The Slog

I had the misfortune to have tickets to go see Rafael Aguilar’s Ballet Teatro Español performance of Bolero, tagged as an explosive Flamenco firework, at the weekend in Stuttgart. I had high expectations as I had seen it about 10 years ago at the same place, and it was simply fantastic then. This time round it was rather lame - the acoustics were weak, the dancers made choreographic mistakes and some of their costumes fell apart during the performance. A couple of the female dancers were rather vulgar and too revealing, and some of their dancing was so agressive that their movements were no longer graceful. The centre piece of the whole show, Flamenco set to Ravel’s Bolero, was good, except that the main dancer became so sweaty that as he came to the front of the stage and span, his hair full of sweat sprayed the front row of the audience. Yuk. On the whole I have seen much better Flamenco dancing in small restaurants in Sevilla (I lived in Madrid for a year). Rafael Aguilar died in 1995 - I expect he would have been disappointed to see how the performance has gone downhill since then.