Noche Flamenca at the Aotea Centre

By BERNADETTE RAE

A dark stage reflects the dark background of the people who first performed flamenco.

Who those people were has become confused with the passage of time, but far-wandering gypsies from India and Pakistan were certainly included alongside the Arabs and Jews who also left their mark on the early culture of southern Spain.

The gypsies' profound suffering, a pent-up hatred of the persecution to which they were subjected and a constant conversation with death fuels this flamenco - song, dance and guitar. And Noche Flamenca, a leading exponent of the art, visiting from Madrid, presents it in all its raw passion.

The company has five dancers, two singers and two musicians, and they perform with a remarkable simplicity.

No tricks, gimmicks or stage dressings distract from the sounds and the movement. None is needed.

The lithe bodies of the two male and three female dancers are visual decoration enough as they whirl and stamp, glide and strut, the men in skin-skimming trousers, shirts and sometimes vests, the women similarly silhouetted until the magnificent frills and flounces of their costumes swirl with marvellous fluidity from around their thighs.

It is a dance of extreme tension, in both its serious or "jondo" and lighter, or "chico" forms.

The women carry their shoulders high, chins jutting forward with the intensity of their passion. The tension arches spines, thrusts hips at provocative angles, tautens bellies and thighs.

Wrists arch and fingers writhe their own complex messages, equally seductive and despairing.

And their feet! For it is the incredible rhythm and syncopation of flamenco that has propelled the art form with such popularity into the 21st century.

The incredible rhythm begins in the hand clapping that frequently introduces a new item.

It is there in the virtuoso guitars, in the voices and in every cell of the dancers' bodies.

It follows such complex patterns that a solo performance is fantastic, but the co-ordination of several performers, playing or singing or dancing, and always perfectly on it, is beyond comprehension.

It is primal. And it is profound.

Standing ovation territory.