SAETA: The mourning (dance film)

A dance film that looks closely at Flamenco and more particularly the Saeta style. The film takes traditional flamenco to an abstract level with an eerie overtone. The dance short takes the traditional religious song, the Saeta, sung during Spain’s Holy Week and brings it to a modern setting. The song is heard typically during a procession and is usually associated with death. The Flamenco movement vocabulary explores grief and longing and the film plays with this concept. Black is usually associated with mourning and the Spanish comb, the peineta, is important to the Saeta song and to Holy Week. In the film the peineta is juxtaposed by a modern outfit and is playing with the ideas of new ways of seeing and old ways of being. The film’s costuming and dancing pushes boundaries and Koko Zin’s camera work frames the movement and adds to the anxiety the choreography is playing with. David Ajiri’s editing is crisp and makes “Saeta: The mourning” an eerie and haunting dance film.