Theatre and live music in Santander and Las Palmas, September 2019

I spent this September in Santander and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

• 7 September: Devórate @ Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria, Calle de Gamazo, Santander
  There is nothing wrong in dancing in the nude. It will do us a lot of good to dance more, to get naked more, and to make love more, and any combination thereof. Personally, I preferred Retrópica to Mari Paula’s brand new creation, Devórate. The opening is almost painfully slow; I’m sure the lovers of Sokurov would appreciate it more than I did. However, there was an absolutely stunning African dance part in the middle; I’d love to see more of that.

• 8 September: Jam session @ Rvbicón, Calle del Sol 4, Santander
  The sixth edition of Raqueros del Jazz, organised and hosted by Rvbicón, kicked off with a jam. Toño Gutiérrez (bass), Rafa Santana (piano), Rodrigo Irizábal (drums), Manuel Cavero (double bass) and others.

• 10 September: Víctor Antón Group @ Rvbicón
  Technically accomplished but rather predictable mainstream jazz collective featuring Víctor Antón (guitar), Roberto Nieva (alto sax), Marcos Salcines (piano), Darío Guibert (double bass) and Mikel Urretagoiena (drums). The original compositions sounded as if I heard all this before. Then they played encore which was simply fantastic. Why not the all of the concert?
• 12 September: Raynald Colom Trio with Eliot Zigmund @ Rvbicón
  Raynald Colom (trumpet), Juan Sebastián (piano), Manel Fortiá (double bass) and jazz legend Eliot Zigmund (drums) playing mostly modern jazz standards and making them sound fresh and their own. (Cf. the previous act.) Unfortunately, I wasn’t in Santander for the second week of Raqueros; then again, nobody could be in two places at once.
• 19 September: Fasur Rodríguez @ Teatro Guiniguada, Plaza F. Mesa de León, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
  An event organised by Mousikê La Laguna opens the new season of jazz masterclasses.

• 21 September: Totem @ Meloneras
  The final live event as well as the highlight of the month. Bravo, Cirque du Soleil!

Back to Santander, I’m looking forward to see and hear more.

Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht

a film by Werner Herzog

This 1979 film is the second feature in El reflejo del vampiro cycle (and the last one I was able to watch). Curiously, just like it was the case with Drácula, there were two versions made, English and German, to avoid dubbing, although this time the same cast was involved. Filmoteca Canaria screened the German-language version in VOSE.

Not exactly a horror movie but it is very atmospheric, stylish and even beautiful (as vampire films go). Bruno Ganz makes a pretty convincing Jonathan Harker, although after watching the final few minutes you might argue otherwise. Isabelle Adjani shines as Pre-Raphaelitesque Lucy — little wonder that even Count Dracula couldn’t resist. On the contrary, the count himself, played by Klaus Kinski, is little more than an (also stylish, but quite repulsive — complete opposite of Villarías’ Dracula, I say) homage to original Nosferatu. My favourite character, however, is still Renfield, here masterfully portrayed by Roland Topor.

Concerto for Group and Orchestra

by Deep Purple and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold

I first got acquainted with this Jon Lord’s masterpiece (first performed 50 years ago today) in the early 1980s, already being familiar with the rest of the Deep Purple Mark II studio legacy. I had a 19 cm/s audio tape reel recorded from a very scratchy vinyl. There were several skips, most notably during the Ritchie Blackmore’s lenghty solo in the First Movement (Moderato — Allegro), but, as this solo is very repetitive, I didn’t miss much. More annoying for me was the fact that the Second Movement (Andante) was split between the two sides of the LP.

What still amazes me that the score of the Concerto was lost in 1970. How? Was there really just one copy? That Marco de Goeij was able to reconstruct it by listening to the original recording is even more amazing. The result, performed twenty years ago already, could have been great... if you hadn’t heard the original, that is. What was revolutionary in 1969 became a tribute in 1999. Still, worth watching, not least because of great guest musicians, such as Annie Whitehead.

Totem

by Cirque du Soleil

We (Tamara, Timur and I) went yesterday to Meloneras to see Cirque du Soleil on their penultimate day in Gran Canaria. Not just an improvement compared to Dralion five years ago (since retired) but simply an amazing show. Of course, it’s so much better to see circus in Grand Chapiteau rather than in a sports arena. One act (Contortion) was missing from the yesterday’s spectacle but I wouldn’t know it without reading the Wikipedia article. The Scientist’s act (“Appearance is based on Charles Darwin”, Wikipedia says), is a slightly annoying stereotype of what a scientific work entails (playing with colourful test tubes, for example). For me, the three best acts — both performance- and costume-wise — were:

1. Unicycles with Bowls
2. Crystal Ladies
3. Russian Bars

The band and the music were outstanding. What was not so great was overpriced merchandise, food and drink (of which we bought none) but, absurdly and disturbingly, no ice cream. Cirque du Soleil! If you are reading my post, I expect this to be fixed next time you are in Canarias.

Drácula

a film by George Melford

This classic opens the cycle El reflejo del vampiro screened by Filmoteca Canaria. I went to see it yesterday in Teatro Guiniguada without doing any research and expecting an English-language version in VOSE. It turned out to better than that.

The auditorium was lit by blood-red light. A lady wearing mostly black came on stage and gave an introduction to the movie. I wished she talked less, as I started to worry that by the time film finished I’ll have no time (o horror!) for my late-evening shopping in Mercadona. However it was illuminating to discover that we were about to watch an alternative version of the English-language film of the same title. Back in those “pre-dubbing” days, we were told, the Hollywood studios used to produce foreign-language versions of their films using the same sets but different casts. Or at least that was what Universal did, shooting Tod Browning’s Dracula by day and Melford’s Drácula by night, this latter on a significantly smaller budget. This set-up brought some unexpected advantages to the “Spanish” film. The Cordobese actor Carlos Villarías, who played Count Dracula, was the only member of the Spanish-language cast allowed to the set during filming of the English version. However, the “Spanish” crew (keep in mind that George Melford himself spoke no Spanish!) were able to see the “English” dailies and do a better job. The angles and camera movements are said to be more interesting than in English version, the costumes more daring and sexy. Although Villarías was told to copy Bela Lugosi (while Lugosi himself was said to admire work of Villarías), the other actors had no such limitations. The film premiered in mainland Spain in 1931 to great success; ditto in Canary Islands the following year.

Well, the introduction took about 24 minutes, then the movie started. Sure, now, in 2019, I can’t see it as a horror movie at all, more as a comedy. Apart from Villarías and fantastic Lupita Tovar (who passed away in 2016 at the tender young age of 106), I greatly enjoyed the acting of Spaniard Pablo Álvarez Rubio in the role of Renfield.

Dolor y gloria

a film by Pedro Almodóvar

Definitely more Almodóvarey than his previous offering, Julieta, this one seems to be more a work in progress than a finished film: some parts too long, some too short, a few loose ends or stories that could have been continued to everybody’s (or at least mine) satisfaction... The famous but declining film director Pedro Almodóvar Salvador Mallo (portrayed, naturally, by Antonio Banderas), for all his pains and even less glory, left me largely indifferent. The best moments are Mallo’s childhood flashbacks featuring his mum (Penélope Cruz, of course), with cameo appearance of Rosalía. And some of the finest dialogues since Volver.

— Si tú ves algo raro, me llamas.
— Aquí todo es raro.

Pure Almodóvar.