Reaching Back for Flamenco Tradition

So much of contemporary flamenco expresses the emotions of the performer through a limited range of traditional musical formats that a program highlighting neglected older relationships between flamenco music and dance represents a valuable project in artistic reclamation.

The premiere of “Desde Cadiz Pa Aca,” (From Cadiz to Here), Tuesday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, took the New World Flamenco Festival back to what a program note called “the Golden Age of flamenco in the 1940-1960s.”

Obviously, flamenco specialists could best appreciate the innovation in this experiment by dancer-choreographer Yaelisa and her San Francisco-based company, Caminos Flamencos. But even the general dance audience could find deep pleasure in the lilt, charm and refinement of the performance.

Like Cadiz, Spain, itself--intimate, elegant, bathed in gleaming reflected light from the water that nearly surrounds it--the beguiling sensuality of the old/new song styles cast its spell.

In the opening “Caracoles,” for example, four women in sleek black gowns stretched and glided to music of disarming sweetness and composure as performed by guitarist and company music director Jason McGuire, with guest singers Silverio Heredia and Miguel Gonzalez.

Rapid shifts of position and flurries of percussive footwork tested the women’s technique--especially when Yaelisa joined them later. But their dancing style stayed relaxed, sociable, vibrant yet uninsistent. These qualities became developed further in Yaelisa’s celebratory “Cantinas” solo, so fleet, light and spirited, with walking steps that evoked the image of a supremely confident young woman strolling along one of Cadiz’s antique, honey-colored promenades.

In “Romeras,” company guest Juan Ogalla proved a master of building complex rhythmic edifices from insinuating step patterns and then demolishing them with a sudden eruption of contorted jumps, turns and kicks. His best dancing all evening came in a passage of dazzling intricacy here, accompanied only by hand clapping and the use of the guitar as a toneless strum-drum. But he also adroitly traded steps with Yaelisa in their teasing, mock-confrontational “Cana” duet and the festive finale.

Yaelisa and Ogalla also ventured flamenco solos in more familiar styles near the end of the program. “Solea” found Ogalla initially doubling the guitar flourishes with his feet and staying closely tied to the accompaniment. But for all his expressive power, stamina and technique, he dulled his best dancing here through dogged repetition.

“Siguiriyas” called from Yaelisa not only great depth of feeling--the emotions pulled into her torso and weighing it down--but great dynamic variety in her footwork and a superb boldness of attack. A passage to stamping and clapping had a special fervor, and as always, her hands embellished her dancing with ravishing delicacy.

McGuire’s solo managed to be atmospheric and fiendishly complex at the same time, with the Barclay’s inescapable amplification seeming more subtle than the New World festival norm last weekend.

Like Ogalla, the two singers came from Cadiz for this project, characteristically alternating within a song and thus tracing an arc from Heredia’s husky tone to Gonzalez’s brighter, more piercing vocalism. Their authority in this material, of course, could not be greater, so Yaelisa’s adventure in flamenco time travel had both novelty and absolute surety to recommend it.

In its creative stance, her program stood midway between the conventional dance drama of Juana Amaya that opened the 2002 series and the radical modernism of firebrand Andres Marin that will close it Friday through Sunday. It showed us more about flamenco than we may have previously known, but as always, confirmed the art’s legendary fusion of technique and feeling, sophisticated form and primal content.

Besides the performers previously credited, the Tuesday performance featured the dancing of Alicia Adame, Juliana Drechsel, Defne Enc and Liza Thomson.

New World Flamenco Festival, Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 6 p.m.; Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine (949) 854-4646 $28-$38.