Review: Flamenco Passion

Flamenco and Valentine's Day aren't the most likely bedfellows: the Spanish dance trades off noisy, sweat-soaked aggression, the saint's day simmers in tenderness. This highly entertaining crossover programme, however, did a great job of marrying those emotional extremes in , featuring the artistry of dancers Rosana Romero and Adrián Santana (right), the conceptual and choreographic vision of Nina Corti, and the guitar skills of Yago Santos.

Santos set a restrained, solo-spot atmosphere, opening with , his own traditional-style composition. By the end of the evening, even conductor Jean Thorel was front of stage, sensually entwining arms with Romero, who had teased him out into a 15-minute party of flamenco encores, castanets to the fore. Thorel may have gone crimson with embarrassment, but he wasn't half bad with his version of twerking.

In between came a pair of Spanish-themed orchestral works serving as backdrops for the dancers' interpretations of the scores. Many composers have tried their hand at assembling a synopsis of Bizet's opera . The 45-minute suite by Rodion Shchedrin for strings and percussion isn't among the best. However, it was a good choice for Romero and Santana's graphic distillation of the plot, the percussiveness of the flamenco footwork readily grafted itself onto the rather basic orchestrations. The dancers exercised a complete command of the stage.

The execution was tight both between themselves and with the orchestra, responding imaginatively to the inflections of the music. It wasn't the orchestra's finest hour, however, with many instances of poor intonation in the strings and a marimba highlight that nearly came unstuck.