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Radio Adelaide Arts Breakfast 9.10 am 25 June 2011
Esencia Flamenca
Higher Ground
24, 26 June
Alan Brissenden

Guitarist Florian continues to encourage Adelaide’s love affair with flamenco with this two-night season at Higher Ground in Light Square, this time bringing from Sydney two dancers, Ana Otero and Jessica Statham, and a first rate singer, Antonio Soria. They were joined by Adelaide regulars singer Mari Olivares, cajon player Adrian van Nunen and the charismatic Roshanne Wijeratne, whose Seguiriyas was a high point of the evening. In this dance which expresses loss, grief and such like emotions, Soria’s resonant wailing lament, the stuttering stamp of Wijeratne’s dazzling feet, the suppleness of her yearning arms and her expressive facial mobility took the evening to another level.

The Seguiriyas opened the second half. The first had been enjoyable enough, with the three dancers in a light-hearted ensemble to begin with, then a dexterous, if melancholy, guitar solo from Florian, in which he was occasionally joined by Mari Olivares’s throaty voice, and Ana Otero by turns merry and serious, quiet to begin with, speeding up with rapid clapping and footwork, dancing with a concentrated intensity that at times led to an appearance of forced emotion.

But the second half continued as it had begun, the dancers more relaxed, Florian and van Nunen getting in the groove with a jazzy duet, and Jessica Statham, in a slinky brown and white flounced dress with a cheeky fringe at the back, using eyes, arms, hands, and rhythmic feet and her swaying, twisting body to seduce the audience.

For the finish, the end of the party, the performers brought the chairs they had been seated on from the back to halfway down the stage, leaving their microphones behind them. The musicians sat, the dancers stood to one side, and they began handclapping, stamping and Soria and Olivares sang. The direct contact with the audience was quietly electrifying. The three dancers one by one strutted their stuff, and here Otero, the most experienced, was at her most appealing, even though the dance was of course much briefer and far less complex than she had given us before. Statham and Wijeratne showed off their different styles, and the evening ended, as it should, on a note of celebration, the enthusiastic audience cheering and clapping.

And it’s on again tomorrow night at 8 down at Higher Ground in Light Square. Book through Bass on 131 246, though there may well be tickets available at the door: $39 and $32 concession.

Now for some dance news: the Australian Ballet’s Kirsty Martin is retiring at the end of the current Melbourne season of The Merry Widow, in which she is starring

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lol...what did you expect ? more macho ??

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hehe sorry to disappoint you :-)..i sound like a little sissy boy

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Hey.. that's Antonio Soria the singer..
remember last week or so I asked about whether to learn cante accompaniment off a guitarist or singer? THAT's the singer I was talking about, I met him at a palmas workshop.

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(I'm still trying to get that out of my head). Next time, please, a warning!

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hehe sorry to disappoint you :-)..i sound like a little sissy boy