Choreographers: Mercedes Ruiz and José Maldonado
Director: Mercedes Ruiz
Showcase flamenco, of the kind usually performed for a large paying audience at the Flamenco Festival at Sadler’s Wells, is usually a demonstration of taconeo, the rhythmic tapping and striking of the heel at an exceptionally fast pace. But for Mercedes Ruiz’s new show, Romancero del Baile Flamenco, taconeo makes up perhaps only 30% of the approach. Instead, it has a much more dramatic focus on arms and body shaping that teases out the footwork across a skilled, if rather underwhelming, 80 minutes.
Co-choreographed and performed with José Maldonado, the literal translation of “romancero” is a series of romances, here taking place across six individual set pieces that give equivalent space to Ruiz and Maldonado as dance partners as well as soloists. This highly traditional show also makes use of the standard flamenco props, incorporating both fan and fringed shawl into specific segments, alongside classic costumes such as the tiered dresses, corseted trousers and bolero jackets designed by a team including Keiko Horie, Isabel Valderrama and Fernando Ligero for Ruiz and González for Maldonado. There are even castanets.
And Romancero del Baile is quite earnest in performance, losing any great sense of romance between the dancers or shape to the unfolding sequences that might suggest a couple being drawn closer together, experiencing conflict and reconciliation before the conclusion. Those ideas are within every dance, the performer-choreographers channelling the possibilities for friction and interaction across their scenes, but there is no narrative cohesion across the show to help link it all together.
The traditionalism is the show’s unique selling point in a busy festival full of modern arrangements and interpretations, but it sometimes weighs down Ruiz and Maldonado’s choices when every movement requires a long period of anticipation and a level of theatricality that distracts as often as it informs. Maldonado in particular enjoys making the exaggerated shapes, and his lines are superb, but it doesn’t connect the audience with the meaning of the dance or with the feeling his character(s) should have for Ruiz, and at times, you read only the upcoming movement or positioning in his expression.
There is variety here; one of the highlights is a Ruiz solo in yellow fringed dress that has spirit and energy, accompanied by David Largos’ vocal, and there are pieces built around items of clothing passed between the dancers, including a hat in the opening sequence and later a bolero jacket. There is also paso doble mixed into the flamenco, and the visual impression is carefully thought through, moving from black to white costumes and, eventually, an orange-lit finale that again puts the leading lady centre stage.
Largos is joined by Santiago Lara on guitar and Los Mellis providing back-up vocals – and despite there being only one chair between them at the start, by the end, they thankfully all have seats. The taconeo, when it comes, is excellent; both performers are superb technicians, yet Romancero del Baile feels underpowered without quite enough dynamism to really fill the Sadler’s Wells stage.
Reviewed on 3 June 2025
