La Luna Roja: Flamenco on fire

La Luna Roja (The Red Moon) rises again as the impassioned flamenqueras of Centro Flamenco collaborating with top Spanish dancers and musicians gear up to enthrall Filipino audiences once more this November.

Jamil and Alba professing their love for each other.

It wasn’t too long ago — in November of 2017, to be exact — when the Philippines’ first full-length flamenco ballet La Luna Roja debuted on the Manila stage. It was a rousing success, and its creators are thrilled to present it again on 23 and 24 November at the RCBC Theater.

La Luna Roja choreographer and librettist Emma Estrada, who is also one of the country’s outstanding flamenco dancers and teachers and the founder of Centro Flamenco, is still excited recounting how the first La Luna Roja was received so enthusiastically then. “La Luna Roja, a flamenco tale of love, loss and redemption, was thrilling to create, choreograph, teach and, as its creator, rewarding to watch,” she relates. “Given how my students rose up to the challenges of 2017, I am excited and eager to see what the cast will bring to the 2019 performance.”

Estrada teams up again with lauded stage director and actor Leo Rialp for this production. Respected Spanish artists led by Javier Martos, who also played the lead role in 2017, are flying in again to perform in the show.

La Luna Roja 2017 was a sensorial treat for flamenco enthusiasts, and for dance and theater aficionados. So many elements made it a show to remember: the visual spectacle; the unlikely story of a cursed village of beautiful women and the star-crossed lovers; the intense and riveting choreography; the haunting, throbbing music of the Spanish musicians; the passionate dancing of both the Spanish male dancers and the mostly female dancers of Centro Flamenco.

It was a pity it only had two shows back then, and in this restaging, there will be two shows as well. Both Estrada and director Rialp are happily tweaking the piece, putting in changes and improvements in a show that is already amazing to begin with.

First, a quick overview of the story. A sorceress (played by respected theater actress Tami Monsod), enraged by the suicide of her son Adrian as a result of getting spurned by the village beauty Aydanamara, puts a curse on the entire village. All the women are doomed to desire and then murder all the men who come into the village whenever the red moon rises — a curse that can only be broken by a selfless act of true love. The story gets more exciting when Jamil enters the village and falls in love with lovely, innocent Alba. Alba falls in love with him in turn and in her attempt to save him from death, she ends up dying in his stead and in the hands of her sister Aryana at that.

All this is told via flamenco dancing and music that are both beautiful and painful to behold and to listen to — in the passion, rawness, power and “all the tangled, frayed emotions that accompany flamenco,” describes Estrada.

La Luna Roja was first staged in 2012 as a short ballet, the second half of Centro Flamenco’s annual show. The 2017 restaging went from a condensed version to a full-blown story. Estrada again collaborated with director Rialp and added to the mix Spanish flamenco artists for the full-length version of the ballet. She mainly collaborated with Javier Martos, who played La Luna Roja’s main protagonist Jamil, and who also choreographed several dances for the ballet. Martos is a renowned flamenco artist and a professor of the flamenco school Carmen de las Cuevas in Granada. Other Spanish artists who performed were flamenco guitarists Ruben Campos and Alejandro Alcaraz, percussionist Jose Cortes, singer Sergio Gomez and dancer Isaac Barbero. These same artists are set to perform again this November, except for Alcaraz and Gomez. Alejandro Lujan will be the show’s new cantaor.

La Luna Roja played to two full-house audiences and to rave reviews in November 2017. It was praised for its “unique plotline,” its “raw energy” and “outpouring of emotion” and for the intense and beautiful choreography and the artistry of the dancers.

Estrada speaks in more detail of the first run: “Leo and I realized early on the daunting task of creating a full ballet, especially since we had invited Spanish performers to perform with our Filipino cast. However, I knew my students were up to the challenge. Every rehearsal, I had to call on them to let go, to dig deep and find emotions they had hidden inside themselves. It was not an easy task, but I’m proud to say that by the day of the show, the students had been replaced by performers.”

She continues, “After the performance, there is a lot of time for reflection. While you revel in everything that went right, you make a mental list of all the things you could have done better. Restaging La Luna Roja gives me and Leo a chance to take that list and make it a reality.”

For his part, Rialp recounts, “We told the story well, the performers did well, and I liked the choreography of Emma. There were points that should have been tightened, but I liked the effects, the sets, the whole visual. In general, I thought it was a very fine show.”

But, of course, he had ideas for the next run even then. “I wished we had more rehearsals with the Spanish performers, with Javier and the cantaor, as it would have been tighter if we did. And we were rushing the love scenes because we had very little time. Even technically, I wish we had more time in the theater. For a dance drama, there were so many elements that we forced into it. It should have been much simpler, and we are now clearing up the story.”

This year’s restaging of La Luna Roja promises to be as delightful and moving as the first. And the artistic forces behind it are raring to fill in whatever gaps and imperfections they deemed the first production to have had.

“Now I can fine tune La Luna Roja and shape the ballet into what I imagined it to be,” says Estrada. “We will make the sequences of the story and the story-telling clearer,” adds Rialp. “I want to make it feel more urgent, thrilling and exciting.”

Speaking of the dancers, Estrada relates: “Every staging of La Luna Roja is a challenge to both our seasoned and new dancers. The seasoned members of the corps de ballet are tasked with deepening their relationship with their characters and mastering their individual roles. I have also invited some young dancers to be part of the corps de ballet, and while it’s exciting to see their enthusiasm and the new and unique outlook on their characters, it is my role as their choreographer to push these young dancers to go beyond just learning the steps to accepting the raw emotions of flamenco and, more importantly, being vulnerable enough to reveal these emotions onstage.”

Fans of the first performance can expect interesting tweaks to both the story and choreography. New audiences, for their part, should expect the unexpected. “To our new audience who haven’t seen La Luna Roja before, we hope they come with an open mind ready to take in new experiences,” says Estrada. “This is a ballet born from a fairy tale, not unlike Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty. However, this a fairy tale created for flamenco, so they should be prepared for the unexpected — don’t look for sugar plum fairies and a prince to save the day, you won’t find these creatures in our ballet.”

Rialp speaks more about the Filipino flavor that audiences can appreciate about the production. “The flamenco that we will do, because we’re Filipinos, although we bow to the elements of Spain, it will necessarily be different from that of Spain,” he points out. “It is inevitable that our sensibilities will fuse with the traditional Spanish flamenco. It will contain the basic elements of flamenco — we don’t want to get out of that — but we will add to its language. I think that’s a healthy sign for the art of flamenco.”

The sorceress puts a spell and curses the village.

This is the first time Centro Flamenco will be restaging this ballet since being accredited by Escuela de Flamenco (EFA), a prestigious organization in the world of flamenco professional training, renowned nationally and internationally. “This year’s performance under the banner of EFA as their official Philippine delegate is both an honor and an invitation for Centro Flamenco to dance at a level higher than ever before,” says Estrada.

Audiences are clearly in for another visual and emotional treat with La Luna Roja 2019. The red moon can’t rise fast enough for dance and theater aficionados eagerly awaiting this fiery flamenco ballet to return to the stage in November.

La Luna Roja runs on 23 November, Saturday, 8 p.m. and 24 November, Sunday, 3 p.m. at the Carlos P. Romulo Theater, RCBC Building, Makati City. Buy your tickets, priced at P2,000, P1,500 and P1,000 at Ticketworld. La Luna Roja is presented by Centro Flamenco and Megaworld Corporation, with special thanks to Passion Arts, Subic Homes and MAC Cosmetics.