Ballet With A Difference

The Festival Internacional de les Arts...or FIA for short...is currently in full swing in San Jose as well as two other nearby cities—Alejuela and Limon.

Low-Risk Exposure

One of the headline attractions was the Ballet Nacional de Espagne.

I've never seen a full ballet performance live and in person so decided that the National Ballet of Spain appearing before a mostly Spanish speaking audience might be a good place to start.

And the price was definitely right...3000 CRC or $5.76 Canadian. Apart from the time involved, this would most definitely have been a low risk exposure to a new art form if ever there was one.

While waiting for the ballet to start, I gave myself permission to leave at intermission if I felt like it.

Happily, I stayed until the final of what must have been eight curtain calls.

I have never seen or experienced anything like this performance...ever!!

Using words like awesome, fantastic and wonderful doesn't even come close to describing the event.

Yet again I witnessed the energy and excitement of what I am considering to be Latin American passion. This time of course there were major differences.

Passion & Precision

But it was after all the Spaniards who planted the seeds of passion...among other seeds...in Latin America way back when.

The 20 dancers comprised one of the most physically attractive uniform group of performers...or people for that matter...that I have ever seen.

All with the same colour skin and hair--which appeared to have been cut the same day—and size, the men could well have been a set of tentuplets.

Their drab, finally tailored costumes showcased...to use Jacques Brel's words...their little Spanish bums.

Similarly the women were all stunningly beautiful..each with identical make-up and black hair, but with slightly more variation in body shape and size.

No tutus and tights for these ladies. More colourfully costumed than the men, they wore long, flouncy and bouncy skirts...exactly what is required for flamenco dancing.

Certainly a ballet in name and staging, the performance was a big beautifully presented flamenco dance extravaganza.

2-3” Heels

Instead of ballet slippers, the women wore sensible shoes and the men wore boots...all with serious 2-3 inch heels, all the better for dancing the flamenco.

Overall the dancing was a combination of Stompin' Tom Connors and Lord of the Dance but with acute finesse and extreme precision.

Even with the full company, dancing, every single heel hit the stage at exactly the same time...usually several times each second. Add to that precision dancing the equally meticulous clicking of the dancers' castanets and ole...another wonderful evening of musical magic.

Then after the final curtain, back to the reality of vehicle horns arguing about non-existent road space and street vendors shouting above uninterested prospective customers.

That night, the joy of the dance inside the theatre more than offset the cacophony of Costa Ricans going about living their lives...normally and noisily.