Her flamenco style may be austere but its authenticity is at the heart of the new mesmerising performance by Spanish star Eva Yerbabuena

Lluvia (Rain) is the title of the extraordinary new show in which Eva Yerbabuena dances drenched amidst a pool of pouring rain. With it, she has created a production that has blown away Spain’s national theatre critics with its originality and finesse of execution.

It is, said the Diario Público, “a torrent of emotions”; “a perfect storm of ecstasy” declared the Diario de Jérez while the reviewer for El País admitted: “No performance has moved me as much in years”.

The show opened to plaudits in March at the Jérez Flamenco Festival and then went on to pack a full house at Madrid’s prestigious Teatro Español. Every performance saw the audience on their feet, yelling Olés and Bravos, many with their eyes full of tears from the emotions the dancer had awakened in them.

Lluvia is now on a world tour that will take Yerbabuena this year from Spain to Buenos Aires, France, the Sydney Opera House, Tokyo and London’s Sadler’s Wells in the autumn.

It seems that with this unusual show, the Granada-born award-winning bailaora has tuned in to a global zeitgeist. In a world that has become addicted to instant emotion with the Internet, the mobile phone and 24-hour television, the realness of her stark style of flamenco has hit an international chord.

Along with Joaquin Cortés and Sara Baras, Yerbabuena is one of a small group of dancers bringing flamenco to a world audience. But what is it about this ancestral dance form that has such universal appeal? “It is something magic,” says Eva. “Everywhere we go we are getting a wonderful response, even where we would least expect. I performed in New Zealand and was bowled over with theatres chock-full every night. Then we went to Japan where we discovered a huge trend for flamenco schools and where the people went crazy with their applause.”
Since founding her own company, Ballet Flamenco Eva Yerbabuena, in 1998, Yerbabuena has toured to a wider and wider global audience. Audiences everywhere seem enthralled by the purity and starkness of her flamenco style, her explosive footwork and the hypnotic movements of her arms and hands. And above all, they respond to her duende – that uniquely Andalusian ‘soulfulness’ that is the trademark of flamenco.

Words: Sarah Monaghan

Read the full article in our June 2009 edition.