The Ballet Teatro Espanol De Rafael Aguilar's tour of Taiwan did not get off to an especially good start on Sunday night. The performance began almost half an hour late and the almost capacity crowd at the Taipei International Convention Center actually started clapping around 7:50pm to urge the show to begin.
By the end of Carmen Flamenco, however, the mood in the huge theater had dramatically shifted and people were clapping, stamping their feet and yelling, "encore" (even a few "oles" were heard), through four curtain calls. Everyone, it seemed, had fallen under the sway of the wild Spanish gypsy, Carmen.
Trinidad Artiguez danced the title role when Carmen Flamenco premiered in Paris in 1992 and she gave a wonderful performance on Sunday night, switching seamlessly from bewitching siren to tough street fighter, from erotic lover to a woman who has seen repeated premonitions of her own death.
Carmen's fight with her co-worker Manolita in the cigar factory scene was a perfect mix of taunting, bragging and dueling -- only with fast-moving feet and skirts as weapons. The dancers used their colorful skirts as skillfully as the most expert fencers, twirling and tossing the material up in the air or around their bodies as they clicked around the stage with such intensity that it was hard to imagine that blood would not be drawn.
Artiguez's duets with two of her lovers, first with Don Jose -- the man who throws away his career for her -- and then with Lucas, the torero, were sizzling.
Both men, Francisco Guerrero as Don Jose, and Ivan Gongora as the matador, are fully capable of matching Artiguez's intensity. Guerrero's solo in the scene where Don Jose is imprisoned stood out for both the passion and the misery he evoked.
Carmen Flamenco ends with him bereft, slowly crumpling over the body of the woman he just killed.
It was interesting to see that the company's notes in the program have Carmen killing herself, rather than blaming it on Don Jose's inability to let go of a woman he could no longer have. The notes say that Carmen recalls the prophesies of her death and "plunges herself into the knife Don Jose has pulled and breathes her last breath."
Rafael Aguilar used both well-known arias and music from Georges Bizet's opera with flamenco music and songs, moving from one to the other and even mixing them together. But with a five-man troupe of musicians and singers on stage to perform the flamenco songs, the recorded music from the opera paled in comparison.
With minimal props and sets -- the giant fallen bull that is on the stage as the audience enters the theater is turned around in scene six, to become a mountain cave that is home to a gang of bandits -- Carmen Flamenco rests on the power and personalities of its dancers.
After the repeated curtain calls, the company finally left the stage with Artiguez carried aloft like a winning matador, echoing her departure at the end of the first scene. Only this time, she really was the victorious gypsy and the dancers were justly celebrating a wonderful performance.
Tomorrow the Ballet Teatro Espanol De Rafael Aguilar will be in Hsinchu (新
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