The Spanish Room

Today we went to the Hispanic Cultural Center to see The Spanish Room, an ambitious Flamenco/Ballet/Psychodrama thingie, full of glorious sound, color, and passion, and mounted by Yjastros, our local flamenco troupe. (Albuquerque is quite the center for flamenco, unexpected since we're over 5000 miles from Seville. But we're home to the National Institute of Flamenco and the Festival Flamenco, which runs for two weeks every summer and features workshops, performances, and international stars--- a whole glorious flamenco edifice thanks to a lifetime's work by Eva Encinias and her family.)

Insofar as The Spanish Room is a long piece of many acts telling a single story through dance, you can view it as a ballet told through the medium of flamenco. Yjastros has been working on this one for over twenty years and this is just the current incarnation.

The production opens at a birthday party for a matador, who falls asleep/passes out/goes into a trance, and then enters a liminal space in which he encounters a series of psychodramas that explore his own internal landscape. In this he is guided by a woman with the head of a bull, who takes on the role of psychopomp (guiding him not to death, but to rebirth).

There are scary places, violent places, sexy places, beautiful places. Travel from one realm to another takes place by passing through a cabinet, which made me want to rename the piece the Bull, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

There was no lack of spectacle. The dancing was terrific--- with a dozen or so acts, there was room for the whole variety of flamenco. The volume was ear-shattering. (When you have an entire troupe stamping away in unison, along with music, the tsunami of sound should really bring the building down.)

The music was likewise varied. There was pre-recorded music as well as more traditional flamenco sounds, with a pair of guitars and a singer.

At the end, the matador awakens, presumably to a new life, but certainly to a standing ovation.