Botched "Ecce Homo" Courtesy of Wiki Commons

“Despite Good Intentions,” states the headline of a New York Times piece about the elderly woman in Spain who performed an amateur “restoration” of a century-old church fresco, “a Fresco in Spain Is Ruined.” Good intentions or not, the woman destroyed a priceless, irreplaceable work of art.

80-year-old Cecilia Gimenez took to the more than 100-year-old representation of Jesus in a church in the town of Borja to “repair” the image, which had partially succumbed to moisture on the church walls, reports the Times. 

Would the subject of her intentions be so thoroughly broached if she were, say, a middle-aged amateur painter who brazenly took to the fresco, armed only with paints and her own ego? Would we be discussing her “Surprisingly Avant-Garde Results,” as Art Info describes, for which she is all but entirely unapologetic?

To suggest Gimenez’s actions are whimsically ignorant is to infantilize someone who knew full well what she was doing, what the piece represented and her own abilities (or lack thereof). She was not a child who unknowingly went at the piece with crayons, though that’s what the final product suggested.

Art Info details the result: “The direction of his eyes has shifted to a preposterous angle, down and to the left towards the beholder, rather than looking to the upper right. The nose is flattened like that of an African mask. Next to the chimp-like headgear, the new painting’s mouth is potentially the strangest alteration: The jaw appears slack with Jesus’s tongue seemingly sticking out in either lifelessness or mockery. All in all, what was a minor work of traditional iconography has become a masterpiece of contemporary surrealism.”

A masterpiece? Contemporary surrealism? She did not merely touch the painting up, she completely altered its appearance. While there is undeniably humor to the situation, to paint Gimenez’s act as excusable or sweetly naive because of her age is to engage in ageism, and ageism is damaging to society. She had the presence of mind to pre-meditate and carry out the act, and we must not react as though she were an infant.

Instances of art vandalism are harshly punished, whatever the person’s intentions. Earlier this year, a man walked up to a 1929 Picasso in Houston, and flagrantly spray-painted it. He was an artist, making an artistic statement, reports the art blog Hyperallergic.com.

The man then released a manifesto, detailing the purpose behind his actions: “I dedicate this to all the people out there who have suffered for any injustice of every kind. To those abused by their loved ones. For those abused by their government. For those who were abused by organized religion. And to Picasso from artist to artist. The beast is meant to be conquered. Picasso loved bullfighting because he knew at the end of the dance, someone had to die and on the day it was his turn.”

The 22-year-old was later charged with criminal mischief and felony graffiti, reported the Houston Press. 

Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana on the Upper West Side is a not-for-profit group whose vision is to bring the many styles of classical and modern Spanish dance into the limelight. The dance company, over the course of 30 years, has become one of the most prominent flamenco groups in NYC and the nation and has performed in countries such as Spain and Colombia.

Flamenco Vivo is known for presenting theatrical dance spectacles such as Burlador, based on the Don Juan legend, but the company performs classic Spanish dances, as well.

The company’s most recent project was the “Flamenco in the Boros” tour, which ran in mid-April. It featured professionals from the U.S. and Spain performing traditional flamenco dancing alongside students at multiple venues across New York City.

At Casita Maria in the Bronx, the company performed the stunning “Seguiriya,” a slow dance designed to instill a feeling melancholy within the viewer.

The dancers, Leslie Roybal, Laura Peralta and Isabel del Dia, brandished scarves called mantones, which are emblazoned with many colors and patterns. These were swung around with hypnotizing intensity as the dancers dipped and swayed. The dancers twirled to the twanging guitar of Jed Miley, who laid the foundation for the beautiful voice of Barbara Martinez.

The “Flamenco in the Boros” event in particular is part of a celebration to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the group’s illustrious history.

“We are very excited that our flamenco company was able to make it 30 years,” said Carlota Santana, the founder and artistic director of the program, who is recognized throughout the flamenco world and is a member of the faculty at Duke University. “We were the first dance studio made by flamencos for flamencos in NYC.”

Flamenco Vivo’s mission began in 1983 when renowned dancers Roberto Lorca and Santana started the Spanish Dance Arts Company as a way to present the world of flamenco outside of the dance clubs.

