The soul of three cities in three Singing Cafés.
Three ways of viewing life from a table at a café. Three ways of catching the spirit of a city through its music. Three ways of seeing flamenco. From the intimacy of Granada to the hustle and bustle of Seville, passing through Malaga and its overseas vocation. From the mountain range of Granada, the coarse fandangos of Güejar and Peza, to the tender style of the Soleá of Triana, and the taranto of el Cojo de Malaga. Earth, water, fire. The intimacy of the closed paradise for many of Soto de Rojas. The delicate and ultraist cosmopolitanism of Isaac del Vando Villar.
The 18th of July, 1936 is not the first day of the twentieth century. It's the last day of the 19th. This is certanly true of modern Spanish history, and is absolutely literal of the flamenco scene. The "jondo" evolves, it grows into a man, in a withered ambience, in the discipline of purity, in the postwar asceticism of Mairena. Left behind is the healthy adolescent promiscuity of the singing cafés where the soleá and the malagueña coincided not only with the Guajira and the "cuplé", but also with the circus, American and French dances, magic, film, musical groups, loose women, and even bullfighting with calves. With the ultraism of Isaac del Vando Villar, the superrealism of Lorca and the neopopulism of Falla.
The golden age of flamenco is an extravagant, energetic, humid, free, spontaneous period. The rigorous canon is far away. There are no heirarchies in genre or gender. The golden age of flamenco in which art, man, is in direct contact with nature.
While Juan Breva sings "with the body of a giant and the voice of a little girl," Lorca and Isaac del Vando write on marble tables. Manuel de Falla abandons for an afternoon his hermitlike reclusion in the "Carmen de Santa Engracia" to remember his friend Debussy in his only piece, barely three minutes, composed for the guitar. It's his first composition signed in Granada. He never imagined that his remains would rest eternally in Cordoba, in "Alta Gracia". Just as Lorca never imagined his forthcoming end in Viznar. The Spanish twentieth century, the one that begins on the 19th of July, 1936, is one of cultural diaspora, of physical or moral death. Massive death, systematic death, Aushwitz or Guernica.
1936 is therefore the time of this show. The year that Lorca is executed. The year Falla turns his eyes inward toward the Victorian darkness to escape the oppressive reality, the death of the author from Cadiz. The year del Vando Villar, during a sales trip to San Sebastian is surprised by the military uprising in Madrid, where he stays during the entire conflict, eventually abandoning poetry as an heroic act.. The year in which the last singing café closes, the Kursaal in Sevilla.
Juan Vergillos
Première in the XIV Bienal de Flamenco de Sevilla
October 7th, 2006. Teatro Central
| Date | Show | City | Theatre | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 07, 2006 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Sevilla (ES) | Teatro Central | |
| Jan 25, 2007 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Nîmes (FR) | ||
| Mar 26, 2007 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Granada (ES) | Teatro Municipal Jose Tamayo | |
| Apr 11, 2007 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Málaga (ES) | Sala Cánovas | |
| Oct 04, 2007 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Créteil (FR) | La Maison des Arts de Créteil | |
| Oct 09, 2007 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Maubeuge (FR) | ||
| Oct 11, 2007 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Bayonne (FR) | ||
| Jan 16, 2008 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Montpellier (FR) | ||
| Jan 18, 2008 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Perpignan (FR) | Salle Charles Trenet | |
| Feb 28, 2008 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Jerez de la Frontera (ES) | Teatro Villamarta | |
| Apr 05, 2008 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Fuenlabrada (ES) | Centro Cultural Tomás y Valiente | |
| May 22, 2008 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Annecy (FR) | Théâtre Bonlieu | |
| Feb 03, 2009 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Foix (FR) | L'Estive Scène Nationale de Foix | |
| Feb 11, 2010 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Sevilla (ES) | Sala Joaquín Turina | |
| May 04, 2010 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Narbonne (FR) | Théâtre Narbonne | |
| May 06, 2010 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Sceaux (FR) | Sceaux Scéne Nationale les Gemaux | |
| May 07, 2010 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Sceaux (FR) | Sceaux Scéne Nationale les Gemaux | |
| May 08, 2010 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Sceaux (FR) | Sceaux Scéne Nationale les Gemaux | |
| May 28, 2010 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | Chalon Sur Soane (FR) | ||
| May 28, 2010 | EL ALBA DEL ÚLTIMO DÍA | (FR) | Espace des Arts |
