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ARTS
ARTS Flamenco veteran savours a return to the stage
by Charlie Smith
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Flamenco dancer and choreographer Veronica Maguire is feeling extremely happy these days, notwithstanding a pandemic that has delivered a devastating blow to live entertainment during the past 19 months. That’s because her Victoria-based company, Alma de España Flamenco, is getting ready for its first full-length theatrical production since COVID-19 emerged in Canada. It’s called Familia, which seems appropriate, given that her son, Gareth Owen, plays guitar and his wife, Denise Yeo, will be dancing with her.
Other than a very small show in a seniors residence in Victoria, this upcoming performance at the Vancouver International Flamenco Festival is the first time that Alma de España Flamenco will be on-stage in a theatre.
“This will be a real treat for us,” Maguire told the Straight by phone from Victoria. “Preparing for this show has been a godsend for us, really.”
Maguire has been operating the Alma de España Flamenco school in Victoria for nearly 30 years. One of its faculty members, Amity Skala, will be dancing in the show, which will also feature legendary Vancouver flamenco singer Oscar Nieto.
“I’ve got a full cast,” Maguire said with satisfaction. “Oscar is doing some wonderful things with the show. He’s going to be
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Veronica Maguire (foreground) has been dancing and teaching flamenco for decades, so it was rough on her when the pandemic put an end to live performances. Photo by Lori Garcia-Meredith.
info & tickets — seizieme.ca singing a special piece that I’ve done with him in the past.”
She readily acknowledged that the pandemic has been really rough on her, and not only because it has deprived her of opportunities to choreograph and dance in front of audiences. It’s also had an impact on her as a flamenco instructor.
This folkloric music and dance, which blossomed in southern Spain in the 19th century, is highly interactive. The “cuadro” form involves hand-clapping (also known as palmas), dancing, guitar work, and singing all coming together in a communal atmosphere.
“Flamenco is so people-oriented; it’s totally interactive,” Maguire said.
She resorted to teaching flamenco on Zoom, and she’s pleased that a handful of very dedicated students stuck with her.
“I didn’t know what I would have done without them,” Maguire said. “It kept me going. But it was hard to actually get the flamenco going on Zoom.
“Now we’re in class, it feels so much better,” she continued. “I taught a couple of classes today. Everyone is so happy. So happy.”
Maguire never knew that she would become so enamoured with flamenco when she was studying dance at Ryerson University. It was only after she attended York University that she began embracing this art form, in part because she could pick up the choreography very quickly. She joined the Paula Moreno Spanish Dance Company in Toronto and has maintained her love of flamenco ever since.
In 1985, Maguire met her husband, guitarist Harry Owen, who was from Vancouver. Their son Gareth was born in Toronto, and the family moved to Victoria in 1990, where they founded Alma de España Flamenco.
Harry Owen was an outstanding flamenco guitarist and devoted instructor who died in 2010. His passion for this music lives on through his son Gareth, who now has several students, including 24-year-old flamenco guitar sensation Iminah Kani. She performed at the Vancouver International Flamenco Festival earlier this month.
Maguire said that she’s very proud of her son, who also plays traditional flamenco music, like his dad. “Some of the stuff he’s done is his own interpretation as well,” she stated. “A lot of it is based on traditional melodies and he has also put in his own flair.”
Her daughter-in-law, Yeo, is no slouch either. Not only is she on the faculty of the family’s dance company and school, but she has also trained with many international flamenco artists. In 2017, Yeo cofounded Palabra Flamenco, which integrates traditional flamenco with English-language poetry and storytelling. Her show, La Palabra en el Tiempo, appeared at several fringe festivals, including Vancouver’s. At the school, she teaches choreography and palmas.
According to Maguire, flamenco is an art form that attracts a wide variety of people—and they’re no longer just the Roma people and Spaniards living in Andalusia, where it became so popular more than a century ago.
