousers with part of a ruffled skirt attached to his waist, becoming at times a balletic version of both a female and male flamenco dancer.

Musical interludes sometimes came close to the kind of passion flamenco or ballet is capable of creating, especially in the powerhouse vocals of Charo Manzano and Ana Reyes. Often, there was a feeling that flamenco music had taken off on a roller-coaster ride, which could be exhilarating but was also scary when the rhythms of instruments, palmas (hand claps) and footwork got lost in a cacophony of sound.

At least the music did not pause for effect, as Cortes was fond of doing. With flamenco fusion, the beat going on seems too essential a thing to lose.