Charles Mingus: Ysabel's Table Dance

Trying to party away the heartache of a failed marriage, Charles Mingus found "not even Tijuana could satisfy." Born in Nogales, Arizona, he had a special feel for border towns. From his unsatisfying binge around Tijuana's streets and bars, Mingus brought home a hard-won hangover and a triumphant flamenco trophy. Featuring namesake Ysabel Morel's crisp castanets and vocal urgings, "Ysabel's Table Dance" does in <10½ minutes what filmmaker Orson Welles's Tijuana-lite Touch of Evil (1958) fails to in >1½ hours. Namely, it scares hell out of you. For Mingus, danger and depravity are not the stuff of stagecraft. They're real.