‘Please Vote For Us to Win a National Lottery Award.’
Ana de los Reyes and Chris Mullett.
The lovely Little Theatre, Sheringham. Our third visit, and as much fun as ever.
Someone once said that civilisation could be summd up in the word ‘welcome’.
The Little Theatre, Sheringham may well be little, but it is very civilised.
‘POWERFUL GRACE and DYNAMIC RHYTHM’ by Megan Millar-McKeever for Remotegoat
Passion, drama, and hot summer nights. These are the things that come to mind when one thinks of flamenco dancing. What Flamenco Express added to this list of attributes was grace, strength and humour. If you have never been exposed to flamenco dancing before seeing this company perform is a great place to start, and if you are a connoisseur then you are guaranteed to have an enjoyable evening.
This small company, comprised of four dancers and four musicians, created a dynamic performance last Thursday night at the LABAN Theatre. The female dancers began the evening with a vibrant group piece, followed by a series of solo performances. Their steps provided a rhythm for the music created by the sweet sounds of the acoustic guitarists and the rough vocals of the singers. Through the performance the music built in speed and intensity seducing the listener while the dancers captivated with their powerful grace.
The impression the performers left on the audience was apparent as members of the audience rose to their feet applauding and children tapped away in the isles in an attempt to mimic what they had just seen. If you love dance, Spain or listening to a wicked acoustic guitar this show is a definite must see. I had a fantastic time and would recommend it to anyone.
Remotegoat. 2008
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Thanks as usual to Faye and the crew at The Bonnie Bird Theatre.
The Devonshire Park Theatre is a Grade II listed building designed by Henry Currey. It was built in 1884 and further improved by celebrated Theatre Architect Frank Matcham in 1903.
Attendance: 460.
Stage crew - excellent. Front of House - excellent. Stage - slightly more rake than flamenco likes, but not too bad and otherwise a sound tablao. Acoustics - fabulous.
Company: Ana de los Reyes. Mateo Solea, La Joaquina, Gemma de la Cruz, Rosa de Las heras, Chris Mullett, Jesus Alvarez.
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Rosa waiting her call. Corn exchange, Bedford. 23/11/07
© flamenco express 2007
‘Bedford Art-icle’.
www.articlemagazinebedford.org.uk
The first time I saw a Flamenco dance troop was in 1995 in a small crowded bar in Barcelona. There were only four in the company; a singer, a guitarist and male and female dancers. They sang, played and danced for an hour and a half without a break. The atmosphere in the confines of the bar was hot, steamy and intimate. The performance was done with vigour, artistry and passion, faces contorted with expression, communicating all the anguish, pain, joy and other emotions of the story. Performers and audience alike with beads of sweat dripping from the forehead, down the sides of the face and off the ends of noses and chins. Indeed, the singer was almost crying. It was electric.
Upon reflection I concluded that Flamenco is far more than just a dance. It is a way of life.
My second outing was some years later in the sterile atmosphere of a large concert hall in Munich. The performance inevitably succumbed to the atmosphere of the hall. Technically superb, but sterile.
Flamenco Express laid out their credentials immediately with the opening number which involved the entire company. They trooped onto the floor and commenced without introduction. The powerful voice of Ana de los Reyes boomed out across the rows of an expectant Bedford audience. The flowing skirts of the dancers, the staccato strumming of the guitar, the rhythmical clapping and the sharp, high speed tap, tap tapping of the feet brought it all flooding back.
With eyes closed the performance evoked all the memories and emotion of that bar in Barcelona. The performers doing well to counter the somewhat flat atmosphere of the Corn Exchange. Even without the heat, the intimacy and the sweat, Flamenco Express were never-the-less, as far as I was concerned, the real deal. Highly recommended.
© Manoj Gupta 2007
Eleven fifteen they released us from the airprison. Some people had nowhere to go and were still waiting to find out were they were sleeping. People with kids. Old people. They may still be waiting as I write this twelve hours later.
This had the lot. Starving children, thunderstorms, men with machine guns…
The day had started so well. A beautiful Constable sky, smooth take-off into it from London City Airport, the prospect of a nice full house in sunny Jersey with time for a fresh lobster after the show. Time - 4.20pm ish. We’re all seated on the plane looking forward to the drinks trolley.
Then the announcement that raised the unanimous unspoken grunt of “Typical” in the cabin:
“There is a technical problem… We will be landing at Gatwick for a minor adjustment and taking off again shortly. There is nothing to worry about.” Not much.
We landed at Gatwick around 5.20. An hour after we took off from City - the same time it takes to fly to Jersey. There was the usual obscure aura of irritated tinkering that accompanies all interruptions to mechanised transport. We sat some more looking out the windows or at the ceiling. Then the rain started.
So we sat on the plane for several hours, in fact, while the thunderstorm crackled and spat all around us.
We survived on occasional rations of hypermarket Just Juice and water and some stuff which looked and, I assume, I suspect, tasted like that legendary substance - ship’s biscuit. ‘My God’, I thought, ‘I’ve been press-ganged.’ Well I didn’t, but I might have done had I not been stupified with boredom to the point of physical pain.
The kids seemed to be coping better than most, but not because their every need was catered for as in a normal prison. No, because (presumably ) their needs were almost totally ignored by the airline and airport. Though you have to say that the cabin staff did their best in the circumstances. You do have to say that.
So first they starved us and then, when they agreeed to let us go back into the airport, they lost our baggage. By this time Jersey airport had closed, and people just wanted to go home. They couldn’t. So then they starved us some more.
They told us the flight had been cancelled and that the next flight would be at 12.45 the following afternoon.
They told us they would put us up in hotels and pay for taxis for those returning to London.
They told us there were no baggage handlers available at that time. That’s what we were told.
Those are some of the things we were told, by a lot of different people wearing strange multi-coloured hats and scarves bearing their names and pictures to remind them who they were and what they looked like and what they were supposed to do. I suppose. Because that’s all they did seem to know. One of our dancers lost it gloriously and addressed the assembled masses with defiant revolutionary fervour and got one round of applause out of the weekend.
Some of us, the lucky few who could at least take their disappointment to a bed or bar somewhere, eventually staggered out in the first wave, gallantly leaving our starving, increasingly vocal companions behind to their fate.
Then just as a finisher, to add that essential garnish of genuine nightmare, as I was fleeing through one of many gleaming white hermetically sealed sci-fi corridors the two large men in black showed up.
Walking slowly down the corridor towards me getting bigger all the time. Men with very functional, obviously expensive, long, matte black objects born visibly on their chest among a lot of other dark, hard objects of various shapes and sizes. It was not a nice sight to see. And after the day I’d had, they looked like my coup de grace, and I wasn’t quite expecting that.
I swore audibly and involuntarily. A medical curse. The larger and more sensitive of the two took exception. I was told in no uncertain terms not to swear as there were children around. There were’nt, of course. They were all back in the Starvation Lounge listening to their parents swearing and passing out.
But nevertheless, I was convinced that if I opened my mouth again, he would kill me. So it’s OK to starve children, but not to swear in front of them. And this from a man apparently on his way down to mow them all down for being a nuisance. They dress to scare the Bejasus out of you, and then when it works, they apparently threaten to kill you. That, presumably, is what you’re meant to think. After a day of British European’s hospitality I was very, very tempted.
