FRINGE '04 REVIEW: Flamenco Mosaic

Like lovingly-made tapas, the performance comes in small, intense bites of contrasting flavour and Mark Edwards’s guitar is like a fine rioja accompanying it all.

Flamenco Mosaic, by Desde Sevilla Dance Company, serves up both traditional and modern forms of flamenco with a passion appropriate to this emotion-driven dance.

Like lovingly-made tapas, the performance comes in small, intense bites of contrasting flavour and Mark Edwards’s guitar is like a fine rioja accompanying it all.

The company’s dancers – four female and one male – perform both ensemble and solo pieces showcasing different forms of flamenco from the ancient to the avante-garde. It’s a great spectacle, performed with foot stamping energy and twirling enthusiasm, all underscored by dramatic, furrowed brows.

The dancers have studied their art form in Spain and their seriousness about the dance is evidenced by technical virtuosity as well as passionate stares.

Their dance is offset beautifully by stunning costumes. Layered with plenty of sumptuous fabric to twirl and sweep up into dramatic folds of contrasting colours, it’s worth going to Flamenco Mosaic just to get an eyeful of the gorgeous frocks.

Appropriately for Valentine’s Day, the added spectacle of a Pablo Neruda poem, recited beautifully in its original Spanish by Josefina Serrallach de Bieto, echoed the passion and longing of the dance.

During the Valentine’s Day performance an appreciative crowd, nearly filling the uncomfortable seats, joined in with enthusiastic cries of “Ole!” at high points in the dance. When the dancers had taken their bows the entire audience stamped uproariously, flamenco-style, rousing the dancers to a lively encore.

Flamenco Mosaic is a stomping good time and a welcome helping of a rich dance culture our antipodean sensibilities seldom taste enough.

ENDS

© Scoop Media