Moderno or puro, it's still flamenco

By Victoria Looseleaf

Aug. 7, 2003 12 AM PT

Special to The Times

Haughty faces, stamping feet, strumming guitars, clicking castanets. Probably most people think they know what flamenco is. But in the 21st century, this art form that originated with Spanish Gypsies is being presented more and more outside the box. Male dancers are shedding their shirts and growing their hair rock-star long, and one -- Israel Galvan, who has been called the Nijinsky of flamenco -- revels in provoking audiences. He says he wants to be seen as “a piece of rubbish onstage.”

But the debate about who’s got duende -- soul -- is perennial, and purists and so-called modernists are duking it out on Southern California stages this month as flamenco busts out all over. “Ay! Flamenco” is scheduled for two nights at the Ford Amphitheatre; the ongoing weekly series “Forever Flamenco” has been running since November at the Fountain Theatre and shows no sign of hanging up its shoes; and the New World Flamenco Festival, perhaps the mother of all local flamenco events, has once again landed in Irvine.

Now in its third year, the festival is big and bold. Having expanded from 10 days to two weeks, it is offering a virtual flamenco omnibus: nine performances, 15 workshops, outreach activities and a first -- the screening of a film, “Vengo,” starring Antonio Canales, who will also close the series with three appearances by his company, Ballet Flamenco de Antonio Canales.

The festival’s artistic director is a dancer-choreographer, the single-named Yaelisa. (Think a retro Cher, albeit one with filigree fingers, whipping turns and fire-breathing duende.) Yaelisa heads her own San Francisco-based company, Caminos Flamencos (it will perform on the Ford bill with the Spanish sensation Domingo Ortega), and is married to Jason McGuire, a guitarist known as El Rubio (the Blond One) and the festival’s music director.

“The festival has grown in the sense of stature and prestige in the kinds of artists we’re bringing from Spain, but essentially in the level of artists,” she says from the couple’s Bay Area home. “When we talk about Canales, we’re really talking about a legend. We needed to bring him this year because we wanted one of the artists who is responsible for innovation in dance for 20 years.”

Innovation, envelope-pushing. That’s the stuff of nuevo that keeps fanning the flames of opposing flamenco camps. Take 42-year-old Canales, who comes from a family of flamenco artists. He says he doesn’t believe in the new.

“I perceive flamenco as something timeless. No one knows exactly where it came from, how it came about, where it’s going and in what direction,” he says. “There are infinite theories about any art form. ‘New flamenco’ is a meaningless term to me.”

As a performer, Yaelisa leans more toward the traditional, but in order to keep building flamenco audiences, she believes in mixing things up. That’s why she sought the heat of Galvan, for example, who is making his West Coast debut with a pair of concerts at the festival. It seems unlikely that half the audience will walk out during his performances, as many spectators did at a 1998 flamenco festival in Seville where he performed “Los Zapatos Rojos” (The Red Shoes).

“The audience had come to see something billed as flamenco,” says Galvan, “and felt deceived. I used puppets, industrial noise, heavy metal effects and all sorts of weird stuff. It was later shown at a non-flamenco-themed festival and was well received.”

Galvan, 30, believes the ongoing debate between the puro and the improvisatory will never end.

“Pure to me is something that’s sincere, whether improvised or not. Many artists conserve the style of their birthplace -- Utrera, Jerez, whatever. All that is fine,” he adds, “because there’s room for all viewpoints.”

Yaelisa points out that many artists in Spain look to Fred Astaire, hip-hop, contemporary dance and ballet as possible sources of inspiration.

“More and more young people have become involved in searching for ways of communicating their art,” she says. “So this ‘traditional,’ quote unquote, art form has brought in many influences from other music and dance forms.”

At 63, Juan Talavera has been around the flamenco block more than a few times. Still performing, he can be seen this month at the Fountain Theatre. Talavera, in fact, studied with Galvan’s father, Jose, in Seville three years ago. And though Talavera considers himself a traditionalist, he’s tolerant of change.

“I’m in either camp, as long as it’s done well professionally,” he says. “And every now and then, I’ll do a shoulder or arm movement that I think is very modern, but for my age, I would look silly dancing moderno. Of course outside influences are affecting styles. The music is changing, the singing is changing. Artists see things, they hear things, and they see if they can stick it into flamenco.

“When ‘A Chorus Line’ was popular, all the dancers had mirrors. And I saw one company doing lifts like in ballet. That didn’t work for me, because flamenco doesn’t leave the ground.”

For his part, Antonio Triana, artistic director-guitarist of “Forever Flamenco,” sees renewed interest in the traditional, both here and in Spain.

“They’re starting to look into themselves and see where the cradle of flamenco is coming from,” says Triana. “Flamenco began with song, and then the dance forms were put together by different tribes of people: Jewish, Moorish, Arabic, Indian.

“All of that got mixed. That’s where the dance forms derived from -- the percussive end, the musicality.”

But the tug of war continues, with Triana adamantly against the use of gratuitous trappings. He cites Spanish “fusion” star Joaquin Cortes, who has staged “these elaborate shows with everyone dressed in Armani. It’s a People magazine attitude. It’s bringing in commercialism and not giving back to the art form.”

Triana looks forward to getting a dose of authenticity when Jerez, Puro performs for three nights at the Irvine festival. Yaelisa and Jerez-based Antonio Malena cherry-picked a company of 12 artists representing five flamenco dynasties. The result, says Yaelisa, represents the first time that a company from the city in southwest Spain has been assembled for a concert in the U.S.

“It’s culturally important,” she says, “because they’re continuing a long line of traditional flamenco.”

As for Galvan, whose sister, Pastora, will also perform with him and his company, Yaelisa disagrees with the Nijinsky label. “It’s an unfortunate description. I would call his flamenco abstract, in the sense that he likes to take it apart, look at it and put it back together in different ways.”

Whatever he does, Galvan arouses interest. The New York Times called him a “provocative, fascinating and Cubist dancer.” But wanting to be seen as a piece of rubbish onstage?

Galvan replies: “I identify with people whose work has initially brought about shock reaction. Innovators like Bunuel and Almodovar in film have provoked that type of feeling. I suppose I’m a pathological nonconformist. I would rather generate extreme responses than indifference, but this is not rooted in anger or defiance, rather a desire to experiment with looking at what happens if the things that have always been aesthetically admired about flamenco -- grace, sensuality, perfect technique -- are allowed to be questioned.”

New World Flamenco Festival

Where: Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine

When: Now through Aug. 17

Info: (949) 854-4607

Also

“Forever Flamenco”

Where: Fountain Theatre,

5060 Fountain Ave., Hollywood

When: Sundays, 8 p.m.

Price: $25

Contact: (323) 663-1525

“Ay! Flamenco”