A romance with dance
It’s early Saturday morning and Antonio Najarro should be asleep.
Instead, the 29-year-old creator of “Tango Flamenco” was dragged out of bed 30 minutes ago and brought to this frigid Detroit television studio. Seems that someone booked him to dance on a popular local morning news show, but no one bothered to tell him.
“Get ready for the tease,” the floor manager hisses at Najarro, who hasn’t even had time to change out of his street shoes. And so, seconds later, when the camera light flickers red, Najarro - clad in jeans and a T-shirt - is obligated to look delighted and perform one of his incredibly percussive flamenco dances.
Touring is not as glamorous as it may seem.
But the 29-year-old Najarro is tough. And resilient.
Besides, this challenge is nothing compared with what he went through when he took on the entire Spanish flamenco establishment last year with his two-hour dance show, which comes to the Aronoff Center Saturday.
What he dared to do was tackle the highly codified world of traditional flamenco dance - a form that has remained largely unchanged for more than a century - and put his own, singularly contemporary spin on it.