View to a thrill
Cristina Hoyos, the Andalusian priestess of flamenco, speaks with passion. "You can't understand flamenco, it is something you feel." Now the 61-year-old legendary artist tours Beijing with the Ballet Flamenco de Andalucia and will make audiences feel the rhythmic and passionate flamenco through Viaje Al Sur (Voyage to the South).
Today, tomorrow and Thursday, Poly Theatre will host a journey to the explosive world of flamenco, its rhythms, music and dance characterized by Hoyos' dynamic ballet, uniquely expressive passion and soul of the art of flamenco.
The show premiered in March 2005 at Cordoba's Gran Teatro in Spain, and has taken Europe by storm over the past two years. It also had a huge impact during the New York Flamenco Festival last February.
It was inspired by the soul of flamenco in Southern Spain and by three colors: white for happiness, black for tragedy and red for passion. Three colors, three unbridled emotions - a fantastic expression of the art of flamenco.
Hoyos had longed to express her passionate feelings for this Spanish region and created the show with choreographer Ramon Oller and the guitarist Jose Luis Rodriguez. The performance explores dreams and desires, running the full gamut of emotions most commonly considered to characterize flamenco.
"There are three tempos, based on three emotions. The three are back to back, without intervals," she says.
"It starts with happiness, light and traveling. Then comes tragedy, all those wonderful things that can turn to nothing in less than a minute.
"And it finishes with passion and love, which is what can be taken from the tragedy in life."
Born in 1946, Hoyos danced in Seville when she was young and started to tour Spain and abroad after meeting the renowned flamenco dancer Antonio Gades (1936-2004) in 1968. She danced with Gades in Carlos Saura's movies Bodas de Sangre (1978), Carmen (1983) and El Amor Brujo (1985).
Hoyos formed her own company in 1989 and built on her well-deserved international reputation as one of the world's premier flamenco dancers.
An artist and a fighter, this veteran dancer from Seville has spent her whole life struggling to lift flamenco to heights it deserves and to be seen as a universal art.
On stage, both with the great Gades and alone, Hoyos has conquered half the world with her virtuoso understanding and performance of flamenco. Off stage, the artist also displayed a special type of bravery fighting cancer a few years ago.
In her eyes, flamenco is not just for entertainment, it's much more serious than that.
"I have always tried to give flamenco the dignity and recognition it deserves," she says. "That's something I've tried to do my whole life and something I tried to do with Antonio Gades, who brought seriousness to flamenco. And I'm still fighting for the same thing."
Having danced nearly half a century, Hoyos has not thought of retirement yet.
"I still feel great now. Nowadays I'm more worried about what other people are doing than what I'm doing, which isn't a lot, it's not like the responsibility of being on stage all the time," she says.
"But really, every time I go out on stage I want it to be my best night like always.
"I wake up everyday very optimistic. I really feel like doing things and helping the young. I am always there, always."
Hoyos considers herself a bridge between the past and future in the history of flamenco.
"I have tried to keep up-to-date in everything I do. I've tried not to change my dance style too much, just to get better and better everyday," she says. "You can dance as modern as you like but you always have to remember the people from Triana and Jerez.
"The essence of those women cannot be forgotten no matter how modern your dance style is."
(China Daily 07/03/2007 page19)
