© Antonio Campos Sadler's Wells' fourth annual Flamenco Festival London. Ballet.co Magazine coverage: March 2007 April 2007 recent Estrella Morente reviews more Charlotte Kasner reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

Not all of the staging worked; the acknowledgement to the composer Falla resulted in a dead stage for a long period at the opening which threatened to kill the evening stone dead before it had even started. It would have been better to have used the stage-sized screen to project historical images and given the evening more of a context. The recording jarred with the superb live music and flattened the atmosphere. Were it not for the expected closing bulerias, the same device at the end would have made the performance fizzle out.

This was surely an evening for cante and in this, Estrella Morente did not disappoint. A Spanish Piaf, she has an extraordinary range and a glowing personality. Flamenco priorities were restored with the song at the forefront and music next. The use of lutes gave the sound a piquancy, but it was the solo guitar work that shone.

Indeed there was very little dance in the evening and what there was disappointing. There were odd, manic solos that lacked clarity and purpose, the only exception being the chico section near the beginning. (If nothing underlined the period nature of this performance, it was the voluminous bloomers of the chico dancer!) The men were especially weak. The soleas, although played beautifully, was choreographed very oddly, for three dancers (not a soleas then, by definition?) The lighting was confined to three spot pools that did not always illuminate the leading dancer and distracted the eye. The use of the bata de cola was tokenistic and not justified by appropriate choreography.
 

What made this evening was the atmosphere; there were contingents of afficionados throughout the house and jaleos coming from all corners. This type of flamenco does not always work on large stages, but the combination of Morente's personality and a warm audience made this feel like a giant pena. It probably would not have appealed to an audience motivated chiefly by dance or good staging but it was unmissable for the cante and musicians.

Post Scriptum: there was a free palmas workshop following the performance which was a great post-performance wind down. Definitley to be recommended should the opportunity arise again.