During an early pause in the pandemic in 2021, Theatre Flamenco of San Francisco’s Carola Zertuche spent several nights beneath the sheltering night sky of the Wadi Rum desert in southern Jordan. Feeling adrift amid the Milky Way, she sensed each moment stretching into the universe, a transformative experience that she sought to evoke while creating a new, evening-length work.
Theatre Flamenco of San Francisco, the Bay Area’s second-oldest dance company, premiered “Transitar por un Mundo sin Tiempo” (“Passage through a Timeless World”) last year at Herbst Theatre as part of the company’s 57th home season, and reprises the production at ODC Theatre for a four-night run Feb. 8 to 11, rechristened as “Un Mundo sin Tiempo.”
At Herbst, the choreography and décor didn’t evoke the desert so much as a sense of suspended possibility. “You go to this world where anything can happen,” Zertuche said. “Our driver, who brought us out to Wadi Rum, was a kid, eight years old. We were with the people of the desert. At night, with all the stars, the desert is like the ocean. I was very inspired.”
While the Mexican-born Zertuche is a lead dancer, primary choreographer and artistic director of Theatre Flamenco, she’s also a master of weaving guest artists into productions with her company. Devoted to the deep Andalusian roots of flamenco and Gitano culture, she’s not afraid to reach beyond cante jondo (deep song) and traditional steps for sonic sources and movement vocabulary.
The ODC “Timeless World” production “is the one I did in May, but with some changes,” she said, “both in the choreography and the addition of Nol Simonse,” an essential presence on the San Francisco modern dance scene since moving here in 1997. A founding member of Janice Garrett and Dancers, Garrett+Moulton Productions, and Sean Dorsey Dance, Simonse teaches at LINES Dance Center and the Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. Dancers Claudia Delveze and Lea Kobeli are also new to the cast.
As a modern dancer, Simonse is something a wildcard next to Adrian Santana, the Málaga-trained dancer who hails from an illustrious flamenco family. An openly gay dancer in a macho culture, Santana has thrived at home and abroad, and has become something of an ambassador for an art form that is increasingly “more universal,” he said. “It’s from Spain, but everywhere you go, there is flamenco, even the smallest town. I’m very happy to share.”
And, like May’s production, “Timeless World” features a sensational musical cast led by guitarist Juani de la Isla, a prolific Spanish artist with some 200 albums to his credit. De la Isla hails from the island of San Fernando near Cádiz, a flamenco hotbed for generations, and will be joined onstage by Diego Amador Jr., a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist from a celebrated Gitano clan known for melding flamenco with rock, jazz and other idioms. His father is the great flamenco vocalist and pianist Diego Amador, and his uncles, Raimundo and Rafael, founded the groundbreaking 1980s flamenco blues band Pata Negra.
With trumpeter Mario Silva, electric guitarist Roberto Aguilar, and Pascual Martinez on electronics, the score for “Timeless World” is both evocatively atmospheric and intensely in the moment, answering flamenco’s imperative to inspire and respond to the conversation of the dance.
Big Joe Hits the Road at the Make Out Room
The Make Out Room is holding an all-day farewell fundraiser Sunday to send off Mission District bassist Joe Lewis, who’s relocating to Tennessee next week. “Big Joe’s Hasta la Pasta” features an appropriately sprawling roster for an artist who’s helped define the local scene since the 1990s as a player, promoter, and booker who kept Revolution Café humming during its heyday. Running from 3 p.m. to midnight, the program includes Michael Musica, The Light Switches, Indianna Hale, Assateague, Zeb Zaitz, fpodbpod, Vox Tremolo, The Willows and Foxtails Brigade.
“Joe is a Bay Area icon,” said Foxtails guitarist, vocalist and composer Laura Weinbach. “He’s played in so many different bands and art projects over the years.” When she and violinist Anton Patzner first expanded Foxtails Brigade from a duo to a larger ensemble, “he was the first bassist we ever had.”
Multi-reed player David Boyce continues his semi regular Friday residency at Medicine for Nightmares with a particularly exciting cast of special guests, including drummer Marshall Trammel, and two Bens from Berkeley who’ve been collaborating widely together in recent months, clarinetist Ben Goldberg and cellist Ben Davis. The program also features experimental-minded bassist Kumi Maxson’s Quartet.
