Flamenco is a word designated from Seville along with their traditional dance. Such flamenco dancers are from Algeria, Soleares, Bulerias, Furruces, Zapateade Tango and Samba. Incidentally, the Tango is danced in the ballroom and is identified as one of their form. Flamenco also reveal Moorish and Arabian influences. But they were only danced to the accompaniment of songs and clapping of hands.
Later the guitar was added but there was always a fixed basic rhythm for which various new steps and counter-rhythms were gradually introduced. A flamenco dance must possess the demon and appears to grip the audience. From the cafes chantants the flamenco that found its way into this. It is no more the ritual look that sometimes frightens the younger audiences who are more modern and classical lovers.
The fiery tempo of the Spanish dance needs more vigour and exuberance than any other form of dance. One needs to possess and apply stamina at its best. Every step, every movement need strength. In Spain classically trained dancers are occasionally assembled under one master to contribute dance sequences for the season or for a touring company. Each ballet dance master treats it differently but the glorious footwork remains unchanged. Music varies and so are the sequences. In the process certain traditions are broken.
SPAIN’S REVOLUTION
One of the most popular dance and touring companies in Spain showed prowess in dance tradition, as well as in their history and culture. They revealed in dance their revolution of over 200 years.
Bolshoi Ballet’s performance of Carmen was in 1965 and enthralled the Brits who responded with appreciation the lyrical, grand and monumental performance and heralded Carmen as a landmark in ballet.
Carmen also deviated from pure classics that Brits were used to seeing in its pure ethereal beauty whereas colour fusion in Carmen amazed them. The brusque flamenco steps and movements which is a mixture of Spanish and Mexican needed strong healthy dancers to execute the rhythmic movements.
Besides the choreographers being fascinated by Carmen, composers vied with each other for the score with Roland Petit leading the way.
BIZET’S Carmen
No one sacrificed his energy as Georges Bizet to make Carmen sizzle. The struggle to mount and the reaction of the first night audience of the opera may have disheartened Bizet even further. His music had to relate to a tale of passion and murder set against a background of gypsies and thieves with Carmen herself running battles with the Opera management. It was not the type that puritanical Parisian audiences were used to and was a hopeless flop. He paid a handsome 25,000 francs for the score of the opera by his publishers and was made a Chevalier of the Legion d’honneur on the eve of the premiere of the opera and was right in his initial assessment but fate was unkind that he did not live long enough to see his masterpiece widely acclaimed. On the evening of the thirty-first performance of Carmen, Bizet died of a heart attack by a throat infection caused probably by cancer from which he had suffered painfully for some time ending his young life at thirty six. Had Bizet lived a couple of months more, he would have been overjoyed about the success of Carmen suite.
Composer Brahms said that he would go to the end of the world to embrace the composer, Bizet whose Carmen was the story of a dark-eyed gypsy girl who seduced the Army Corporal, Don Jose, then rejects him in favour of the matador, Escamillo. This tragic episode in several scenes opens and closes with Don Jose facing the firing squad. He is about to be executed for the murder of his lover, Carmen and in between, her story is presented with flashback events.