You can see why flamenco dancers in the year 2001 might be desperate for an alternative to spotted, flouncey dresses, fake carnations and the make-believe that they're a bunch of Gypsies gathered in an Andalusian village square. But Pura Pasion, the latest production headed by Cristobal Reyes (and co-produced by his superstar nephew Joaquin Cortes), doesn't come up with a very convincing future for the dance form.
The updated trappings of the show are mostly fine - moody, colour-drenched lighting, fashionably cut costumes and a band augmented by drums, keyboard, flute and heavy amplification. But the dancing itself, vaunted as the new fusion flamenco and segueing old-style flamenco with quasi-Riverdance routines, fake ballet and even faker Indian and African motifs, often looks a mess.
The truth is that any traditional dance form can be reinvented but it requires talent and vision from its choreographers and dancers. Reyes, who has created much of the movement for Pura Pasion, is certainly a powerful dancer. In his 16-minute solo, Saeta al Cachorro, there may be an irksome preponderance of preening and a sense of self-congratulation as much as concentration, but the lineaments of flamenco are fiercely instinctive. As he builds the solo to its climax, his famously fast, controlled footwork orchestrates a spectacular fantasy of pianissimo heel drumming and hail storms of stamping.
His choreography for the other dancers in the company is often less sure, though, especially when it pushes too hard against the familiar parameters of the dance. Straining after novelty, Reyes fumbles for contrasts, placing gauche slow-motion moves for the chorus against punchy solos, or having his women dancers cross-dressing with male flamenco. A more genuine reinterpretation appears in the dancing of Rafaela Carrasco, who performs solos in some of Reyes's credited pieces but I suspect also does her own thing. Like Reyes, she embodies many traditional elements of flamenco - and like him dances with a thrillingly driven edge. But she also possesses a sensuously full-bodied style that in the Solea: Desafio al Baile especially allows her to expand her moves into slow, languorous turns and vertiginous spirals, as well as articulating a witty syncopation. In Carrasco flamenco finds a natural fusion with jazz and modern dance.
The top female billing goes to Lola Greco, however, for reasons that I can't connect to her dancing. Along with her choreographer Dagmara Brown, Greco has concocted a style of new-age flamenco in which she floats around the stage, kicking up her legs, ballet style, and posing like some latterday Isadora Duncan. Sometimes, in a nod to flamenco's affiliations with African and Indian dance, Greco is accompanied by a harem-style chorus whose bare midriffs and crudely flexed limbs have all the oriental credentials of a Las Vegas cabaret show.
Until March 17. Box office: 020-7863 8222.
