Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras: Alma – Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London

Director and Choreographer: Sara Baras

Musical Arranger: Keko Baldomero

There are a lot of people on stage – dancers, singers, musicians – but this is very much a one-person show. Everything else is prologue to Sara Baras taking stage centre, crouching like a panther, then exploding into a fusillade of echoing stamps and taps, her feet hardly seeming to move because they are moving so fast, her upper body in elegant poses, occasionally whipping into another frozen gesture. But it’s really all about the feet…

Sara Baras describes this production, Alma, soul, as a “Ballet Flamenco”, as ‘flamenco with a bolero soul’, and as Gypsy fire married to Spanish romantic yearning. She credits herself as a scriptwriter, though it is quite hard to discern a narrative in the suite of dance pieces that occupy the two hours of stage time. There are interpolated scenes; a couple of musical interludes, and a slightly odd sequence in which Sara Baras’ five supporting dancers change costumes in a sort of backstage-with-the-costume-rail effect, but all those scenes are marking time until Sara Baras comes back. For a diva, she is extremely gracious. She acknowledges her collaborators constantly and politely holds aside the curtain for their entrances and exits, but she spends more time in a stark cone of top light, holding centre stage, smashing aside the musicians with her feet.

There are two singers manifesting the passionate expression of flamenco song, two percussionists with a variety of hand drums, bongos, and for economy and extra bass tones, they sit on cajóns. Two guitarists play with the sort of effortless virtuosity that is assumed in any flamenco ensemble, very fast, very lyrical, and very lovely. Additionally and unusually, Diego Villegas plays a variety of reed instruments – harmonica, flute, and most notably tenor saxophone.

Five women and two men make up a sort of corps de ballet. They all dance exquisitely, they all have brief moments in the spotlight, and their dancing in unison provides a change of pace from the footwork, but they are there to support, not to challenge.

Sara Baras holds the focus throughout with one exception. The end of the show features a long saxophone solo by Villegas, at the culmination of which he dances a duet with Baras, swapping phrases, her heels, his tenor, tracking each other back and forth across the stage. It is light-hearted, and it is fun, but perhaps most significantly it takes some of the focus away from the star’s personality and places it on the dance event.

Sara Baras received an Olivier award in 2019, which world events prevented her from receiving. She has it now, presented after the show, and she creates a dazzling spectacle that makes it richly deserved.

Runs until 9 July 2023