It's going to be "Bel fiesta" they said, with loads of sexy Spanish stuff - tapas, flamenco, salsa and more than a bit of marcha. There'll be the legendary Catalan theatre group, Els Joglars, a dead good play about Picasso and the sensational Sara Baras dance company shaking a leg or two in the spanky Waterfront Hall. There would also be driving rain and Arctic temperatures (not to mention pubs that close at 10 p.m.) which would undermine the sultry sensuousness of it all. But never mind, it's Belfast, it's festival time and mine's a double tequila.
"Spain as a country is my personal passion," says the festival's acting director, Rosie Turner, explaining this year's decidedly Iberian orientation. "We wanted something hot and passionate to spice things up and it's just fortunate that so much brilliant work is coming out of Spain right now, particularly in Catalan theatre. Besides, the festival's remit has always been to promote international work and in the past we've brought in shows from say, Lithuania and Russia, and sometimes it hasn't been easy to sell that type of work. With the Spanish programming this year, though, we felt that the country is quite familiar to people from going there on holidays and we wanted to display something beyond the image of castanets and flamenco."
It also helps that the people of Belfast - who've had to put with up their own vida loca over the past 30-odd years, have growing links with the country: hundreds of Spanish students come to learn English at Queen's University, there's a local "Spanish Connection" cultural society with plenty of people offering classes in Spanish guitar playing and flamenco dancing.
Everything, then, was organically primed for the Festa:Fiesta component of this year's arts bash, which also included an Argentinian Tango ensemble guesting at the "Guinness spot", the classical music section of the festival offering works from Spanish composers and more prosaically, the Waterfront Hall offering tapas in their restaurant.
It was fitting then that the festival kicked off with a show about Spain's greatest artist. Beside Pi- casso, written by Northern Irish writer, Brian McAvera, and receiving its Irish premiere here in the Lyric Theatre, was a fascinating and oft hilarious two-hander about the nature of art, friendship, genius and celebrity. Iain Armstrong plays the frenetic and priapic artist who, after his death comes face to face with his life-long friend, confidant and amanuensis, Jaime Sabartes (played by Mick Jasper - last seen on Channel 4's Drop The Dead Donkey). Slowly, surely and scabrously, Sabartes takes Picasso apart, calling him to account for his behaviour: "You played with people like a cat with mice". On a bare stage, with only four chairs as props, the two men spar with each other, exchanging insults and judgements at every turn. Ostensibly, Sabartes is Picasso's conscience but such are the dynamics of the relationship that that's merely a starting point.
Coming on like Victor Meldrew's understudy, Armstrong's Picasso is a boorish misogynist whose relationship with Dora Maar, Marie-Therese Walter and Francoise Gilot (and other potential Nora Barnacles) is put under Sabartes's interrogation lamp - "all those women who you made go off their trolley". "I am what I made . . . I changed the way people see" is how Armstong's Picasso justifies his human failings by constantly appealing to his own genius. But even Picasso's work is challenged by Sabartes who at one point questions if the artist's breakthrough work, Demoiselles d'Avignon, was indeed as original as everyone thought, and indeed still thinks.
The debate about whether an artist should live by a different set of laws to everyone else rages back and forth, with perhaps Sabartes winning on a technical knock-out. Both the writing and acting were excellent.
Another great Spanish artist was thrust centre stage but in a radically different way by Catalonia's Els Joglars company. An anarchic co-operative, Els Joglars have the distinction of having been banned in their native land for their iconoclastic portrayal of Catalonian politics. Previously, a mime-only company, over the years they have extended their repertoire but still retain their harlequinade base. Their show, DAAALI, written and directed by Albert Boadella, was a sumptuous son et lumiere extravaganza, which very much reflected the atypical life and times of the great Surrealist. What it did share with Beside Picasso was the same dramatic summation of a life less ordinary, but whereas the former had an antagonistic narrative, DAAALI had all the fluidity and fascination of one of the artist's famous melting clocks.
Staged in the Waterfront's studio theatre on a stage that was mainly made up of a giant grand piano (don't ask), the play opens with Dali (played by Ramon Fontsere) on his death-bed attempting to put some order on his life and work. Events take one of many surreal turns as a young Salvador Dali (brillianty played by a 21-year-old actress - Montse Puig) takes to the stage, torturing domestic animals and in their dangling innards, seeing a vision of his later art work - and this use of strong and provocative imagery is an over-riding feature of the show.
With judicious use of musical accompaniment, rapidly changing scenes and the intelligent use of an electronic screen behind the main action, the play has a funfair ride quality as you watch, not just a biographical account, but also a social and cultural history of Dali's century. Performed in a mix of Spanish, Catalan and English, the elderly Dali remains the centre of dramatic attention, sometimes just staring blankly as crucial historical episodes are played out around him, other times bursting into animated action as a word or phrase captures his attention and cues him up for his word salad type monologues.
Mixing the diachronic with the synchronic, the young Dali punctuates the action with timely interventions, all with the express purpose of helping us understand the formative influences on Dali's later work as a visual chronicler of the bizarre and absurd.
There's a running (and enlightening) confusion over the character of Dali's wife, Gala, who morphs every now and again into the poet, Federico Garcia Lorca (Lorca was madly in love with the artist). Like Picasso, Dali had a well-developed sense of his own importance and it is this very solipsism which drives most of the narrative - particularly in the show's best scene where his contemporaries - Mondrian, Klee, Pollock, Kandinsky and Picasso (as a puppet) - are summoned for a masterclass and told the error of their artistic ways.
ADDING more colours to an already busy palette was a busy supporting cast of seven actors, who, consistent with the surrealist theme, played out the first World War as a Punch and Judy show, portrayed the media pack who swarmed around Dali as a pack of slovering hounds and re-enacted the second World War as a bizarre tug of war. As much a feast for the eyes as one of the great man's works, DAAALI is an exhilarating experience. Just one quibble though: the subtitles were out of visual reach for those sitting in the first few rows and the translation from Spanish to English left a lot to be desired.
The perfect antidote to Riverdance was presented by the Compania Sara Baras in the main Watefront Hall. Virtuoso guitar playing and high velocity rat-a-tat flamenco dancing combined to earn a series of standing ovations. Baras herself is a dance phenomenon - a whirlwind of hair, hips and hands. Accompanied by six other dancers, two guitarists, a percussionist and two singers who specialised in that keening Andalucian vocal, this show was a sheer delight, not least because of the infectious joy which spread from the stage.
A welcome dash of Spanish warmth then certainly helped jolly along this year's festival and it all won't end here, according to Rosie Turner: "We view the Spanish component of this year's festival as just a step. Historically we've usually imported shows but now we want to bring Irish work abroad and particularly to Spain. Logically, we will be looking at working with agencies like the British Council to ensure a touring life abroad for Irish work". Belfast in Barcelona next year? Count me in.
There's plenty more Spanish flavour at the Arts Festival over the coming days: Carles Santos's Ricardo I Elena is at the Waterfront Hall from Thursday to Saturday ; the Catalan theatre group Pep Bou will be presenting their Bufaplantes show at the Waterfront Hall, also from Thursday to Saturday; the renowned author Mario Vargas Llosa will be talking about his work at the Peter Froggat Centre at Queen's University on Monday, and Llosa's play, La Chunga, will be at the Lyric Theatre from Friday until Saturday, November 25th. Further information from the Festival Box Office on 02890 665577 or the website www.belfastfestival.com
