National Ballet of Spain, City Center, New York, New York, February 20-March 1, 1998.

CITY CENTER FEBRUARY 20-MARCH 1, 1998 REVIEWED BY SUKI JOHN

The National Ballet of Spain (Ballet Nacional de Espana) returned to City Center with two premieres, two American premieres, and a brand-new artistic director, Aida Gomez. This company of excellent flamenco dancers with strong ballet and modern technique is clearly seeking a fusion of old and new. In two programs, the company presented several forays into updated, cross-pollinated flamenco. The most exquisite example of these hybrids remains Jose Granero's 1984 Medea.

Granero combines bold flamenco with balletic storytelling and expressionistic modern dance. Medea is filled with moments of stylistic and technical homage to Martha Graham, beginning with Medea's two masked malevolent spirits, tumbling and writhing with bare flexed feet, and ending as Medea closes huge doors behind her, exiting into her own fiery hell. Set to a taped orchestral score by Manolo Sanlucar, dancers augment the music with rhythmic footwork, palmas (hand-clapping), pitos (Finger-snapping), and unorthodox cries that issue forth from Medea. The searing tragedy of infanticide is carried out in utter silence.

As Medea, Lola Greco, daughter of the great flamenco dancer Jose Greco, transforms her wispy, classical form into a figure of magical strength and heart-wrenching evil. Her achievement, beyond impeccable line, crystalline footwork, and absolute mastery of the eclectic choreography, is the creation of a character at once reprehensible and understandable. She crawls like a serpent, hollows out her torso, slouches in defeat, and beckons her lover with the soft, urgent sound of her feet. She extends her body into an impossibly long diagonal, flinging herself like an arrow toward the man she's lost to a younger woman. Shaking and seething, she contrives to murder her own children; her eyes burn as she calls forth the essence of evil. Francisco Velasco's razor-sharp footwork brings the unfaithful Jason to life while the majestic Currillo rules as King Creon, undone by Medea's sorcery.

Antonio Canales's Grito ("Shout"), in its American premiere, was the most successful of the other pieces shown, and one of the few that employed the company's gifted musicians and singers. Grito incorporates feisty flamenco rhythms and postures into innovative structures, allowing individuality to emerge even in unison passages. A semicircle of exquisite male dancers explodes in sharp, driving rhythm, alternately pounding the floor with fists and feet. Long stylized rosaries swing from the women's necks as they form a wedge traveling downstage, hips swaying lustily. Canales evokes the joy of dancing through comradely competition for a quicksilver trio of men, tricky zapateado (footwork) for Greco, and a folkloric duet for the sensuous Maribel Gallardo and the delightfully imposing Currillo. This great dancer was left out of program notes which were otherwise full of inscrutable synopses and glaring omissions, neglecting even to specify who was dancing on which night.

Eva La Yerbabuena performed her own choreography in a traditional Solea por Bulerias, a gutsy, exuberant solo accompanied by seven singers and musicians. Artistic director Aida Gomez premiered her Mensaje ("Message"), a light flamenco women's quartet, followed by Javier Lattore's Luz de Alma ("Light of the Soul"). These two spare dances fuse minimalist structure with flamenco movement. Lattore's work, in which black-clad men perform unison steps in precise, military formation, evoked the spirit of Franco. Both the American premiere of Felipe Sanchez's Los Tarantos, to live and recorded music by Paco De Lucia, and Jose Antonio's premiere of La Vida Breve ("Brief Life") combined clear, muscular flamenco with vague narrative.

The National Ballet of Spain is a treasury of versatile dancers. They shine in works that allow them to emerge from the mold, to create well-defined characters, and to explore the passage from traditional flamenco tablao to contemporary choreography.