There are very few flamenco dancers who can detonate a performance with the precision and power of Rocío Molina. Sitting in close vicinity to the drilling ferocity of her footwork and the corkscrewing tension of her upper body is to feel a physical exhilaration bordering on pain. But almost as drastic as the force of Molina’s dancing is the boldness of her imagination. In her new work, Fallen from Heaven, she pushes herself and her language to sexual and theatrical extremes.
Molina’s entrance is deceptively minimal, even virginal. Dressed in white, and with no musical accompaniment, she slowly and exquisitely sinks to the floor, confounding the strict verticality of flamenco tradition with a dance of quietly earthbound moves. Kneeling, sliding, scrolling her body across the floor, it’s almost as though she were enacting some ritual of purification, some votive offering to gravity.
What follows however is anything but pure, as her four male musicians stride on to the stage in a blast of electric guitar, percussion and vocals, and Molina transforms through a riotous succession of characters and gender types.
After stripping naked (a first in flamenco, as far as I’m aware) she costumes herself up in tights and a quilted gold jacket, strutting like a toreador, her feet racking up a zapateado storm. Strapping on a studded leather thong, she then becomes an androgynous dominatrix, the symbolism of her outfit made boggling by the half-empty crisp packet that’s stuck to her groin, from which she feeds herself (and her band members) the remaining crisps.
Molina’s dancing, like the music, ranges from traditional to experimental. She’s feminine and sharp as a village coquette, but she’s also a witch riding a blatantly phallic broomstick; a damaged earth mother in a bloodied skirt; even a poster girl for Spanish tourism, garlanded with grapes and flowers – although when she busts out of that role with a final Dionysiac dance she’s as magnificently sardonic as she is proudly sensual.
Fallen from Heaven started life as a series of improvisations, and it’s a weakness of the finished product that this still shows. Between the high-voltage dancing there’s a lot of random joshing and noodling around. Yet if Molina risks losing her audience, she never loses command of the stage. Any time your concentration may wander, she’s always there, a reckless dance marvel, yanking you back into her zone.
- At the Barbican, London, until 14 October. Box office: 020-7638 4141.
