Gringos get the beat
Flamenco ace Paco Pena strums up passion
RIALTO CENTER, JAN. 31 — Flamenco is, let’s face it, best experienced at a tiny tablao with a pitcher of sangria and a pan of paella on the table — someplace where the explosions of the dancers’ feet can shake your spine and chase away all the mundane thoughts of the day. Or better yet, at a neighborhood celebration (still with the sangria and paella), where your best friend plays the guitar, the ancient man from across the street wails the songs through his dust-scarred throat, and your abuela hikes up her skirt to show everyone her legs are still strong.
But when Paco Peña comes to town, well, you go to him wherever he may choose to play. But when the internationally acknowledged Über-master of the flamenco guitar, played with his performance company to a sold-out house at the Rialto Center Friday, the crowd was heavy on gringo initiates not too sure, at first, what to make of all the clapping along and yelling that erupted from the pockets of flamenco true-believers. Initially, most kept their hands folded in their laps and their mouths respectfully shut. But the silence didn’t last long.
Peña opened the show with a quiet solo granainas, played with such serenity that it was easy to miss the astonishing red-lined rasgueados (intricate strumming patterns) that once drew the admiration of Jimi Hendrix. Any competent flamenco guitarist can keep a couple of lines going simultaneously, but Peña plays like a quartet. A contemplative bass line mused its way under a rapid minor melody, with wandering themes of hope and regret woven between. In some of the more complex measures (and God alone knows how he manages this), Peña plucked out little studies on the neck with his left hand while his right hand maintained the major lines.
Guitarists Rafael Montilla and Jesús Majuelos accompanied Peña for most of the show. They leaned back into their chairs, crossed their legs, and rested their guitars at angles on their knees: carefully studied figures of cool. Peña, by contrast, sat upright with perfect schoolboy posture, both feet on the ground and his guitar firmly supported on his thigh.
Flamenco cannot simply be listened to and watched. It is sorely diminished without the hypnotic play of muscles and the rawness of hands that have been clapping polyrhythms for an hour or two. No matter: The beats are irresistible. The Protestant hush in the crowd soon broke, and seats began to rock in counts of three, six and 12.
Dancer Antonio Alcázar walked on stage, lean and long-limbed, curly black hair slicked back to his shoulders. Cries of “guapo!” erupted from the crowd. Forgiving his first solo, which suffered from too much balletic refinement, Alcázar was phenomenal. His steps were thunder. His arms formed and flung off perfect ellipses. He sent spins off-center to the edge of collapse, then kicked the ground defiantly, denying he ever could fall. In between movements, he circled center stage like a matador sizing up an unworthy bull.
Alcázar’s partner, dancer Victoria Palacios, was of equal talent, though of wholly different character. She answered Alcázar’s anger with lust, his aggression with seduction, working her ample hips to arousing affect. She bent her fingers and sent her arms through curving labyrinths. She cast off her mantòn without a backward glance, and danced away from it, too strong for regrets.
Secondary dancers Antonia Alcalde, Verònica Molero and Irene Romero were technically skilled, but lacked duende — the spell, the spirit, the trance of flamenco. Singer Miguel Ortega was similarly afflicted early in the show, but seemed to enter the essence in the second half. He is a young singer of abundant talent, but has not yet acquired the raw and ragged edges that the finest flamenco singers use to inflect their notes with wails and cries of desperate exaltation.
The show ended with much shouting and clapping and stomping of feet in all quarters. We left in a metered mystic state, dividing our steps by threes and fours. By the elevators in the parking ramp, an old woman was still clapping her hands in time, her face lit up like a schoolgirl with a crush. Her middle-aged daughter tried to stop her with a program slipped between her hands, then laughed and started clapping along with her.