Review: Gala Theatre's Fuego Flamenco festival

GALA Hispanic Theatre's fifth Fuego Flamenco festival got off to an exhilarating start Friday night with Isabel López y Compañía, in "Flamenco Desde Abajo," presented by the Spanish conservatory/foundation Casa Patas, a festival collaborator since 2006.

Mature and confident as an artist, company director and choreographer López surrounds herself with major talents: dancer Felipe Mato, guitarists Morito and Jordí Albarrán, singers El Trini de la Isla and Sara Salado, and the brilliant Diego Villegas, who rotated among saxophone, flute and harmonica. Powerful musicality shaped this ensemble's pursuit of the possibilities of compás, the recurring measure whose counts and accents define the structures of flamenco. The opening "Alter Ego" set the course for the evening, with López using the stage as a soundboard for syncopated cadences while the musicians kept the heartbeat of her tangos (which has nothing to do with the Argentine dance.)

López caught fire in "Mi Niña," a sustained silken swirl of shawl and ruffled train punctuated with fusillades of footwork. If solos worked best for her and for Mato, their "Como Palo en Candela" was nonetheless an ensemble tour de force, its rhythmic complexity overlaid with Villegas's mellow saxophone. So was the sultry "Cambiando de Aire," showcasing Mato's elegant line, vibrato heelwork and explosive jumps.

Not surprisingly, some of the program's best moments belonged to the musicians, notably Salado, a bombshell in her vividly embroidered Manila-shawl sheath, who, in her solo, made the most direct contact with the capacity crowd. Villegas and Morito's exquisite "Musical" paired improvisations on the harmonica with quotations from classical Spanish compositions and a popular Latin American song -- a break with flamenco tradition, but the aficionados seemed to love it.

Fuego Flamenco V continues at Dec. 5-6 with Aparicio Flamenco and guest artist Omayra Amaya.

-- Paula Durbin