MODERNIZED FLAMENCO IS VIVID.

MARIA BENITEZ TEATRO FLAMENCO

HOTEL RADISSON
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
JUNE 28-SEPTEMBER 3, 2000

At her annual summer venue in Santa Fe, Mafia Benitez has iconic status. Her summer Institute for Spanish Arts is a magnet for dancers, while her company, now in its thirtieth year, regularly plays to packed houses in the cabaret room that has been named after her. The atmospheric spot is decorated like a Spanish grandee's mansion.

Currently, the company is presenting a tablao, short numbers showcasing her and her talented, good-looking troupe. (Once a week, creamy tango dancers Luren Bellucci and Michael Walker head the bill.) Benitez herself seems to have mellowed, employing fewer of her signature bravura zapateados and more of her expressive tilts of the head and slim-waisted torso and dramatic, sudden gestures. She is very much a master in control of full-blown and economical artistry, gesturing with her skirt and wielding a shawl like an extension of herself or a bullfighter's cape.

She has chosen a company of individual talents with vivid personalities: the torrid and proud Lucilene de Geus; Inmaculada Ortega, long and flexible from her back to highly articulated fingers and wrists; the veteran of the group, Antonio Granjero, forceful though a bit stocky for elegance; Pedro Blazquez, with an appealing understated dignity and a centeredness that perhaps owes something to his ballet training; and Martin Gaxiola, possessed of a special developing elegance.

The company modernizes flamenco. The traditional full stops (bien parado) for men in the course of a dance, which show off their svelte lines, have virtually disappeared. Most noticeably, the music of the able guitarists and singers tends less to traditional flamenco with its tonality of cathartic lament than to the flamenco-influenced, with lyrical passages, a modern type of dissonance, an unexpected cymbal and cascade of chimes, and heavy use of the boxlike cajon for percussion. Unison dancing isn't overdone; but the singing, rather than voicing the lone soul, is often carried by two or four men in unison or even in harmony. The exemplary footwork of the dancers often gets buried.