“We are the foreigners of flamenco,” Maguire quipped. “And we are the ones who keep flamenco alive!” g
ARTS Shakespeare polarizes characters in Done/Undone
by Charlie Smith
males played by Gallant. In one scene, he plays a fictional academic, Martin Gibeaux, who is actually highly critical of Shakespeare. Here, he debates a pro-Shakespeare academic character, Anaad Prewal, portrayed by Sandhu, who delivers an articulate defence of The Taming of the Shrew and Shakespeare’s female characters.
In addition, Sandhu plays the bard himself, explaining in a rather egotistical way why his plays are so important and why he put the audience at the centre of everything he wrote.
When the Straight asked Besworth what the two actors brought to their multiple roles, she paused for a moment.
“Charlie is my partner,” she replied. “It’s hard to have perspective on that, to be quite honest, but I would say he brings deep humanity to every role he plays. And an incredible work ethic. He’s so rigorous with his process and with his text.”
As for Sandhu, Besworth described her as “magical on-screen and on-stage”.
Besworth was already planning to write a play for both of them when the idea came up of two academics debating Shakespeare’s relevance.
“They were right on the ground level of it, for sure,” she said, “and then carving characters knowing them was such a wonderful process as a writer.” g
Done/Undone is available on-demand at BardontheBeach.org until September 30.
Charlie Gallant (left) and Harveen Sandhu play a multitude of characters in Kate Besworth’s Done/Undone (directed by Arthi Chandra), a documentary about Shakespeare’s tricky legacy.
The 38 plays and 150 poems by William Shakespeare are at the heart of the western canon. According to Kate Besworth, who wrote a film called Done/Undone about Shakespeare’s legacy for Bard on the Beach, there are 21 Shakespeare-oriented theatre companies in Canada.
“I would say we are taught from an early age in Canada in this country to venerate Shakespeare as kind of a symbol of western literature,” Besworth told the Straight in a recent phone interview.
But does his work merit such high regard, given how women and racial and religious minorities are portrayed in his plays? That question lies at the heart of Done/Undone, which was directed by Arthi Chandra and features actors Charlie Gallant and Harveen Sandhu, playing a variety of characters.
“The objective was to get people excited about thinking critically,” Besworth said. “I really didn’t want to prescribe a solution or even prescribe an opinion to the audience. I wanted them to come away with a balanced argument on both sides in terms of pro-Shakepeare and anti-Shakespeare. But I wanted them to have their own conversations about it and to, hopefully, take this kind of critical lens and apply it to all of the things that we enjoy and elevate and idealize in our society.”
At one point in Done/Undone, Sandhu’s character named Isabella, who is speaking to the audience after her performance in Measure for Measure, bluntly declares that Othello was not a “real Black man”.
“He’s a white man’s idea of Blackness,” she says. “He’s an idea, not a person.”
It’s a riveting moment. In fact, Besworth relied on accounts of academic works of female artists and scholars of colour in writing this and other provocative ideas expressed by Isabella in this scene in the film.
“One of the really exciting parts for me in crafting this was doing all of this academic research and understanding that academics—and female academics of colour, especially—have been looking at this over the last 20 years,” Besworth said. Her goal was to bring their theories and ideas forward in an accessible and entertaining way. In a similar vein, there is one scene entitled “Übersetzung”, which is the German word for “translation”, presented in a style of theatre known as German Expressionism. Standing on a box on a spare stage, Sandhu delivers highly misogynistic lines from several of the Bard’s plays with an English accent over a haunting background score. Each time she does this, Gallant follows up by explaining in a German accent what Shakespeare was actually writing in contemporary language. The words are full of hate and contempt for women. Some of these lines were taken from The Taming of the Shrew, which is one of Shakespeare’s more controversial plays. Originally written as a comedy, nowadays it’s often presented in a more critical way, according to Besworth. “My question is: do we need to keep using this material or can we make something new of it?” Besworth asked. Yet the film also contains stirring praise for Shakespeare—and not only by white
– Done/Undone’s Isabella on Othello
