Review: Compañía de Danza Jesús Carmona in UnYdos – Flamenco Festival London 2026

It’s always a pleasure to welcome the return to London of the annual Flamenco Festival, held at Sadler’s Wells and other venues across the capital, and the opening night performance by the Compañía de Danza Jesús Carmona was a superb start to the season. Led by Jesús Carmona and his fellow dancer Lucía Campillo, and a group of excellent singers and musicians, UnYdos* gave you everything you could ever want from a Flamenco show, which is dance and music at its very best.

Brilliantly lit by Juanjo Hernández Trigueros, the show opens with Carmona spotlit from above, his face unseen, as he advances toward the audience in silence, scraping and sliding his shoes across the floor, twisting his hands and raising his arms, and then tapping his feet into an ever-quickening drum roll of rhythm. It’s an exciting start to the performance, and the excitement is maintained throughout the 75-minute duration.

Carmona is a slim and wiry man, his body taut and upright, and he has an intensity to his dancing that is compelling. His feet execute cascades of coruscating zapateados, but he enhances his movements with an incredible feeling for line and proportion. The traditional Flamenco poses and stances are all there to see and admire, but Carmona undertakes them with such grace and elegance they become a kind of metaphor for beauty in motion. This, and the simple, unashamed pleasure he also brings to his performance mark Carmona out as an exceptional Flamenco artist.

Lucía Campillo has an exciting stage presence as well, and she, too, brings intensity – as well as a delightful sense of humour – to her performance. Her backbends are marvellously free, and, like Carmona, she dances with a beautiful sense of form and line. At one moment she manipulates a long, fringed shawl around her body so that she becomes a living evocation of Loie Fuller, and at another moment she can twist the bata de cola of her dress around her ankles, kick it away, hoist it up, or shrug her shoulders with insouciance as her feet tap out complex rhythms.

It is elating to see so much fine dancing in one evening, but I must also mention the thrill of hearing the cantaor guest artist Jesús Corbacho. Working alongside the charismatic guitarist José Manuel Martínez Muñoz “El Peli”, Corbacho sings with such hypnotising, hushed, husky fluidity that his music almost becomes an act of seduction.

After such a marvellous start, there is more to look forward to in the coming days, including appearances from the Flamenco stars Rafaela Carrasco and Rocío Molina, as well as the ever-popular Gala Flamenca. I can’t wait.

* UnYdos – wordplay blending the Spanish words uno y dos (the musical count “one and two”) and unidos (meaning “united”).

Jonathan Gray Guest Author

Jonathan Gray was editor of Dancing Times from 2008 to 2022.

He studied at The Royal Ballet School, Leicester Polytechnic, and Wimbledon School of Art where he graduated with a BA Hons in Theatre Design. He was on the Curatorial Staff of the Theatre Museum, London, from 1989 to 2005, assisting on a number of dance-related exhibitions, and helping with the recreation of original designs for a number of The Royal Ballet’s productions including Danses concertantes, Daphnis and Chloë, and The Sleeping Beauty.

Jonathan Gray has also contributed to the Financial Times and The Guardian, written programme articles for The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet, and is co-author of the book Unleashing Britain: Theatre gets real 1955-64, published in 2005. He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.