Maria Pagés' Yo Carmen at London's Flamenco Festival

Those who came to see this show because Carmen is in the title may have been disappointed when, after a brief capsule overture of Bizet’s popular music in the Poemas y Cante Obertura, there were no further direct references to Mérimée’s novella (the beginning of the Carmen brand) and the familiar melodies of Bizet’s popular music made only fleeting reappearances.

Instead, Yo Carmen is about all women, the “I” (“Yo”) being relevant to every woman. A message that Maria Pagés, herself, delivered (in English) from the front of the stage, late in the show, in a surreal parody of a messenger, postman’s bag slung over her shoulder; reading what appeared to be a self-delivered letter.  “All the women; we are Carmen”, she announced.  I don’t think she meant that all women are voluptuous tobacco workers destined to be murdered; more that, whilst all women have inner strengths and ambitions, few receive due acknowledgement (as the programme says, Yo Carmen is for ‘those women who have made history but whom history has ignored’).

It was helpful for Pagés to give this explanation, since it would have been difficult to deduce the overarching concept from the flamenco numbers themselves. Pagés is a tall, imposing figure who dominates proceedings despite being surrounded by seven other bailaoras and seven musicians, including two female cantaoras.  If Yo Carmen is about all women it cannot escape being a Yo, Maria Pagés show, given that she is the star, the choreographer, director, costume designer and she also composed some of the music and lyrics.  Perhaps as an antidote to the inevitability of this being the Maria Pagés show, I particularly respected the way in which she personally applauded each of her fourteen co-performers during the curtain call.

The show’s music is eclectic, including Celtic themes and a song with melodies not dissimilar to Morris Albert’s Feelings (originally composed by Louis Gasté as Pour Toi, in the 1950s), alongside the occasional extracts from Bizet’s Carmen, and the traditional song, guitar and percussion generally associated with flamenco, much of which had been composed for this show by guitarist, Rubén Levaniegos. However, it wasn’t until comparatively late in the 80-minute performance that we came to see the musicians, who were previously hidden at the rear of the stage, behind a gauze curtain. The visuals were generally strong, enhanced by Pau Fullana’s imaginative lighting designs: the opening silhouette of Pagés suggested an Antony Gormley statue rising out of the sea, as the tide recedes.

When the eight identically dressed bailaoras performed in unison, they presented a magical and fluid uniformity, both visually and aurally. But, the show is at its best when Pagés – unbelievably, now 55 – performs her solos. Her concluding number – Mito Roto (Broken Myth)-  in which Pagés dresses and undresses (very tastefully achieved) – temporarily wearing a gorgeous crimson bata de cola, embroidered in gold, with a large golden comb in her hair (each item passed to her by apparently disembodied hands, from above a mirror) was an absorbing highlight of the evening. 

 Pagés is certainly anything but a broken myth, having developed a pioneering reputation for thinking outside the box in developing her art form and some of the segments of her show were an unusual expansion of the flamenco experience, such as doubling the percussive rhythm of the feet by dancers banging old-fashioned walking sticks in time with their steps; an opening dance in which the lighting featured only the dancing white fans that were being held by seven dancers (with another, in Carmen’s red, at which the Toreadors’ swords were aimed); a dance, in which the women swept the stage; and another that celebrated pregnancy. Yo Carmen – “we are all Carmen” – in which the women’s lives are summarised in domesticity, motherhood and as victims.    

Made in 2014, Yo Carmen was featured in last year’s Edinburgh Festival. It is a show with a powerful message and one which is occasionally riveting, mostly when Pagés herself is the focus of attention.