You enter the theater. You scan the QR code on the playbill (an annoying invention for those of us of a certain age) to study the cast and, God willing, decipher the plot or meaning of what you are about to see.

Danced theater is certainly not new. The vignettes of popular operettas like “La Verbena de la Paloma,” combining music, voice, and dance, reached their peak popularity at the end of the 19th century. They took on flamenco content in the 1930s with Argentinita’s legendary creation “Las Calles de Cádiz” featuring prominent flamenco artists of the time like Pericón de Cádiz, Adela la Chaqueta and El Gloria among others. Besides frivolous or comic works like the one mentioned, there have also been tragedies such as the notable “Bodas de Sangre”.

A majority of uninitiated theater-goers assume that flamenco somehow tells a story. “I loved it, but I didn’t catch the story” is a typical comment, or often, “What do the hands tell?” And don’t even think about telling anyone there’s no script — many people won’t accept that.

The issue of flamenco shows with a narrative thread based on singing, dancing, guitar, or other elements that represent a story of varying complexity, is what I’m putting on the table for you to consider. In 1984, the magnificent dancer Manuela Vargas made history with her profound elegance and the music of maestro Manolo Sanlúcar to represent the Greek tragedy “Medea”. But two decades earlier, yours truly experienced a much greater flood of emotion upon watching the same dancer in four different shows each day at the Spanish pavilion of the New York World’s Fair in the early 1960s. There was a complete absence of stories, only the classic singing of Fosforito, el Beni, Naranjito de Triana, the guitars of Juan Habichuela, José Cala el Poeta and the goddess Manuela with her penetrating gaze, and those sharp cutting movements. I’m convinced that any attempt to impose a script on that intense feast would have only served to dilute the flamenco essence it represented. It was virtual hand-to-hand combat between straight-ahead flamenco and theater, in which only one could only emerge victorious at the expense of the other.

It’s likely that shows with a narrative thread sell better outside of Spain. The legendary slow-motion knife-fight from the fertile creative mind of maestro Antonio Gades is the impressive centerpiece of the aforementioned work, “Bodas de Sangre”, a play by Lorca that inspired an entire generation of flamenco enthusiasts both inside and outside of Spain.  

La Gloria de mi Mare of dancer Asunción Pérez “Choni” is, in my opinion, one of the few works that manages to balance good singing, dancing, guitar playing, good humor and social drama without these elements clashing with each other. Carmen Cortés and Gerardo Núñez drew inspiration from works by Lorca such as “The House of Bernarda Alba”, while Isabel Bayón biographically portrayed the exotic dancer Tórtola Valencia through dance.

There are also semi-dramatized works, such as the brilliant show of Seville dancer Andrés Marín, “El Alba del Último Día”, which portrays the decline of the historic cafés cantantes.

I bow down to the late critic Tobi Tobías, who in 2016 published the following wise words about the fusion of theater and flamenco: “I have never seen an attempt of this kind that does not end in failure, not only a theatrical failure but also a moral one, because it is a betrayal, a loss of faith in the very heart of the art form”. El Amor Brujo, the brilliant work of Manuel de Falla, exemplifies the triumph of theater over flamenco.

Some synopses in program notes are guilty of unrestrained verbosity. If you’re a dancer, then dance your message, and don’t make your audience study a convoluted text with fine print that needs to be deciphered in the semi-darkness of the theater. Flamenco deserves better than that.