“Gentlemen, the musical soul of the people is in the gravest danger!” Such were the words of the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca in 1922. The musical soul was that of flamenco, which he considered an uncontaminated channeling of “the naked and spine-chilling emotion of the first oriental races.” The danger was commercialization. Once confined to the rough Gypsy taverns of Andalucia, flamenco was moving into the sophisticated cafes and theaters of Madrid, where its purity was being “stained with the dark wine of the professional pimp.”

Lorca died in 1936, but his concerns live on. Martin Santangelo, the director of the beloved Madrid-based troupe Noche Flamenco (which is onstage at the East Village’s Theater 80 until July 31) – applies them, less hysterically, to the present. “Flamenco is in a precarious state,” he said. “Things are becoming light, too pretty.”

In his view, contemporary flamenco choreography, emphasizing spectacle over improvisatory communication, is “colder, less in the moment, mechanical – and therefore commercial. It’s a way to sell without taking any risks.”

Over the past 10 years or so, the kind of flamenco performances that trouble Mr.Santangelo have become all the rage in Spain – big, theatrical presentations with extravagant production values, often incorporating contemporary music and techniques borrowed from other dance forms. One of these productions, a multimedia affair that Madrid’s newspaper El Pais named Best Dance Show of the Decade in 2002, will play two nights at City Center on June 22 and 23.

It’s called “Poeta en Nueva York,” and, ironically enough, it’s about Lorca. Seven years after he wrote his flamenco jeremiad, the poet spent a year studying at Columbia University, an experience he turned into a book of surrealistic poetry titled “Poeta en Nueva York.” This book, largely a condemnation of everything modern and urban, serves as the inspiration for the largely modern and urban show, choreographed by and starring an up-and-coming flamenco dancer, Rafael Amargo.

At 30, Mr. Amargo certainly is pretty, and he has no trouble selling himself. His smoldering, unshaven good looks have earned him fashion spreads and articles speculating about his sexuality in Spanish glossies including Vogue, Cosmopolitan,and Playboy. But there’s more to Mr. Amargo than his cover. “Poeta en Nueva York” draws on his own time in New York 10 years back, when he studied at Broadway Dance Center and the Martha Graham school.And the connection with Lorca goes deeper. Both men were born in Granada, a cradle of flamenco; Mr. Amargo studied with some of the region’s masters. The dancer’s given surname is Garcia Hernandez, as in Garcia Lorca. His stage name comes from the poet’s “Romance del Amargo.” (The word means “bitter,” and it pops up frequently in Lorca’s New York poems.) His uncle was a close friend of the poet.

In the show, Lorca’s words are spoken in Spanish, by specter-like actors in filmed sequences that alternate with historical footage of New York. As in the book, the selections follow the course of Lorca’s journey, though the verse itself is hermetic; Mr. Amargo supplements it with sections of a more explanatory lecture the poet gave about his travels.

The relation between the words and the choreography is frequently hermetic itself,or just incongruous.The famous “Ode to Walt Whitman” is matched by a crass, pseudo-jazz dance. Other sections are stranger. Mr. Amargo does one number bare-chested and much of the less traditional music sounds canned.

At the same time, there’s plenty of traditional flamenco – with the musicians and singers sharing the stage, and each dancer showing his stuff, including the precocious children and the wiz ened old aunties. And Mr. Amargo is a strong, charismatic dancer. He’s not afraid to show a genuine grin. Some of the most effective numbers aren’t flamenco, but almost Slavic folk dances.

“Tradition is good,” Mr. Amargo told The New York Sun. “But I am young. I need to express other things.”

At Noche Flamenco, Mr. Santangelo started as an actor, in New York, where he was born. He fell in love with flamenco, then moved to Spain, and started a company, in 1993. “Flamenco is changing, evolving. It needs to,” he said.

After the death of Franco in 1975, Spain opened up to different influences, and these, Mr. Santangelo said, need to be acknowledged. However, he said, the most important changes have come in guitar technique. “The main mistake people make,”he says,”is to think of the dancer as the protagonist.” In order of importance, the singer comes first, then the guitarist, then the singer.

Noche Flamenco shows follow this aesthetic, with a structure open to improvisation. From year to year, the most obvious changes are in personnel. But with his wife, Soledad Barrio, in the cast, it’s surpassingly difficult not to see the dancer as the protagonist. Her impassioned performances show what the purists care so much about preserving.

Noche Flamenco at Theater 80 (80 St. Mark’s Place at First Avenue, 212-352-3103), until July 31; Rafael Amargo at City Center (W. 55th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues,212-581-1212), June 22 and 23.