Voces

Today is your last chance to see the Queen of Flamenco dancers, Sara Baras.

Baras is a legend in Spain and around the world for her tacaneo - the incredible fast heel rolls of Flamenco. It’s impossible to count how many beats per second she is able to execute. It’s all very impressive and the production is beautifully mounted with astonishing lighting by Oscar Gomez of De Los Reyes, but, despite the show ostensibly being a tribute to those who influenced Baras’s career, it feels like a pretension, an homage to Baras herself. Frequently arms are thrown to sky “milking applause long beyond its natural life. The show is overly slick and without a sense of improvisation and spontaneity which make Flamenco so great. Baras, though brilliant, is cold and technical and lacking visceral passion. She is a Diva - and clearly she has earned to right to be so. See her for the skill, but for true energy and fire, see it for her husband Jose Serrano, a dancer of such passion that you shout out ole and jump from your seat without meaning to. His stage presence and charisma are a match for his dancing and equally thrilling. He is the star of the show perhaps because, rather than in spite of, he is used so sparingly.

The rest of the cast, all skilled, don’t get much of a look-in until the encore, almost two hours down the track. Then, even the singers get to improvise and show their grasp of the footwork. It’s the least rehearsed and most joyful part of the evening.

Keko Baldomero is an astonishing guitarist and his original score is haunting and dazzling by degree.  On second guitar is the very skilled Andres Martinez. With three singers bringing individual voices as well as the Palmas ( handclapping) to the proceedings. With five standing ovations….three of them not at the end but during the performance, there is no questioning the excellence of the show.

Voces (the original voices are heard in Spanish and there is a translation in the flimsy programme), is a must for all lovers of technical dance. But for something which lights a fire in your belly, if your appetite is whetted by the amazing Serrano, perhaps head for a bar in Fitzroy, where passion drives the dance.

Coral Drouyn