“Oro Viejo” (Old Gold)
Compañía Rocío Molina
New York City Center
New York
February 12, 2010
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2009 by Kathleen O’Connell
Rocío Molina is an astonishing dancer, as riveting poised in charged stillness as she is in vibrant motion. Judging from “Oro Viejo” (Old Gold), which received its New York premiere at City Center on Friday evening, the 25 year old rising flamenco star is a promising choreographer as well. The work’s individual numbers seemed only tangentially related to its stated theme—old age and the passage of time—but no matter: each comprised its own satisfying little drama and set its own mood, as much through articulate dancing as through costumes and lighting.
The curtain rose on Molina lit (by David Pérez) in dramatic chiaroscuro on a raised platform, visible only from the waist up. She pivoted slowly, framing her head and torso with elaborate, flamenco-inflected gestures while a somber male voice recited some text in Spanish. When the speech was done, she fell backwards into the dark. A guitar began to play softly, and images—first of a ticking clock and then of an old woman running her hands over her wrinkled face—flickered onto a tall, narrow drape hung stage right
Just as the proceedings threatened to tip over into portentousness, a spot fell on Molina, Eduardo Guerrero and Adrían Santana seated in a tier as if at a bullring—she gesturing with a rose, the men with white handkerchiefs. Gliding to center stage, they began a coolly elegant, faintly sinister pasodoble à trois woven through with stylized motifs evocative of a torero’s stiff march and a banderillero’s upraised darts. The costumes (by Josep Ahumada) recalled the bullring as well: Molina wore a long, close–fitting black dress embroidered like toreador pants along its side slits; the men wore bright sashes. After an extended display of silky turns and crisp unison footwork, the trio swirled off into the darkness, wreathing in and out of each others’ arms. It wasn’t pure flamenco, but it was pure theater.
The rest of “Oro Viejo’s” numbers were built along a similar plan: costumes, gestures, and music evocative of a particular time or place were layered onto a core of flamenco vocabulary augmented by other dance forms. One trio—which Molina performed in bare feet—looked equal parts flamenco, contemporary, ballroom, and Martha Graham. Molina worked the train of her long black dress—and coiled herself around her strapping, bare-chested partners—with an architectural ferocity that would have done Graham’s Clytemnestra proud. The show’s closing solo, which Molina performed to percussion in a crimson racerback gown, was an arresting amalgam of contemporary arms and flamenco feet.
But flamenco is the foundation of Molina’s art. She presents its materials—its postures, promenades, gestures, and footwork—fully charged with their expressive potential but stripped of cliché. Molina’s footwork is jaw-dropping not because it’s fast but because it’s spun out in flawless rhythmic counterpoint to her arms, which are themselves moving in counterpoint to her torso. Her play with contrast extends to the quality of her movement, all plush one moment, all steel the next. Her ability to shape–shift without transition is uncanny; just as you think she’s about to bring a phrase to a close she pushes it to a fresh climax or—more startling yet—slams it shut and comes out of the other side doing something entirely different.
Molina, the only woman who danced during the evening, appeared in nine of the thirteen numbers—four times as a soloist, twice in a duet, twice in a trio, once in a quartet—and created a different persona in each, largely through her vocabulary. Her playfully seductive pink–gowned Miss, saturated with femininity and armed with a fan, moved nothing like the bold, butch show-off vamping with a man’s straw hat a few numbers later, though they clearly sprang from the same dance tradition. In a bit of gender–bending, she danced a competitive duet (with David Coria) dressed in traditional male garb using traditional male vocabulary. It was, interestingly enough, among the most “traditional” moments of the evening.
Ninety minutes long and performed without intermission, “Oro Viejo” rarely flagged: Molina and stage director David Picazo varied each episode’s tone, texture, and music to keep the eye and ear engaged. A jolly comic quartet performed to Mary Santpere’s “Donde va María” was slipped in between a white-hot solo to music performed in traditional flamenco style (by guest vocalist Rosario Guerrero and two palmeras) and a tragedy-tinged duet to an orchestral version of “Maria de la O.”
Molina knew how to present two or more dancers as a coherent unit, whether they were moving in unison or not, and gave her excellent colleagues plenty of interesting things to do (there were two extended duos for men): it was her show, but wasn’t just about her. The company’s musicians—Paco Cruz (guitar) and Sergio Martínez (percussion) in addition to Guerrero and her two palmeras—got their turn in the spotlight, too. Unfortunately, guitarist Rafael Rodríguez—who composed much of the show’s music—was unable to perform live due to visa issues; we heard his part on tape.
copyright © 2009 by Kathleen O’Connell
Photo by Luis Castillo
Eduardo Guerrero and Rocío Molina in “Oro Viejo”
