All the fury of flamenco

Not only is the Ballet Nacional de Espana not a ballet but a flamenco company, it represents the undisputed apex of flamenco. It is Spain's flamenco ambassador to the world.

 Find out why when the whole ensemble - more than 50 performers - closes Bangkok's 13th International Festival of Dance and Music on October 15 and 16 at the Thailand Cultural Centre.

Thai viewers will likely have that same swooning sensation experienced by audiences around the world after every exhilarating performance. Who doesn't get tingles down the spine on hearing the heartfelt cries of the singers - the cantaores - and the stamping and clapping of the dance itself - the baile?

The show will consist of two different productions, "La Leyenda" ("The Legend") and "Dualia" ("Duality"), both of which offer magnificent duets and ensemble work.

"Dualia" is rarely seen nowadays because flamenco companies prefer to keep the spotlight on their star dancers, but Spain's Ballet Nacional is very much trained as an ensemble, and no other troupe can match its en masse impact.

Acclaim accumulates. The company was twice the "audience choice" for best dance performance at the Teatro de Rojas in Toledo, Spain, including last year, and has won the critics' prizes in competitions in New York and Japan.

"La Leyenda" is itself an award winner. It is the great dancer Jose Antonio's tribute to the justly celebrated Carmen Amaya, who performed in Paris and America during the 1930s and '40s and came to represent the universal spirit of flamenco - passionate, strong and bewitching.

Antonio headed the Ballet Nacional for many years and received the Spanish government's Gold Medal of Merit in the fine arts in 2005. For an artist of his stature to honour another indicates how superb this production is.

It features classic, stunning choreography in duets in which two women portray the different sides of Amaya - her charismatic strength and her petite femininity.

Performing these alter egos are Elena Algado and Cristina Gomez on the first night and Algado and Jessica De Diego on the second.

Castanets in hand they will tango, with the "tougher" Amaya dressed in a sharp suit. Then, for the closing seguiriya movement, both women will wear traditional flamenco frocks, but one in black and the other in white - and four metres long. Watch how that long dress gets flicked high in the air.

Flamenco's current hot male duo, Angel Rojas and Carlos Rodriguez - who together won Spain's premier annual flamenco-choreography award in 1994 - created "Dualia", the other production coming to Bangkok.

Their approach is fresh. The music, costumes and movements are designed to enhance the sensuality of flamenco, with many exaggerated poses and the women's frothy layered gowns either blood red or chaste white.

The dance begins with all the brooding menace of a bullfight and picks up pace from there. The toreadors return later in the show with testosterone to spare in a startling male duet between Miguel A Corbacho & Jose Manuel Benitez.

"Their technique is perfect, their physical beauty shaming, their passion irresistible," a reviewer in Britain's Telegraph newspaper once said of the Ballet Nacional de Espana.

And that's the consensus everywhere. Thanks to the Spanish Embassy, the curtain-closer on this year's Bangkok's International Festival of Dance & Music really will be a showstopper!

INFLAMED!

See "La Leyenda" and "Dualia" on October 15 and 16 at the Thailand Cultural Centre, each evening at 7.30.

Seats cost Bt700 to Bt3,500.

Call (02) 262 3191 or visit www.ThaiTicketMajor.com.

Bangkok's 13th International Festival of Dance & Music is sponsored by Bangkok Bank, Beiersdorf, B Grimm, the Canadoil Group, the Dusit Thani Bangkok, the Nation Group, SCG, Thai Airways International, the Tourism Authority of Thailand and Toyota Motor Thailand.

Siam Falles

Special to the Nation