Forceful Footwork Drives Noche Flamenca

Forget storytelling, scenery-chewing, corps dancing and pop-star glamour. Noche Flamenca is a company that focuses on the essence of this antique Andalusian Gypsy art.

Over the weekend, in the 250-seat Founders Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Martin Santangelo’s 9-year-old, Madrid-based ensemble emerged from darkness and continually defied it in solos and duets of vehement self-assertion and deep integrity.

There was no emotional overkill: Even in the most flamboyant outbursts of song or dance, the tension between personal expression and technical display led to startling changes of attack, as if the performers suddenly felt they had revealed too much and retreated to the safety zone of virtuosity.

Thus the sensuality and need in a duet for Noe Barroso and Alejandra Zaballos reached a flashpoint several times Thursday. But the dancers always abandoned this closeness for a mocking, confrontational style that relied on matched-step combinations without risking passion.

A sense of inner truths, cautiously guarded but ultimately irrepressible, dominated a severe, haunting solo by Soledad Barrio. Wearing a simple dress and shawl that made her torso look block-like, Barrio established powerful contrasts between her weighty, forceful footwork and the bare arms that kept curling toward the light, pulling her upward.

No easy Spanish elegance here and no glorification of suffering. Instead, Barrio’s lunging turns, gutsy lashing of her skirt and backbends that looked forced from her at gunpoint depicted a woman of fierce self-possession momentarily overwhelmed by her feelings but determined to master them. Like the Barroso/Zaballos duet, her solo remained deliberately unresolved--an installment in an ongoing life cycle. Similarly, Barroso’s duet with Bruno Argenta teemed with dramatic implications, but never quite became a challenge. Instead, the men sustained a wary, isolated standoff, letting audience imagination take the relationship to its next phase.

More conventionally finished solos came from Elena Martin and Argenta, both interacting with singer Manuel Gago as if he held some mysterious power over them. Martin performed a showpiece with a cane: a kind of third leg that sometimes accented the rhythms of her dancing but elsewhere defined high-velocity counter-rhythms. Three men with canes added to the percussive intricacy of the solo but Martin kept the total effect grounded in her taut concentration.

Argenta proved unforgettably unpredictable, building some passages out of rapid changes of stance rather than steps, but elsewhere launching brief flurries of spectacular footwork ornamented with ballet turns. Only at the end did he offer sustained high-speed steps, and even here air turns provided the final exclamation point.

Despite the intimacy of the venue, Noche Flamenco didn’t perform unplugged--the guitars and singing remained overamplified, leaving the refined guitar duet for Miguel Perez Garcia and Jesus Torres (who also composed the company’s original music) harsh in tone. Sung without any translation or summary in the house program, Gago’s solo wrenched periodic long-held cries of anguish from him, but reached its peak in the accelerating, rhythmic rapport with Garcia near the end.

The admirable skill and taste of Noche Flamenca would make the company an ideal introduction to an art that is often abused and distorted on world stages. But Founders Hall doesn’t provide ideal sightlines: The audience sits on three sides of a platform stage, and although many rows in the side sections are raised, much of the center section isn’t, and offers only an obstructed view of the dancing.