LO QUE DUERME EN EL CUERPO DE LOS GITANOS

the truth, to admit it from the beginning, is that i didn’t do my (any) research. and my excuse, to allow myself at least the one for having admitted the truth from the beginning, is that i thought i’d have more than enough time to myself in lebrija to discover something appropriately historical or to wander myself into an interesting anecdote. but the truth is that i needed something, because i hadn't done much investigation into the show. and i should have had all night, because the last train from lebrija for sevilla leaves nightly at nine fifteen (fifteen minutes before the show was scheduled to start), and the first one out on a saturday morning wouldn't have come for me until seven fifty-four. the night didn't, however, end up as i'd foreseen it, because i was offered at seat in a car at (almost exactly) the eleventh hour of the night before. of course, i was happy at the prospect of company, and also for the excuse -- and i let my nursing a sore throat that found me off my guard on friday morning and threatened my passing of the night with excitement (company or not) excuse me from buckling down to any research before i needed to meet my ride at the arch of the macarena at seven. the truth is...something like that.

and of course i wasn't at all unhappy when my ride turned out to be the angolese portuguesa to whom i was introduced (as a friend of hers) the night that i met lakshmi. (maybe it was because i'd left her that night expecting to see her again sooner than later that, when i didn't, i expected that i might not see her again.) but she was the one who got out of the driver's seat of the car that pulled up next to the arch, in front of the basilica. she then got on her phone to find out what none of the rest of us did, which, outside of a bus or a train car, was the way to lebrija.

the way seemed clear enough, though, for the person with whom she had a brief conversation in portuguese, and it wasn't too much past seven thirty when we crossed the river on our way out of town and made our way onto the highway. from there, i can't say exactly how long it took us to arrive at our destination, but it's about an hour by train, and i think it must have taken us about the same. i thought we'd arrived earlier when i saw that church lit up on the hill above that town just off the highway to the left. that was about where we exited, but then we took a road that veered off to the right and left what, from the road signs i could see, i took to be las cabezas de san juan behind us.

it didn't seem that anyone in the car had been to lebrija before, so when we arrived a dozen or so minutes later, we didn't know either which way it was to the theater. and after we did find it, it turned out that we didn't see much of the city other than what was on the path between it and the car, although it was possible to see a lighted minaret of pre-reconquista arab design from road that sloped upwards from a larger plaza to where a crowd was gathered around the box office. i probably wasn't incorrect to assume that it was smaller than the giralda, but i hadn't done any research, and that vista, which i could see during my wait with the group in front of the theater and then saw briefly again on my way out, was all of the geographical history of lebrija that i got.

but there's definitely a strong gitano tradition in the city, and there was a beautiful history excerpted on the front of the programs for the show, "zarabanda: lo que duerme en el cuerpo de los gitanos." i'd missed the homenaje in jerez the previous friday (although jerez seems to like to throw those and there will surely be others), but i hadn't any idea about the singer who was being tributed and had been mostly enticed by the idea of staying with the family of a friend. i did, however, know of lakshmi, even from before coming to andalucía, and had, even, met her on that one occasion (or rather had introduced myself after recognizing her by reputation), and it was her show that was being given in lebrija. or, at least, it was lakshmi that most of the people that i recognized from sevilla seemed to be in lebrija to see.

unfortunately, i can't tell you much about the dancer herself. (no research.) but i do know, beautiful program histories aside, that she isn't gitano. she's from san diego maybe? that seems right when try to remember what people told me about the workshops she gave in portland. other than that she was gorgeous. and that she was, gitano or not, for her show in lebrija. the singing and the guitar and the percussion should be as closely followed as the dancing in any flamenco show, but it's still usually the diva that steals the show when she's on the stage. granted, the standing ovation started when the older man who had set the scene for each segment of the show with his spirited narrations took his bow, but only lakshmi took a bouquet -- and i doubt that anyone else's could have been bigger.

that isn't, however, to say that she didn't earn it. gitano or not, lakshmi does seem to know what sleeps inside the gitanos' collective body. or, maybe i was just been taken by the exotic charm of the program -- or should be giving more credit to the stagecrafters and the directors. but, with all due credit given, the spirit of the show still moved essentially through the dance, which every other element was designed to showcase in a cycle of segments that moved the dancer through a full array of moods and styles but placed her at the end of her soleá in exactly the same spot as where she had begun the sigueriyas amid the storm that opened the show.

the zarabanda was arguably the most gitano of the dances, and lakshmi's adornments and phrasing for that segment were the most similar to the picture of the dancing woman on the eighteenth century advertisement for "Bayles de JITANOS" reproduced on the program. nonetheless -- and maybe even a bit ironically -- it was the alegrias that best demonstrated lakshmi's talent for interpreting flamenco as a form in general. her footwork sections weren't anything to criticize, but despite the (expectedly) spirited tempo of the percussion and the song, lakshmi danced the dance almost subtly, although the overall essence of her interpretation might be better described as simply controlled -- and impeccably -- to imply that no movement or set of movements was allowed any special explosion, even as, at the same time, nothing was held back. and the dance's captivating synthesis -- by way of its seeming contradictions -- with the music was nowhere more visible than in the simple but careful movements of lakshmi's shoulders and hips as she made her way through her paseos, defiantly compliant with the style of the palo.

so i was only expecting the best when, near the end of the soleá that closed the show, lakshmi fell. which is to say that i didn't recognize the fall when i saw it, especially for lakshmi's quick recovery which, as the friend who confirmed to me after the show that the dancer had in fact fallen pointed out, was a physical feat unto itself and executed perfectly in compas at that.

and that is what must be sleeping inside the body of the gitanos. or else it probably came out at the reception after the show (for the artists, friends, family and anyone who'd come from sevilla apparently), or at the juerga that followed the reception in the same reception space in the restaurant behind the theater. it was obvious, at least, that whatever sleeps inside the gitanos sleeps during the day. after we'd had our fino and had a wary laugh over deciding that any one of the displaced or expatriated of our group could easily be the spy, we waved goodbye to the bit of lebrija to which we'd become acquainted and headed back to sevilla by the still unfamiliar road by which we'd come.

from what i'd seen, i wouldn't have had any easy time finding my way into an anecdote after three thirty en lebrija, but the new flamenco club in triana was full when we got there sometime after four. the portuguesa wondered how long the place would be around after our interaction with the bar staff, but later it seemed certain that our drinks were paying for the sharply dressed security crew which did end up breaking up a fight and ejecting one patron in the after after hours, about a half an hour before the lights came on and everyone had to leave. thankfully, the night itself had the consideration not to break into daylight until after the breakfast group had gone on its way and the windows were shuttered, twenty minutes or so from when my train would pull in from lebrija.