At the Vancouver Playhouse on Saturday, September 19. No remaining performances

The black curtain drew back to reveal a stage backlit in scarlet and bare save for two chairs in the centre facing the audience, with a third one beside a small table off to the side. Cádiz de la Frontera opened with the sound of a guitar in the wings before musician Juan Campallo walked slowly on-stage, still playing flamenco tangos, and sat down. Cantaora Inma Rivero stepped out singing from the other wing to sit near him. Then Andalusian dancers Pilar Ogalla from Cádiz and Andrés Peña from Jerez de la Frontera, the show’s creators, appeared on either side of the stage, came together, and began to dance.

The simple elements for an extraordinary evening of flamenco puro were in place. The intensity of the artists and their improvisational play created an intimacy that, despite the large empty spaces on-stage, drew the audience like a fire. The troupe presented a balance of traditions from Cádiz and Jerez, and for those of us unable to appreciate all the distinctions between the styles and palos (flamenco forms) associated with the two cities, there were visual cues in the colours of the lighting and costumes. In essence, reds, oranges, and a stark light evoked the hotter, inland, and earth-centred Jerez, which is surrounded by vineyards that produce the wine of its name (sherry). Blues, turquoises, silver, and a watery, more diffuse light evoked Cádiz, a historic Atlantic seaport with strong links to Latin America.

The performers were given equal weight. Campallo played throughout with a finely judged combination of assertion and restraint. Rivero proved a major presence, a singer with a big heart and deep soul whose hands were as expressive as her magnificent voice as they twisted in anguish or clutched the air. She performed her solo cante, a milonga from Cádiz, while standing behind her chair, unaccompanied until Campallo came on-stage and placed a compassionate hand on her shoulder before starting to play. That only triggered more waves of emotion from Rivero, swelling her chest and rocking her body.

Ogalla and Peña danced palos from their respective communities, and as a couple they embodied and reconciled those differences. Their love inspired Cádiz de la Frontera as much as the love for their tierra, presented in a spirit of respect, not rivalry. As blue and gold light spilled down onto Rivero’s broad shoulders Ogalla performed the first solo, an alegría, wearing a purple gown with white flounces and long fringes and a bata de cola—the train or “tail” that sweeps the floor behind the dancer. She tossed and swirled it playfully and with a regal disdain for any constraints it imposed.

For Peña’s solo, he stepped almost casually on-stage and, as Rivero’s voice broke again, raised his arms to snap his fingers like castanets, before drilling his heels in a zapateado, and, in slower moments, tugging on the lapels of his jacket as if to acquire a new charge of energy. Near the end of the baíle, Peña was pushing his jacket off one shoulder, a gesture of freedom from the formalities of elegance and style.

Cádiz and Jerez were united when the two dancers, dressed in identical male costumes with black hats, performed a farruca (a light form of flamenco traditionally performed by men) side by side and facing the audience. Their fluid, mirrored movements were synchronized with impressive precision. At once polished and raw, the wordless love story of Cádiz de la Frontera took the capacity audience far from the rains and the greys outside the theatre to an inner world saturated with colour, heat, and a full spectrum of feeling.