La Tania Creates Lyrical Blend of Art, Flamenco

Drawing on the inspiration of her grandmother’s paintings and the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca, flamenco artist La Tania presented her new hourlong suite, “Passage of the Muse,” Friday night at El Camino College in Torrance.

It couldn’t have been an easy task to incorporate, alongside her dancing, an actress (the powerfully fluid Teresa Vallejo), projections of artwork (by post-impressionistic Judith Deim) and musicians (largely unseen, including the eloquent score’s composer, Juan Antonio Suarez).

But somewhere toward the end of the piece, La Tania brought it all together in a way that suddenly created a new world out of disparate spheres. A beautifully projected triptych that hung behind her featured Deim’s bold, swirling brush strokes in shades of scarlet, azure and yellow, suggesting a compassionate figure caught in a blazing landscape of sea, sun and waves. Vallejo--who had been declaiming Lorca’s verses in a rich, commanding voice that could melt bitter chocolate--was suddenly silent, majestically trailing a long red scarf across the back of the stage, while Suarez’s guitar punctuated as if blown in on the wind.

Knowing when to use stillness, La Tania allowed the eye to linger on the painting for a time, the ear to echo the lush words of Lorca (alas, incomplete to non-Spanish speakers). But then came her evocative solo passages, using what more impulsive flamenco dancers rarely use--controlled repetition and variation. She could have danced off the canvases, which contain a lot of movement in vigorous, arcing brush strokes; just as Deim’s eye seems drawn to the beauty of harsh landscapes and fates, La Tania highlights the lyrical element of flamenco.

If her impulses seem tame when compared to gutsier Gypsy flamenco style, it’s because she leans toward the evocative classicism of ballet or kathak. So it’s not surprising that the bulerias segment that wrapped up this suite was a pale copy of more lively communal finales. But in solo work, La Tania’s clear-cut shapes and fresh rhythmic phrases often hit the mark.

The warmup first half of the program was comprised of solos and a duet by La Tania and Andres Marin. Amplification problems slightly interfered with singing by Juan Jose Suarez and Cristo Cortes and the viola of Rafael Fernandez.