For hard-core flamenco aficionados, dancing is at the bottom of the flamenco hierarchy, following singing and guitar-playing in power and expressiveness. But you couldn't call Mujeres, the celebration of flamenco dancing in Saturday's third and final performance of Flamenco Festival Miami, anything but top of the line.
Like Thursday and Friday's concerts, the sold-out show at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts Knight Concert Hall showed a level of flamenco artistry that South Florida has never seen before. It brought the adoring audience to its feet. ''I think that's the best performance I've ever seen,'' sighed one longtime former Miami flamenco dancer afterward.
INNOVATION
The evening shone not just with star power and technical brilliance, but for the way it demonstrated innovation and creative possibility. And, as its title implied, facets of womanhood, with three dancers who represent the best of their respective generations: revered 60-year old Merche Esmeralda; the ferociously elegant 41-year old Belén Maya, and 23-year old phenom Rocio Molina.
Mujeres was directed by Mario Maya (Belén's father), but the dancers choreographed their own dances (except for opening and closing trios by Manuel Liñan), and designed the fabulous costumes, which creatively updated traditional garb. The result was richly impressive -- and entertaining. Shows made up of disparate pieces can feel scattered. This one felt satisfyingly complete. Guitarist Paco Cruz led an excellent ensemble of two other guitarists, a percussionist and three fine singers, notably the portly, soulful Antonio Campos.
Any current or aspiring diva should line up to learn from Esmeralda.
She is statuesque, with a rare power and dimension in her torso that contrasts with gorgeously liquid arms and fluttering hands, shifting from earthy sensuality to impish flirtation without ever losing her tremendous dignity. In Mis Soledades she sported a virginal white dress with an enormously ruffled train, her arms swirling joyfully from a gravity and age-defying backbend. In Deja de Volverme Loca (Stop Driving Me Crazy), a flamenco-modern dance with guest singer Diana Navarro, Esmeralda's gravity gave a different and very moving resonance to a potentially sentimental theme of love lost.
A specialist in other Spanish and world music styles as much as flamenco, Navarro was a special treat. Her voice had a shiver-inducing beauty, with Middle Eastern-tinged harmonic overtones and an opera singer's vocal power.
The other two dancers were no less impressive. Belén Maya combined fierce intensity with quirky playfulness; in Calle de Elvira, she used odd hand gestures, circling shoulders and off-kilter body shapes, her heels beating a complex counterpoint to the music. In Romance de Zaide, a duet with Molina, their sharply rhythmic, circling, geometric moves around each other, more modern dance than flamenco, implied a close but conflicted relationship.
FOCUS, ENERGY
Molina may have been the youngest, but her focus, energy and sheer technical brilliance make her a formidable artist. In Apasionada, she was a fiery, tightly wound whirlwind, exploding in amazingly precise and rapid footwork, whipped into a frenzy by the music, focused as a laser. It was an astonishing performance.
The evening ended with the three women in luxuriously ruffled red and white dresses, a joyful celebration of just how good flamenco dancing -- and these dancers -- could be.
