New Flamenco Dance Drama DVD
The story of Petenera as it has never been told before.
Music Film Factor has just produced a new flamenco DVD with two hours of previously unreleased live performances featuring Seville's acclaimed maestro Jose Galvan and California's flamenco dancer Elena Marlowe." Petenera - A Flamenco Drama in Music and Dance" is a unique collection of traditional flamenco repertory as it is seldom performed today. It includes a 26-minute dramatic account of the suffering and loneliness of Andalusia's femme fatale Petenera who has haunted flamenco lore for over 500 years. An hour of additional solos complete the main program as it was performed only twice at Santa Rosa's Jackson Theatre in California in 2004. There are bonus tracks of historic performances recorded live at Sonoma's Sebastiani Theatre and Planete Andalucia in Paris, France as well as an interview with the choreographer and the music director.
The NTSC and PAL versions are both available now online at Music Film Factor's website that faithfully reflects the DVD's design and includes clips for previewing here (in English, Spanish, French and German). Limited editions will also be on sale at Flamenco Arts' August 24 concert featuring Jose Galvan at Wells Fargo Center for the Arts. For tickets and information, click here.
"Petenera - A Flamenco Drama in Music and Dance" is not your standard flamenco DVD. Its exclusive packaging makes it a collector's item: an elegant cardboard Digipack with a 16-page, full-color Spanish-English booklet for liner note lovers and a beautifully printed DVD - the kind of object you'll want to slide into the shelf alongside your most treasured books. The recording and editing faithfully transfer breathtaking performances to the screen and succeed in perpetuating Elena Marlowe's and Robin Brown's remarkable artistic achievements as seen through the eyes of Robin's own European film-maker son Michael Brown. It is story-telling in its true form that faithfully reflects flamenco arts' endeavor to pull the audience out of their seat and transport them through centuries of flamenco history.
Both versions have been pressed in a limited edition of one thousand each.