Technique, harmony, innovation
August 15, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Flamenco show
Vernáculo y Bohemio
Alonso Villarreal, Patricia Laborde 
Wed–Thu, Aug 27–28, 8pm
Teatro Ángela Peralta
Mesones 82
100 pesos

“When you are standing on stage you forget technique, which is just a means to reach what you want to express. Then the passion overflows and that is what is delivered to the audience,” says Alonso Villarreal.

He danced and acted in festivals when he was very young and worked with the Folkloric Ballet of Universidad Regiomontana as a high school student. He traveled to Spain in 1996 to learn the roots of flamenco and studied for six years in Madrid and Sevilla.

His creativity has made a choreographer of him; he has created original dance works. He is an innovator, always searching for balance and harmony, with a personal, almost mystical style.

From India to the Alhambra, Part II: Persia
By Maridel García

Flamenco Dance
Anis y Yerbabuena Flamenco
Me Embrujaste
Fri, Aug 22, 5pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
200 pesos

Two legendary Persian texts give evidence of the passage of tribes from the Indus Valley heading toward the West. In one, Hamza of Ispahan spoke about the arrival of 12,000 Zott musicians to Persia in the middle of the tenth century. An Indian king of great power would have sent them to charm his cousin the Shah with their music. 

The number of artists is sometimes interpreted as 1,200 and sometimes as 120. What is consistent is the magic number of the Middle East: the wise 12—the 12 months, 12 hours in a day, and a dozen is the perfect number of roses. The text makes no reference to the expulsion or impurity of Zotts. They appear in the chronicle as a gift, as an exchange between monarchs who are cousins and share the same tastes in music. 

The other text is the Book of the Kings, the Shah Nameh of the poet Firdusi. The nationalist poet composed his extraordinary epic to sustain the poetic Persian night against the resounding Muslim noon. In one of its 60,000 verses, he mentions the luris, eternal voyagers averse to agriculture and prone to nomadism, theft and music. 

Forgoing the legendary, English linguist John Sampson divided Indian wanderers into two branches—those who followed roads southeast and west, and those who went northwest. More on Sampson next week.