Last week Opera (see Mozart Rusticana); this week Flamenco in, of all unlikely places, the Georgian Assembly Rooms in Ludlow which still function as the town’s entertainment centre.

I’ve always been attracted to the musical subtleties and sheer physicality of flamenco music and dance and I have regularly promised myself a short sojourn in Seville, to be spent in small, smoky bars where guttural singing and harsh guitar chords echo off low vaulted ceilings – a promise which I have so far failed to keep. With a strongly held view that raw peasant culture like this doesn’t export easily, I had doubts that this powerful musical form would convince when performed on the stage of a provincial English theatre.

I was delighted to find that I was wrong, for despite lacking the tang of gitana sweat, tapas and fino, Jaleo put on a show of brilliantly excuted dancing and singing that was real, energetic and exciting.  The troupe consists of six performers: two guitarists, a classic male flamenco singer (Juan Reina), two lovely women dancers (one who also sang with vivid gypsy intensity) and a splendid male dancer (Adolfo Vega). One of the guitarists, billed as El Ingles, gave a solo performance of an astonishing virtuosity that I’d never seen before.

They staged the show in way that cleverly conveyed the impression they were in a small, intimate bar – even, as they finished their two sets, performing without any artificial amplification. Although the auditorium was only two thirds full, they were ecstatically received and applauded.  If Jaleo are coming your way in their current tour, and you like that sort of vigorous, sweaty and highly skilled music-making, I urge you to make the effort to see them while you can.

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