Thursday, March 20th, 2014
In “La Curva” (The Curve, 2011), seen March 16 at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, Galván transforms flamenco dancing’s noble male image. The experience is like watching a painter create a cubist portrait. Except in this case what Galván presents is not a fractured face, but a full-blooded person, with his androgynous, grotesque, buffoonish, and madman characteristics, as well as his regal, virile side.
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Tags: Duchamps, El Bobote, Igor Stravinsky, Inés Bacán, Israel Galván, La Curva, Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, Pace University, Rachel Straus, Rite of Spring, Sylvie Courvoisier, Vaslav Nijinsky, Vicente Escudero
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Friday, January 4th, 2013
Consider this scene. Galván hammers an old upright piano apart with his sputtering footwork. In doing so, he destroys the harmonic integrity of the instrument. When he forces the piano apart, we hear its strings shrieking as they stretch. We see Galván in a deep lunge with his muscular arms working to push the battered object to its breaking point. But the piano doesn’t dissemble. Instead its strings, like Galván’s wiry body, produce a shrill, taut dissonance, one that is awe-inspiring in its intensity. At this moment, the image of the persecuted gypsy becomes real: Galván, stripped of his shirt, dances while caught in a barbed wire fence. His angular, contorted gestures and his sharp, hard footwork eviscerate him as they reveal the unique quality of his dancing, which bends the tradition of the Seville school of flamenco beyond recognition.
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Tags: Belén Maya, Bobote, Caracafé, Chicuelo, David Lagos and Tomás de Perrate, Eloísa Cantón, Flamenco, Isabel Bayón, Israel Galván, Jacques Lacan, Leni Riefenstahl, Lo Real/Le Réel/The Real, Pedro G. Romero, Rachel Straus, Roman, Saville, Sinti, Txiki Berraondom, Uchi
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