London Flamenco Festival: 10 Mar. Carmen Linares, Miguel Poveda, Juan Carlos Romero, Pastora Galvan

Carmen Linares and Miguel Poveda, acclaimed flamenco singers, were accompanied with Juan Carlos Romero’s fine guitar music and Pastora Galvan’s passionate dancing.

Apart from Pastora, who is one of my favourite bailaora, I was only interested in Carmen in terms of her deep singing, but I was so taken aback by and impressed with Miguel, especially by his almost never-ending, prolific Tangos’ variation and repertoire. He looks young but his songs are so mature.

The most impressing part of the show was where Pastora danced to Miguel’s singing of the original version of Sevillanas created by Juan. Both of them looked dignified, having dominating presences. In many flamenco shows, dancers might outstand but I don’t think that’s the way it should be. I would prefer that each artist can show their presences equally, so I thought that this was one of the few occasions of the ‘right’ way of showing flamenco.

I was looking forward to Carmen’s Taranto (if without a dance, Taranta) the most, as it’s her best piece and Pastora, was going to dance to it. But when I saw Pastora’s choreography to the song, using a chair, I wasn’t initially sure what to think of it, especially of the ending.

It started off very nicely but at the end Pastora started to bend her knees outwards with showing her back towards the audience, and place her bottom on the chair which was facing the front. Then, she turned herself bit by bit and the chair also turned itself accordingly until the back of the chair was shown. Her finishing pose was her front-faced, bandy-legged posture on the chair with its back towards the audience. Bandy-legged, facing the audience… I was very worried if some people could actually see the inside of her skirt.

At first I was confused with this dancing of Pastora as it didn’t really seem sophisticated. But later I realised that it was her uniqueness, being different from other ‘superstars’ such as Eva La Yerbabuena, Maria Pages, Sara Baras or Rafaela Carrasco. These female dancers would never think of doing that kind of weird movement. Pastora is different, cheeky and cute. So, after all I really liked her dancing throughout the show, although the stunning choreography distracted me from Carmen’s singing…

At the fin de fiesta, Pastora was even more stunning. As if her body was made of springs, her movements were kind of elastic, rhythmical, boosting, refreshing and funny. The closing movement with slight diagonal jumping was so cool especially.

As a whole, I really enjoyed the performances of all the artists.

After the show, there was a free workshop for palmas in the same venue. It seemed to be organised by a few flamenco artists working in London. The guitarist was ok and he also sang, but the two female dancers hardly matched up to Pastora, inevitably. Their poor performances made me disappointed as I felt that my dancing was as poor as them, comparing to the real flamenco dancers. Still, the workshop itself was enjoyable. Although this was a part of the flamenco festival, the majority of participants were those who came for general interests in the theatre art. Seeing some nice old people struggling with contra tiempo was smile-inducing.