Flamenco’s Next Step

When two or more flamenco aficionados get together, expect a hot argument about what constitutes real flamenco. The New World Flamenco Festival, Friday through Aug. 19 at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, is only going to fan the flames.

“The basic idea is to present new work from artists who are on the cutting edge of what they’re doing,” says festival artistic director Yaelisa, a San Francisco-based flamenco dancer who will be appearing with her company.

“The name says it all: The New World Flamenco Festival has to represent the work of artists today.”

So what’s wrong with that?

“In Spain, there is a perception among older flamencos, who grew up performing in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, that flamenco is going down the tubes,” Yaelisa said.

Flamenco evolved among gypsies who migrated to southern Spain in the middle of the 15th century. Denied any social status there, they expressed their pain and joy through solo songs and dances. Characterized by stamping and tapping feet, flamenco dancing initially was accompanied only by voice and clapping hands. Later, guitars were added.

For the purist, flamenco still consists only of singer, dancer, guitarist and a palmista or palmero (a person who claps the rhythms). But sometimes the music is played without dancing. Recent developments have included the addition of other instruments and an expansion of the dancing to duets or even groups.

These “theatrical” innovations are the subject of the debate.

Yaelisa ticks off the complaints:

“There are too many instruments, people are dancing with way too much footwork. The choreography draws on everything from hip-hop to contemporary dance, African American, Indian. The costumes have changed.

“People are so opinionated about what is true flamenco. But I feel, like [famed flamenco guitarist] Paco de Lucia said, ‘What is puro?” Something that comes from your heart and something that comes from the very moment you’re giving it. If you believe it and want to give it at that moment, then it’s traditional. It’s flamenco of today.’ ”

The festival is the brainchild of Yaelisa, who was persuaded to bring the idea south by Irvine Barclay Theatre President Douglas Rankin. The two met when they were both serving a few years ago on a dance panel for the California Arts Council.

“We’ve had some considerable success in presenting flamenco over the years,” Rankin said. “Also, I like flamenco, which makes the task rather that much easier.”

The budget is about $250,000, with half coming from grants and the rest expected from ticket sales. The plan is to make the event a two-city festival, alternating yearly between Irvine and San Francisco.

Workshops and master classes fill out the 10-day event, which includes a juerga, or party and jam session (Sunday at the Steelhead Brewery in University Center).

In addition to Yaelisa (Tuesday and Wednesday), the festival visitors include two groups from Spain: Compania Domingo Ortega from Jerez de la Frontera (Friday and Saturday), and Compania Belen Maya from Madrid (Aug. 17-18).

“Domingo Ortega is one of the top male dancers in Spain right now,” Yaelisa said. “His idea for a show is intriguing. Basically, it started as an all-male show, with all male dancers as well as all male musicians.”

Ortega was born in Jerez, a major cradle of flamenco.

“I wanted to show that a man can have feelings as much as any other human being or a woman has and still be strong,” Ortega said in a recent phone interview from Madrid. “The whole performance is about men’s need for love.”

But his original all-male emphasis threw some audiences.

“Everyone missed women,” he said, “particularly because of the title [of the program], which names a woman: ‘I Will Go With My Mother.’ So now the company has been enriched. It has grown. Now there are three women dancers and a woman singer and a woman playing the violin.”

It is the mixed group that will dance his “... Y ahora me voy con mi mare” at the festival in Irvine.

Belen Maya, whose parents were legendary flamenco dancers, took the opposite path. She formed a company entirely of women. But this too has recently changed.

“At that moment, I wanted to do a show that was completely full of female feelings, of emotions,” Maya said in a phone interview from Barcelona.

“When we opened in Australia, at the Perth festival, people were shocked because they never saw only women on stage. They had this idea of the bullfighter, the torero, the male dancer, fighting for the woman.

“My generation, we don’t dance that. We dance more on feelings, the feelings that women feel--sadness and loneliness.”

It was a struggle to pursue this vision.

“It’s really hard for anybody to have a company, men or women,” she said. “But for women, flamenco is really a tough world. Guitarists and singers are men, and you have to push really hard to get what you want from them.

“I was lucky. I found my own musicians early in my career. I found people that liked my way of understanding flamenco music.”

Maya’s company now includes a male dancer, Manuel Reyes, a friend from childhood.

“There are wonderful male dancers in Spain, but I didn’t feel close to their approach to dancing and didn’t feel close to them personally,” she said. “Then last December, I found Manuel again, after all these years. He’s great. He’s the balance. We need to have balance, on stage and in the world.”

Dance Will Honor Company’s Teachers

Maya’s company will be dancing “Adir” (Heritage), which pays homage to the teachers of her company’s members.

Yaelisa’s San Francisco-based company falls between the two camps, she said.

“I like avant-garde work, contemporary work, but my choreography comes from a traditional background.

“As an artist involved in this, I feel that it’s just that flamenco is what it is. It’s a changing art form. It’s modern. Well, it’s modern because we’re in the year 2001.”

Even so, all three artists feel some sympathy with people who criticize contemporary flamenco as less “pure” than it used to be.

“With the really younger generation, they’re forgetting the roots of flamenco,” Yaelisa said. “They’re going out and doing a solo that has no improvisation, or if it does, it’s too thought-out.

“Flamenco has to have an element of improvisation. If it doesn’t, it starts to lose its spark. It never was intended to be choreographed from beginning to end.”

How can you tell if someone is really improvising?

“If you look on stage and you see the artists or the musicians sitting on the edge of their seats, that’s it,” Yaelisa said. “There’s a kind of energy when the choreography is not a known commodity.”

Ortega too has his criticism. “Authenticity is being lost, but not because of the reason you think,” he said. “It’s lost by people who become famous, people who want to move 6,000 people.

“Flamenco is very intimate. You can’t move people in a football or a soccer stadium. That’s when the sacrifices start because you’re trying to appeal to the majority. Flamenco is intimate and you can’t do it like that.”

Maya said, “I hate [all the new] percussion, all this drumming. It covers [up] everything--the singing, the footwork. I hate it.”

She goes further: She feels the form itself needs to be expanded.

“Flamenco is very limited,” she said. “It only talks about certain feelings: anger, loneliness, jealousy and sadness. You can’t play roles in flamenco. You can’t be a daughter, a sister, a wife. There are no roles. You’re only this woman who is feeling this emotion. There are only four or five emotions.

“That’s why we try to use these [other dance] techniques--contemporary and Indian dance--and try to put some of the feeling of them, very humbly, as I understand them, into my dancing. Not only me, but a lot of others.”

Both Yaelisa and Rankin hope the festival will catch on and continue. They might even include flamenco programs without flamenco dancers.

“If you go to the festivals in Spain, at least 15% to 20% of the performances will not have any dance in them whatsoever,” Yaelisa said. “In Spain, [music is] considered more important in some circles than the dancing.

“I thought about that at this festival. But I don’t think we’re ready to do that. The public is not educated enough.”

The future may also bring a shift in emphasis.

“We might want to do different programming, looking back and seeing the flamenco of 30 years ago,” she said. “It was very different. Definitely there’s a place for that.”

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The New World Flamenco Festival, Friday-Aug. 19, presents three companies--Compania Domingo Ortega, Yaelisa and Caminos Flamencos, and Compania Belen Maya--and related activities at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. $24 to $35. (949) 854-4646.