May is a truly exciting month to be in Brighton. The Festival and The Great Escape come to town, and of course, for something a bit different, The Fringe runs alongside them. Wednesday night in the Studio Bar at the Komedia provided a delicious slice of Fringe confection in the form of Alma Gitana, a combination of flamenco music and dance.

 

Clearly no strangers to the cultural festival circuit, Alma Gitana are a supremely confident collection of musicians and a dancer, scarily in sync with one another, but most importantly, brimming with passion and power. Their 80 minute set provided a mixture of dexterous instrumentals, heart-warming song and breath-taking dance.

 

As the evening smoothly unfolded, I was struck by how much flamenco has permeated popular culture – virtually every element of its music is familiar, from the suspense building legatos (think the Jaws theme on Spanish guitar) to the picados (think Spaghetti Western). Piecing together these familiar musical tools provides the perfect backing for a story to be told and the dancer takes the role of the storyteller, carrying you along on the journey, expressing a remarkable range of emotion through her dance.

 

The band explained that Alma Gitana translates to something along the lines of “Gypsy Soul”, which they believe aligns nicely with the spirit of flamenco, an expression of passion. You can’t buy passion (wealth and possessions are irrelevant), yet embodying or articulating it is free. They also checked to see if the audience were feeling the passion? Could it be that they weren’t hearing many “Olés!” because the weather was a bit dreary? Or could it be because it was a Wednesday? No – you’re just in Brighton. Actually, the crowd loved it – I even saw 3 or 4 people clapping along. That’s almost unheard of in this town.

 

Musically, the show was everything I hoped for – a rich combination of guitars with timely injections of tika-taka cajon (a drum that you sit on and looks like a wooden box), smoky yet easily excitable vocals and romantic chord sequences dotted with spectacular guitar work. However, it was the dancing by Lourdes Fernández which blew me away. After a very short time, it was clear that she was the conductor or “el Patrón”. Even when she was seated and clapping complementary rhythms for the music, she was in charge – the musicians looked to her as she subtly orchestrated changes in tempo or intensity. Once she was in dancing mode, her control was total – whether she was imitating the movements of a matador or a ballerina, or battering the stage floor in a flurry of foot stomping, the performance surged or fell, exploded or relaxed according to her and her alone. She was completely mesmeric.

 

I had no idea just how rhythmically complex flamenco was. Perhaps that’s naivety on my part, but some of the patterns that Fernández tapped out were incredible – like musical stories within themselves. All this without a bead of sweat.

 

An encore of Volare was very warmly received, but the most enduring memory of the night was to follow. After much searching, a dance partner for Fernández was plucked from the audience. He was a fine figure of a man in his later years, splendidly attired, holding no fear of the stage. He proceeded to tower over our Spanish princess, throwing dramatic shapes with gay abandon and no little flair. When he mustered a climatic tap solo, Alma Gitana must have thought all of their birthdays had come at once. What more could you ask from a night out?

Adam Atkins