Sadler's Wells, Sara Baras, Sombras Review ★★★★★

Forget about long flouncy skirts with exaggerated trains, oversize polka dots, ornate hair combs and mantillas, and the clackety-clack of castanets: Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras looks not to the cliched past of this unique art form, but to its future, what it may become.

It does so not in the iconoclastic manner of the young Rocio Molina, whose show Fallen From Heaven you can see later in the current Sadler’s Wells Flamenco Festival (9 July); nor with the surreal provocations of the maverick Israel Galván, last seen in a stand alone show at Sadler’s Wells earlier this year.

Sara Baras is an internationally acclaimed flamenco veteran. Her Ballet Flamenco has been going for 20 years, and her latest show, Sombras (Shadows), starts in experimental form. Baras herself and her six dancers, four women, two men, are dressed in uniform black trouser suits, and seen only in silhouette lined up on the duskily lit stage.

Keko Baldomero’s as yet unseen guitar strikes up, with slow, plangent chords creating a feeling of nostalgia for who knows what… and the audience is instantly won over.

As the light subtly changes, the ensemble file off stage, leaving only Sara Baras and her musicians; and they launch into a Farruca, Baras’s trademark flamenco style, the kind that in the old days was exclusively reserved for men.

Its main characteristic is the increasingly quick, dazzling foot-stomping, a zapateado focussed primarily on the heels, which hit the sound-wired stage with the rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire, achieving speeds that are simultaneously exhilarating and hard to comprehend.

It’s a percussion all its own, that enters into a dialogue with the musicians and two singers, each challenging each other to ever more impossible feats, which you know will have been rehearsed, but succeed in giving the impression of in-the-moment improvisation.

To say it’s contagious will rate as understatement of the year. By now, my seat was shaking as if rocked by an earthquake as a result of spectators energetically tapping their feet along with the rhythm pouring forth from the stage; and I was mildly shocked belatedly to realise that the enthusiastic “Olé!” floating in the air suspiciously close by had, in fact, issued from my very lips…

The first part of Sombras follows a similar pattern, with Baras occasionally joined by her dancers, all bathed in lighting designer Óscar Gómez de los Reyes' extraordinarily effective shifting shafts of light.

By about the half-way mark the show settles into a more traditional format, with the women allowed costumes inspired by the traditional flamenco dresses and mantóns, the gorgeous silken shawls; and it draws to an animated finale, or fin the de fiesta, for the whole company.

Sombras is a highly enjoyable flamenco show, anchored by the charismatic dancer Sara Baras, and backed by true flamenco musicians and an ensemble of good dancers, though the latter are sadly underused, often appearing simply as props to keep us entertained while Baras goes through her very many costume changes.

That said, it’s not often we get the chance to see a performance of the calibre of Sara Baras’ in a show with remarkably high production values. Sombras set the bar very high for the shows that will follow in Sadler’s Wells Flamenco Festival 2019.