Angeles Gabaldón

CON CORRIENTE

(River of Time)

THE SHOW “A party is made up of three people: one dances, one sings and one plays. I had forgotten about those who say ole! and keep the rhythm playing palmas.” Manuel Machado In these words, the poet Manuel Machado captured the essential elements of Flamenco: dance, song and guitar. This is also the primary objective proposed by the Ángeles Gabaldón Company in this performance: to return to the bare essentials in a search for simplicity in the roots of the “party,” the quintessential flamenco atmosphere. This minimalist approach, however, is not the only thing that defines this staging: Ángeles Gabaldón has two additional objectives worth highlighting. On one hand, she aims to showcase the use of accessories that have complemented flamenco dance over its history: the bata de cola, the Manila shawl, the Cordoban hat, and the castanets. These accessories impacted the era and their use, which has its difficulties and requires artistic dexterity, has been falling into disuse as flamenco dance has evolved with the times and modernized. On the other hand, regarding the selection of dances and songs, Con corriente proposes an overview of those “palos”, or styles, which, while they marked an important time period in flamenco, are currently “going out of fashion” and are not as frequently performed by artists today. Con corriente is also, in a way, a voyage through the history of flamenco dance, a fresh approach to those times in which flamenco, first through the cafés cantantes and later from theater stages, started to depart from the environment of the private party to gain popularity and reach wider audiences.

Length: 70 minutes

Premier: Flamenco Festival Jerez, Spain. 2013

International premier: Tanzhaus nrw, Dusseldorf, Germany. 2014

SCRIPT:

1. El Garrotín. Voice, guitar and dance with hat.

2. Pregones. Singing “a palo seco”.

3. La Seguirilla. Singing , guitar and dance with “bata de cola” (tail robe) and castanets.

4. La Zambra. Guitar solo.

5. La Guajira. Singing, guitar and dance with fan.

6. Las Cantiñas. Singing, guitar and dance with “bata de cola” and shawl.

CREDITS:

Original idea and dramatic art: Angeles Gabaldón

Choreography and dance: Angeles Gabaldón

Guitar: Rafael Rodríguez

Singing: David Lagos “El Londro”

Costumes: Lina, Pilar Cordero, Viki Vassilious

Photography: Luis Castilla

Technical coordination and sound: Fali Pipió

Production: Fernando González-Caballos

VIDEO:

https://vimeo.com/156161751

BIOGRAPHY

Angeles Gabaldon Valle was trained in the Dance Conservatory of Seville and in private schools in Madrid. She started his working life in Seville flamenco clubs or “tablaos” in which she is still active at, and at the same time made frequent tours around Japan, America and Europe. She was awarded the Prize for Best Alegrías Coreography at the Pearl of Cadiz Contest and has been the only woman twice finalist at the Flamenco Bienale of Sevillle. She was awarded the National Award Desplante 2002 and with her first show Inmigration she won the 1st Critics Award for Best Show and Best Company. As a teacher he has attended numerous festivals around the world and has been a guest lecturer at the Barcelona Theatre Institute. In her dancing, the passion and the feelings that are most characteristic of flamenco dancing go hand in hand with the elegance and subtlety of the classic Spanish ballet, in a very simple and natural way, combining strength and temperance with elements from other genres such as contemporary, which makes her dancing an inexhaustible expressive crucible. Her hard work, together with a huge inquisitiveness and a strong sense of self-criticism have slowly led her to seek and find her own interpretative style.

REVIEWS “Each of her pieces is like a little revolution”, the Flamenco magazine “Anda” praised the dancer Ángeles Gabaldón and her outstanding productions. At last the dancer from Sevilla returns to Düsseldorf! In "Con corriente“, "river of time“, she devotes herself to the roots of Flamenco and revives its heyday – when the Flamenco reached a big audience, also because of the “cafes cantates”. Ángeles Gabaldón takes us into the world of the 19th and early 20th century and embodies the characteristic styles and elements of Flamenco of these eras. She has perfected her way with the “Bata de Cola” the traditional “train” of the Flamenco dress and knows how to impress by employing hat, fan, scarf and castanets!” www. tanzhaus-nrw.de. November 2014 “An extraordinary performace. Ángeles Gabaldón is an extraordinary dancer and last night she far demonstrated it again. He danced divinely and gave a sovereign lesson of the Sevillian School. She impressed with her “bata de cola”, made music with the castanets, moved her shawl with mastery, put all the imagination of the world into the fan and played magically with the hat. He danced with everything - hands, arms, shoulders, hip, figure - and transmitted and expressed with the gesture everything that was demanded by each “palo”. In addition, as a contemporary critic would say, he interacted with the public with smiles and coquette, witty eyes. It was a great exhibition of art, knowledge, elegance, good taste and charm.” José Luis Navarro. May 2013 “María Ángeles Gabaldón shows that she knows how to enrich her proposals and it does so by refining their meaning(…) Two very good cantaores, such as Lagos and Londro, and an excellent guitar, such as El Cabeza, were enough for Gabaldón to point out that if the original dance improves self-esteem, complements can be like vitamins, which Lengthen the life (---). El Mundo, Manuel Martín. Mayo 2013

"Ángeles Gabaldón is a dancer of today and completes the delicacy of her pose with the forcefulness of her feet. The precise one. Without noise, without fuss. Everything underlines the circle: the wrists, the shoulders, the arms, the hip. (...) The whole group was wonderful "

Juan Vergillos May 2013

You have to have courage to do the unheard-of, to get away from the ordinary and declare your intentions and objectives with absolute clarity. But not only courage, but the ability and intelligence to make it work. (...) This time she came to the Festival de Jerez with no more than ther clothes. She did not seek the false simplicity of an empty stage without singing or guitar, but the "complicated" simplicity of the singing and guitar to accompany her dance. Without a “cajón” or percussion or instrumentation or props ... not even a libretto beyond the explicit purpose of recovering the ways and accessories of the past ... A fresh show that reflects the current trend through the classic forms. The fact of using accessories that had gone out of fashion, or “cantes” (singing) practically in disuse, make this work timeless. In fact, Ángeles Gabaldón forces us to recognize that the only thing that is never fashionable is bad taste.”

www.deflamenco.com February, 2013

Some events and theatres where she has perfomed:

- Maestranza Theatre, Seville, Spain - Central Theatre, Seville, Spain - Lope de Vega Theatre, Seville, Spain - Flamenco Festival of Jerez, Spain - Festival de Cine Iberoamericano, Gran Teatro, Huelva, Spain - El Auditori, Barcelona, Spain - El Mercat de las Flors, Barcelona, Spain - Flamenco Festival of Valencia, Spain - Metropolitan of New York, USA - Seongnam Dance Festival, Seoul, Korea - Flamenco Festival Mond de Marsan, France - Biennale de la Danse de Lyon, France - Flamenco Festival Amberes, Belgium - Tanzhaus nrw, Dusseldorf, Germany - Podium Mozaiek Theatre, Amsterdam, Holland - LIFT Festival, London, England - Forde Folk Festival, Oslo, Norway - Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland - Dias de Flamenco Festival, Tel-Aviv, Israel - Cervantes Institute, Warsaw, Poland - International Dance & Music Festival of Istambul, Turkey - Maisonneuve Theatre, Montreal, Canadá - Tokio Blue Note and many other theaters all around Japan - Flamenco Festival of Vancouver, Canada - Festival Iberica Contemporanea, Queretaro, Mexico - Andalusi Music Festival, Argel, Argelia - Flamenco Festival of Mexico DF, Mexico - International Festival of Volubilis, Meknes, Morocco. - International Music Festival of Perth, Australia