SARA BARAS’s Alma (Soul)

Flamenco Festival London 2023 at Sadler’s Wells

Award-winning Sara Baras has dedicated her life to flamenco dance and sharing that love with her audiences. Alma is flamenco brought up close with bolero, which provides a platform with the power to express joy, love and hope as well as the pain and anguish that life inevitably throws at us.

Sara Baras’s Alma is food for the soul!

Alma continues at Sadler’s Wells until Sunday 9 July 2023, Tickets.

This latest Sara Baras production called Alma (Soul), combines flamenco with bolero, or in Sara Baras’s words: ‘Alma es un abrazo enorme, donde el flamenco abraza al bolero, y el bolero se deja abrazar por el flamenco’ (‘Alma is a huge embrace, where flamenco embraces bolero and bolero allows itself to be embraced by flamenco’).

Alma takes its name from the bolero Alma: in the opening darkness, the guitars set the intimate scene for the voice-over of evocative poetry:

Soy el alma que baila desnuda de cadenas,

soy el sueño insaciable de la luna,

soy testigo en la sombra de la vida,

soy la que contigo aprendió que las semanas tienen más de siete días,

…

Si las copas traen consuelo,

aquí estoy con mi desvelo para ahogarlo una vez más,

porque no hace falta que te diga que me muero por bailar algo contigo,

no hace falta que te diga que es mi corazón flamenco el que tiene alma,

alma de bolero

© Sara Baras

The styling of the stage with the semi-transparent glittering string curtain and dramatic straight-edged lines of the lighting by Chiqui Ruiz created the atmosphere of the early twentieth-century jazz era. Alongside the two flamenco singers (Rubio de Pruna and Matías Lopez ‘El Mati’) and two flamenco guitarists (Keko Baldomero and Andrés Martínez) came the vibrant percussion on the bongos and congas (Antón Suárez and Manuel Muñoz ‘El Pájaro’), played with a Cuban bite, and Diego Villegas moved from flute to harmonica to a lazy breathy saxophone style; these all push at the flamenco barriers but the traditional flamenco forms were celebrated such as ‘Nostalgia’, a seguiriya, ‘Algo Contigo’, a bulería, ‘Te Extraño’, a caña, and ‘Remolino’, a soleá.

Sara Baras is a flamenco dancer to the core and as beautiful and poetic as her dancing is in the lighter footwork pieces, she inevitably expresses herself best through her zapateado. The tone quality of her percussive footwork is distinctively and reliably pitched, her syncopations and playfulness with the tight flamenco rhythms, and her speed and rhythmic ideas are what make the whole performance seriously ‘phenomenal’! But it is not a one-woman show. Alma is such pleasure because of the approach of Sara Baras in collaborating with her ballet flamenco dancers (Chula García, Charo Pedraja, Daniel Saltares, Cristina Aldón, Noelia Vilches and Marta de Troya) and with her musicians. Each are given an opportunity to take centre stage.

This sense of sharing and collaboration is evident throughout the two-hour production without an interval. Each of the artists is performing with an open heart and soul to the very end. Alma closed traditionally with a bulería ‘Alma de bolero’, to the shouts of appreciation and applause from the audience.

A special shout out to the sound engineer Sergio Sarmiento, who created such pleasing timbres in the percussion and footwork, the guitars and Diego Villegas’ flute, harmonica and saxophone solos, and managed to keep clarity on the voices of the two very different singers, particularly with the full-bodied thrust of the young Matías Lopez ‘El Mati’.

At the end of the performance, the standing ovations were quietened by the onstage appearance of Sir Alistair Spalding, Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Sadler’s Wells, introducing Katie Kerry of the Society of London Theatre, who presented Sara Baras with her 2020 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance for her choreography and performance in Ballet Flamenco – Sombras at Sadler’s Wells, as she was unable to attend the ceremony during the pandemic.

Flamenco Festival London 2023 continues until 15 July 2023 with:

flamenco guitarist Vicente Amigo presents Memoria de los Sentidos on Monday 10 July 2023, 7.30pm. Tickets

Olga Pericet presents La Leona on Thursday 11 July 2023, 7.30pm.Tickets

Manuel Liñán presents Amor Amado Amén on Wednesday 12 July 2023, 6pm. Tickets

flamenco guitarist Rafael Riqueni presents Herencia on Wednesday 12 July 2023, 8.30pm. Tickets

Estévez / Paños y Compañía presents La Confluencia on Wednesday 12 July 2023, 7.30pm. Tickets

Mercedes de Córdoba presents Sí, Quiero on Thursday 13 July 2023, 7.30pm.Tickets

Gala Flamenca featuring Manuel Liñán, Alfonso Losa, El Yiyo and 85-year-old Carrete de Málaga on Friday–Saturday 14–15 July 2023, 7.30pm. Tickets

flamenco guitarist Niño Josele presents Galaxias on Friday 14 July 2023, 8.30pm. Tickets

 Julio Ruiz presents Tocar un hombre on Friday 14 July 2023, 6pm. Tickets

guitarists José Maria Gallardo del Rey and Miguel Angel Cortés present Albeniz Flamenco Saturday 15 July 2023, 6pm. Tickets

Álvaro Romero and Pedro da Linha present Yeli Yeli  Saturday 15 July 2023, 9.30pm. Tickets

for full programme: Flamenco Festival London 2023

Flamenco Festival London 2023 with Director Miguel Marín, is at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Rosebery Ave, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 4TN. Ticket Office Tel. 020 7863 8000, sadlerswells.com

© Thérèse Wassily Saba 2023