Flamenco Vivo, Setting Hearts and Soles Aflame

Flamenco is not a gentle art. At least not as Olga Castro dished it out, with a heart that bled, feet that screamed and eyes that told us off for something really, really rotten.

In her solo Tuesday night with the New York-based Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana at the Music Center at Strathmore, Castro boiled with fury -- but just as deliciously frightening was the way she could bring it all under control. She battered the stage with her heels, hammering unknowable agonies into dust; she slapped her wet chest and her thighs; she held her palms out to the audience as if showing us the blood. And just as sharply, she froze, measuring the silence, shooting us dagger eyes, before launching another volley.

The stamping, the flagellating, the inflamed emotions, the vocalist moaning behind her: In the end, it was almost more than we could bear. But Castro? A final stomp, a stare, maybe she exhaled, maybe not -- but she hadn't a hair out of place.

Such was the impeccable cool of Santana's dancers, delivering a rampage of pheromones and pounding footwork, then kissing it all goodbye with a conclusive stamp. The petite, intense Castro had her moment in the "Suite de la Seguiriya"; later Juanjo Garcia matched that display with "Solea por Bulerias."

Where Castro had been all about unadorned directness, however, Garcia was more musically driven, intricately linked to the guitarists, drummer and singer who shared the stage. There was a lighter strike in his heels, drilling so fast he seemed to hover on a cushion of blur. But his ear was just as keen, or maybe it was all in his gut, or maybe -- well, by that point in the evening, one was apt to credit the hand of God for the miracle of perfect accompaniment that manifested onstage, with Garcia's beats layered over the drumming, hand-clapping, strumming and searing caterwauling, each pause just as empty and silent as the rhythms were full.

Earlier, Santana herself, a curvaceous woman of a certain age (she founded the company nearly 25 years ago), dueled with Garcia in an unabashedly sexy duet that made no apologies for their difference in years. Maturity won the day -- or rather, the night -- when she snatched up the long, ruffly train of her green dress and swirled the very willing Garcia around in it.

Hot stuff, all of it. Why, then, did the program open so inauspiciously with "Palillos y Pies," a melodramatic work intended to show off the dancers' handiwork with castanets "in a new setting"? This apparently referred to the horrible and over-amplified recording of some mushy symphonic score that set one's teeth on edge. Bury the recording, bring on the musicians (singer Pedro Sanz, guitarists Calvin Hazen and Javier Navarro) and let the sparks fly, I say. Unplugged.