La Edad de Oro: Spain’s Israel Galván returns to the Golden Age of flamenco
By Gerald Morris
Israel Galvan is a master of contemporary flamenco. Born to a family immersed in flamenco, his father José Galván directed his own dance academy in Seville for more than 35 years and both his mother and sister are fellow performers. Both a flamenco rebel and a traditionalist -- who has been called “revolutionary” -- Galván is known for his incredible footwork punctuated by moments of stillness and silence. Since appearing in 1994 in Compañía Andaluza de Danza, he has won every top flamenco prize possible, including Spain's National Dance Prize in 2008.
La Edad de Oro (The Golden Age) strips flamenco to its bare essence, sculpting a form that is both steeped in tradition and intoxicated by the moment. As in all his work, Israel Galván collaborates with classic flamenco artists and contemporary flamenco innovators and musicians. Here he is joined by renowned vocalist David Lagos and guitarist Alfredo Lagos. Israel Galván and La Edad de Oro received a 2012 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Production “for astonishing audiences with idiosyncratic kineticism, rigorous intellectualism, and thrilling use of boundary-breaking movement elements, in a stark and startling dialogue between flamenco’s golden age and its many possible futures.”
Israel Galvan leaves audiences overwhelmed. With deep knowledge of classic flamenco, he invents a new pared-back aesthetic, a new alphabet of the human body. It is flamenco for the 21st century. He says, “If I venture into something new or innovative, it always starts from the roots of flamenco. A flamenco artist today no longer has the opportunity to be shaped in the fiestas, the private gatherings. I went to college, I have the Internet, I am an avid cinema-goer… we no longer have the same influences.”
Clement Crisp wrote in London’s The Financial Times (February 11, 2011), "Daringly innovative ... cunningly contrived yet wholly natural, with none of the clichés of flamenco ... like Astaire, his art is uniquely satisfying. I think him a marvellous artist." Alastair Macaulay in The New York Times (September 22, 2011) said, “Israel Galván combines complete command of his medium with a phenomenally fertile range of off-beat stylistic ideas. … his effects work because they’re part of the witty, odd flamboyance that characterizes his dance theater, but even more because they’re part of the rhythmic outpouring that turns his dance into music.”
See a video excerpt of Israel Galván performing La Edad de Oro here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfmCd-caWUU
Israel Galván performs La Edad de Oro in the Theatre on Tuesday March 18 at 7:30 p.m.
