A FLAMENCO DANCE CONCERT
In his own way, world-renowned Spanish dancer Edo was doing the same thing with this concert, in which he premiered his local pick-up company (Karen Stelling, Maria Cecilia, Maria Gitana, El Polaco, Catalina, and Maria Virginia). There were no elaborate sets designed to transport you to the sunny courtyards of Spain. There were no trailing ruffled trains (colas) on the women’s dresses. There weren’t even any castanets.
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What there was was good solid dancing. By focusing our attention on the steps and on the nuances brought to them by each dancer, Edo in essence made the vestiges of spectacle seem incidental–a sideline rather than a highlight. There were hardly any group dances, and even when all the dancers appeared together onstage briefly, there was no sense of ensemble dancing: instead they looked like a number of people who’d simply come together to dance, almost as if this were a social occasion. This is not to say that they weren’t dancing in step or didn’t look competent as a group.
This was the kind of concentration each soloist brought to each dance. It’s the kind of concentration you would expect from a man with an extensive tradition of dance in his family. Edo Sie is a third-generation dancer, married to dancer Susanna Sie; daughter Lily Sie was a featured soloist on this program.
