Ballet Folklórico de México de Amália Hernandez: London, July 2015

[johnross]

This highly energetic and colourful company return to London after 40 years and entertain at the Coliseum. Sadly we could only photograph three of the nine dances but here is a taste from Yesterday's rehearsal.

 

 

Ladies of the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico in Guerrero - Guerrero 

 

 

Jorge Torres Chavez and Nait Alejanda Perez Altamirano and dancers in Charreada 

 

 

Dance of the Quetzales 

 

More pictures on www.johnrossballetgallery.co.uk

[Bruce]

Great show. BUT it's not a show for the dance-studious, looking to discover a Mexican Balanchine or Forsythe - rather a colourful and spectacular entertainment and I loved it as such – it’s stampiliciously good!

[Bruce Wall]

I have to agree with Bruce above.  Allow the child in you to run free and you will find your soul pulsating.  

Is there a MORE beautiful race than the Mexicans.  A goodly part of me doesn't think so.  Their smiles are so broad as to embody all mankind.  The heat of their joy so vivid that it seems an eternally renewable life force.  

 

I have had the good fortune to go to Mexico on four different occasions (largely for work).  Sadly it is now a far more dangerous country than it used to be due to the ever increasing - or so it seems - thrust of the drug cartels.  Certainly my last visit was the only time in my life I have ever seen a decapitated head.  Still - many moons ago - decades in fact - I had the pleasure of visiting Mexico City and was lucky enough to go to the Palace of the Arts and see the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico on its home turf.  That is QUITE a different experience from what is being offered on stage at the Coliseum just now.  Not that the show is different ... It really isn't as far as I can recall.  All the colourful elements are the same.  There too the variety of folklore being celebrated ranged from the flight of a Yaqui deer (and boy did that lad do some stunning ronds de jambe en l'air last night) to the dizzying frolic of the Dance of the Puebla Quetzales with some mean lasso work being tossed unto into the determined rhythm of the Jarabe for good measure.  There too the costumes were flamboyantly striking - largely through the splash of their homespun simplicity - and the music dazzling in its battle between the base harps and shrieking trumpets.  There too the lighting was bright.  These people WANT to be seen.  No chic dimness here.  There too the evening was a flight of characterful dance fancy where the emphasis was clearly on the ecstasy of the participant's pride.  And what pride it is.  Technological over-kill takes second place to heart.  

 

Then what made that occasion in Mexico City all those years ago so different you may well ask?  Well, from the depths of my ever receding memory I'll strive to tell you.  As far as I recall - and I do - there was an entire conversation between the audience and the stage throughout.  That's what I remember as the difference.  You found yourself in the midst of an true panorama.  (At that time I wouldn't have known what an IMAX was.)  There the audiences would speak, shout and sing back to each other as much as to those on the stage.  We all - even I - were very real reactors.  We were all part and parcel of an interactive element.  I vividly remember being lost in wonder at the sway of this mass of happy humanity. It was a bit like being in a religious revival in Harlem.  It was all encompassing.  I even found myself joining in - in albeit broken - if entirely earnest - Spanish.  It was infectious.  I doubt my hips have ever swayed quite so far askew since.  

 

Still, you will get a sense of this exuberance at the Coliseum.  Certainly I did.  The dancers do still come into the aisles and they have much easier truck at their London address due to the heartbreaking mass of red that appears (or did certainly last night) on each level.  (The balcony was closed.)    

 

Still there are some things that happily defy translation ... and that as much as the fever of this animation, in and of itself, is a very good reason to go.  

Edited July 24, 2015 by Bruce Wall