London’s 2025 Flamenco Festival ended at Sadler’s Wells East last night not with some traditional flamenco (that had featured in the rest of the festival at Sadler’s Wells and the Lilian Baylis Studio for the past eleven days or so) but with Estévez/Pãnos y comapañia’s experimental piece Retablo experimental sobre el baile flamenco which translated into English means Experimental Flamenco Dance Altarpiece and experimental it certainly is.
There are five (all male) dancers: Rafael Estévez, Valeriano Paños, Alberto Sellés, Jorge Morera and Manuel Montes and Sellés also sings. There are six distinct pieces: “Meter los Pies, Nondedéu, Reflexión, Café, El cuaderno de Félix Fernández and Silencio absoluto, which utilises the dancers in various combinations either solo or in duos. In three of the pieces, Sellés sings and in other pieces, one of the other performers does some interesting calling out in Spanish whilst in others, the dancers make their accompaniment with their feet – oh and there’s the occasional use of a kazoo, triangle and chairs – this is flamenco but not as we know it! The dancing, apart from traditional flamenco, features contemporary dance and also hip-hop and street dancing – always interesting and often surprising. The pieces are short – the whole performance is just seventy minutes or so and there’s always something aural and visual to keep the audience stimulated.
In the programme notes it states “Five men who dance and are nourished by abstraction, improvisation, learning, living and dreaming. A synaesthetic experience of foot tapping, singing, flamenco dancing, ballet and silence!” and that’s exactly what it is and the new(ish) Sadler’s Wells East is the perfect place to see this kind of production.
Retablo experimental sobre el baile flamenco is an interesting way to end a flamenco festival, being that it’s not exactly what you’d expect, but it certainly whetted the appetite for what might be coming in 2026.
Review by Alan Fitter
Estévez and Paños, joined by Alberto Sellés, Jorge Morera, and Manuel Montes, draw inspiration from the classical flamenco dance form, the bodily expression of a cantaor (flamenco singer) transformed into movement, and the historic dialogues between artists.
In this daring exploration, they reinterpret the sounds of two radios playing simultaneously, transforming them into distinct rhythms. The dancers embody rhythm machines, transmitting and transforming the legacy of flamenco’s historical figures—patriarchs, apostles, and prophets of the art. Their zapateado shifts seamlessly from gentle to ferocious, from ritualistic to frenzied.
They celebrate the union of tradition and vanguard, the orthodox and the experimental, the interplay of cante (song) and baile (dance), and the convergence of body and soul, past and present. This performance invites audiences to experience flamenco as never before: a fusion of zapateado, song, dance, silence, and pure expression – a vibrant tribute to the ever-evolving art of flamenco.
Retablo experimental sobre el baile flamenco
Sadler’s Wells East
Presented as part of the 2025 Flameco Festival
8 June 2025
