© John Ross Sadler's Wells' fourth annual Flamenco Festival London. Ballet.co Magazine coverage: March 2007 April 2007 Carmen Cortes (Compania) reviews more Charlotte Kasner reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months) Gallery of Photographs

Carmen Cortes' evocation of Lorca's women provided the third strand of this festival's exploration of the art of flamenco from neuvo to puro to narrative; and here, I feel that flamenco is at its least successful. It simply does not have the vocabulary to deal with text in the way that ballet can, and many literary ballets fail (no mothers in law again). Whereas the best narrative and "literary" ballets distil the essence of text, flamenco seems to reduce it to banalities and clichés. Oddly enough, the one exception to this that I have seen so far was a Paco Pena production of Lorca's House of Bernada Alba, and this was the most successful of the vignettes in Cortes' production.

Whilst I confess to having only an intimate knowledge of four out of the six of Lorca's plays whose women were depicted, the devices used, and soon the flamenco itself became predictable very quickly. The device of the shoes seemed to add unintended humour. (It was a bit like reading Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom: one is often wading through the dull politics in order to get to the next funny camel story). Undoubtedly, and perhaps appropriately given the preponderance of footwear, the company and Cortes herself were at their best in zapateado, which was precise and measured (in the sense of having a strict compas throughout). There was some fine castanet playing too; I particularly liked the concept of the castanet cat fight.
 

The music was a very mixed bag indeed; at its best when traditional and very odd when not. It almost strayed into slushy pop and, as on other occasions this week, grated when recording was introduced into an otherwise live performance. This was at its most noticeable during the recorded piano solo when the aforementioned "grotto" of shoes upstage right was cleared of its detritus of shoes to reveal a dummy upright piano. What was the point? Were the audience not expected to realise that they were not listening to guitars and percussion unless they could visualise it? I concede that it may have been a textual reference that passed over my head, in which case it perhaps should have been more integral to the performance, or even better, played live.

Some sections of the audience gamely tried to interject jaleos and others were clearly riveted by the undoubted display of technique, but mostly the evening left me cold and eventually bored. (It was not to the company's advantage that some very noisy children were allowed to disrupt the quieter moments towards the end).

On the whole, I feel that if you really want to understand Lorca's women, read the text or see the play. If you want to see good flamenco, ditch the narrative.