“We wanted to bring flamenco out of the clubs and make it theatrical,”said Santana.

She explained that flamenco was popular in the early ’80s, which set the scene for Santana and Lorca to open the company. Their aim was nurturing the growth of flamenco and Hispanic culture, teaching the dance styles to those interested in performing and providing a stage for existing professionals in the U.S. and Spain to come and showcase their talents in New York City.

Unfortunately, in 1987, Lorca’s life was cut short by AIDS, but Santana persevered and continued to welcome dancers of all skill levels with open arms. Santana said she has seen “people from all walks of life taking classes—the young and old, and men and women alike.”

The company engages in community outreach programs and has also lent its talents to several of city’s public schools, where they teach dance instructors, Santana said. Participants will study, get the history and culture, and learn how to integrate the art into their basic course standards, according to Santana.

The company has two bases of operation— the NYC location and one in North Carolina—and Santana looks forward to “raising the next generation of flamenco dancers.”

For more information, call 212-736-4499 or visit flamenco-vivo.org.

By Valerie Gladstone

The Barcelona Ballet company in Pálpito.

Many great ballet dancers dream of starting their own companies, though few get the opportunity. Even as he performed with American Ballet Theater, Angel Corella was plotting to establish a ballet company in his native Spain.

Unlike most European countries, Spain had never been able to sustain a first-rate ballet troupe and ballet school, forcing Spanish dancers who wanted a career in ballet to leave home to make their names. “Even though many of us have loved performing with the great companies of the world,” he says recently, “we miss Spain and bringing the art to our people.”

Corella went about the formidable task with determination, first establishing a foundation to support classical ballet in 2001 and slowly building enthusiasm among potential supporters and the government. By 2008, he had fulfilled his dream and was awarded a base in a small town near Segovia, not too far from Madrid.

The Corella Ballet started touring Europe—and the United States, most importantly—winning a strong Spanish following almost overnight. But last year, with Spain suffering from a severe economic recession, he lost his original backing. Undaunted, he found support in Barcelona, and in February, the Corella Ballet became the Barcelona Ballet.

Within two weeks, it had sold out the city’s historic Gran Teatre de Liceu. “Audiences were standing up and cheering at the end of our performances,” he says. “Over and over again, people came up to me and said, ‘Thank you for bringing ballet to our city.’”

When he brings his company to New York City Center April 17-20, Corella hopes for the same enthusiastic response.

Certainly the repertory should please. He will dance with the company in Clark Tippet’s Bruch Violin Concerto and bring back Soléa, the hit flamenco-influenced ballet from 2010. “It’s such uplifting choreography,” he says. “It’s like a bomb exploding on stage.” But what gets him really excited is talking about Christopher Wheeldon’s For 4.

“I have such amazing men dancers now,” he says. “Their turns and jumps are unbelievable. It’s a great showcase for male dancing.”

Then there’s Pálpito, by Ángel Rojas and Carlos Rodríguez, a dance that combines classical ballet and traditional Spanish dance.

And how does Corella feel about moving from a sleepy village in the countryside to Barcelona? “I didn’t mind the peacefulness of the country,” he says. “But my dancers much prefer this elegant, exciting city, and the most important thing is to keep them happy. If they’re content, we are assured of success.”
Barcelona Ballet performs April 17-20 on the Main Stage at New York City Center, 131 W. 55th St., 212-581-1212, www.nycitycenter.org. 

By Gregory Solman

Despite the persevering earnestness of filmmaker Emilio Estevez, The Way wanders off a well-trodden path down too many dead ends to find the epiphany it seeks.

Dispirited and dour company among the golf buddies of his southern California suburbia, ophthalmologist Tom (Martin Sheen) undertakes a somber journey to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, to collect the body of his son Daniel (Estevez).

An all-but-doctoral-thesis anthropologist, Daniel’s novice fieldwork ended in his unseen accidental death at the start of the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage through the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, where tradition places the tomb of St. James. When Tom arrives, remembering the time his son lectured him on the virtues of living in the moment rather than deliberating over choices—a philosophy impractical for medical practices that can support such caprices of children—he decides to pick up Daniel’s backpack and complete the nearly 500-mile journey his son could not, seeing the world through his eyes.

