Mercedes de Córdoba, Sí, Quiero review ★★★★★

Sí, Quiero is the Spanish equivalent of ‘I do’, the words with which bride and groom signify their assent to marriage, and the rituals of a wedding are the metaphor that underlies this rousing flamenco show.

Truth to tell, the actual concept is impressionistic and at times elusive, but with intense dancing of this quality framed by transporting music and highly sophisticated production values, who cares? Certainly not the packed Sadler’s Wells audience which rose as one to award the one-off performance of Sí, Quiero one of the longest, most enthusiastic standing ovations this theatre has seen.

Mercedes de Córdoba is one of the most authentic and admired ‘bailaoras’ of her generation, a woman for whom dancing is an ‘inescapable fate’ and flamenco something she vowed to protect until the end of her days in a short address in Spanish at the end of the show.

In Si, Quiero she is backed by an excellent company of three musicians, three singers and four young female dancers – Águeda Saavedra, María Carrasco, Cristina Soler and María Reyes – whose remarkable talents include singing and comedic acting.

The curtain goes up on a monochrome set, with two grey curtains upstage hiding the musicians, the sole prop a panel covered in a cloth depicting massive white blooms. Four female silhouettes are dotted across the back. A single spotlight creates a central circle amid the gloom.

Then Mercedes de Córdoba makes her entrance. Dressed in black pants, white shirt and lacy black jacket, she starts dancing, her ‘zapateado’ evolving in a crescendo of ever more intricate beats and taps (for all that you can see her feet, you can't really comprehend what they're doing), rotating wrists displaying fierce hands, eyes burning with passion and humour, too.

From this introduction the show evolves in a series of sequences and tableaux in a variety of flamenco formats – buleria, milonga, copla – perhaps the most outlandish, yet absolutely compelling, of which is the one where the four ensemble dancers sit at a long laid table – the wedding reception? – from which they rise to perform intricate comic choreographies, holding glasses or plates and singing, all with split-second coordination.

Sí, Quiero is crammed full of unexpected sequences, which look and feel thoroughly modern, yet never betray the very essence of flamenco.

Its core, though, is a long central dialogue between Mercedes de Córdoba in a blood-red flamenco dress and singer Enrique ‘El Extremeño’, a powerful exponent of ‘cante jondo’.

They face each other, the cantaor’s commanding, throaty voice challenging the dancer even as it sends shivers down your spine. Mercedes de Córdoba responds with whirlwind dancing, the intensity of which is beyond words. She is a primal force, woman as earth and fire embodying ancestral power and passion, the very soul of flamenco.

You have to remind yourself to breathe.

Sí, Quiero marked Mercedes de Córdoba’s debut at Sadler’s Wells’s Flamenco Festival. We can only hope this was but the first of her many appearances in festivals to come.