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Flamenco is about passion. This ancient Spanish form of song and dance stomps, cries, thrusts, swivels, pleads and wails. It grabs you by the throat and wrings you dry.
Which makes the listless current production by Sowelu Ensemble—"An Evening of Flamenco and Ballads," playing through December 23 at the Back Door Theater—a disappointment. There is about as much passion on stage as you'd find at a junior high chaperoned dance.
That stage, by the way, is of the postage stamp size, arrayed with cocktail tables and chairs, and swathed in red—red lights, red fabric, a red shawl. Maybe the director and designers—all uncredited in the program—are trying to evoke the passion so lacking in the performance itself.
The three cast members are well-intentioned yet rarely break a sweat. In nearly 20 songs and dances over 90 minutes, guitarist Stan Olmsted, singer/actor Joaquin Lopez and dancer/vocalist Juliet Cardinal race through flamenco standards, voice-guitar duos by
Federico Garcia Lorca and original "flamenco style" original compositions by Olmsted.
Cardinal strips the vocal gears in her grating performance in collaboration with guitarist Olmsted, who favors bravura style over rhythmic incisiveness. Lopez alone provides a calm, smoky-eyed center, and the most poignant singing (and a haunting reading by Pablo Neruda, in English).
No translations, super titles or commentary are provided, so you may wonder what all the Spanish sobbing and hand-clapping is ever about. I certainly did.
(photo above: guitarist Stan Olmsted, courtesy of Sowelu Ensemble)
WWeek 2015