Along the way, Tom collects fellow travelers Joost (Yorick van Wageningen), a jovial Dutch hash smoker who claims to be dieting to save his failing marriage, seeing the way as a fitness trail strewn with gourmet temptations; Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger), an acerbic, abused Canadian divorcée, trekking under the guise of curing her chain-smoking vice but hiding a malady of the heart; and Jack (James Nesbitt), an Irish writer suffering from writer’s block, an exasperating excess of blarney and the isolation that follows. As a group, they puncture American parochial notions of Western worldliness while still providing a welcome turn from Hollywood’s romantic fixation with an uncommitted Eastern mysticism that derides Christian experience as ignorant and ultramontane.

With a light hand, writer/director Estevez tweaks the artificiality of contemporary pilgrimages without giving in to cynicism. In one of the liveliest scenes, Tom’s companions critique false suffering and pretend poverty while hiking along a comfortably touristy trail laden with modern gadgets and credit card conveniences and retreating to luxury hotels for those for whom even a hostel means roughing it. Still, Estevez can’t—or at least won’t—penetrate any of his characters’ mysteries. Their revelations lack the profundity of reflection and their actions lack meaningful distinction.

In the case of Tom, at least, this is unpardonable. Introducing him warmly interacting with an elderly patient who wants to cheat on her eye exam by memorizing the charts, Estevez sets up a metaphor that conflicts Tom’s seeing in time against lugging the baggage of his past, presumably the memories of his recently passed wife. This dovetails with Daniel’s impertinent advice to Tom (“You don’t choose a life, Dad, you live one”) but ignores the dichotomy between ophthalmology (the practical healer who helps men see) and anthropology (the idealistic academic who dispassionately studies man). And as father-and-son fevers run, their case is mild; Daniel delivers his juvenile bromide as his father calmly drives him to the airport, and Tom complains to a colleague that gadabout Daniel checks in too rarely—hardly evidence of irreparable estrangement.

That’s crucial, because Estevez’s story implies that the lapsed Catholic Tom’s pilgrimage should be penitential. Though he shuns company and seeks silence to meditate, he rejects (but later mouths) prayer; though the self-described “Easter and Christmas” Catholic at least goes through the motions of ancient ritual practice, he adds his own skeptical twists, including the New Age sacrilege of spreading his son’s ashes along the way—a practice his church nearly exclusively forbids. That motif at least leads to an appealing excursion when a boy steals Daniel’s remains along with Tom’s backpack and the group gives chase. In the angelic-sprite storytelling tradition, they find themselves drawn into the old world of the gypsies, rediscovering a tradition of father/son honor.

Though Estevez filmed the story in a place with supposedly inspiring vistas, his vision of the Camino de Santiago remains surprisingly uninspiring, the cinematography of Juanmi Azpiroz compositionally dull. This is particularly disappointing because the Camino was last prominently visited for cinema when Luis Buñuel littered the trail with sophomoric anti-Catholic garbage in The Milky Way (1969); Estevez here shows a contrasting humanism and tolerance of his characters’ peculiarities and beliefs but doesn’t deliver visual elan.

One would expect any filmmaker in this place to balance contemplative meaning with the magisterial landscape and Romanesque architecture of millennium-old churches functioning as spiritual allegories; recall Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky or Powell’s A Canterbury Tale; Hudson River School painters like Albert Bierstadt showing the luminous hand of God among the Sierra Nevada; or even Kerouac’s Dharma Bums appreciating “the work of the quiet mountains, the torrent of purity at my feet” and “wishing there were a Personal God in all this impersonal matter.”

Estevez suitably defers to his pilgrims—even showing Joost finally blessed with humility on his knees before the statue of St. James and depicting the ghost of Daniel among the friars swinging the oversized thurible in the church at the trail’s end—but can’t make out their modern spiritual malaise through the incense haze. More’s the pity, because few filmmakers today have the passion to try.

Martin Sheen in The Way, directed by Emilio Estevez.