About three years ago, choreographer and former San Martín Ballet director Mauricio Wainrot started with a hip problem that would have led to ten operations.
The forced imprisonment that this situation implied, added to the general imprisonment that the pandemic has established, has not completely removed Mauricio Wainrot from work; had a sustained activityexcept the last few months which have been more complicated for his health.
He is now largely healed and awaits the next rerun of his opera Carmina Burana, at the Teatro del Bicentenario in the city of San Juan. This is the second time he has put on a show for this institution; the first was The messiahon the score by Georg Friedrich Haendel.
Hard times
-Can you tell, first of all, the process of your disorder?
-It started three years ago and I have experienced many things. I had a hip operation, I got over it but the pain returned; the prostheses were replaced three times, I had repeated infections and therefore more operations and even today I was still not completely discharged.
But in that first moment I didn’t tell anyone what happened to me. He said they operated on me for something else.
-Because?
-The doctors assured me that this would happen soon. I know many dancers who have undergone hip surgery and have turned out very well. Y in the midst of all this, I was still working and traveling.
But did it affect you emotionally?
-Much. Immediately I was stimulated when they called me during the pandemic in Peru or Mexico to ask me about jobs. And also that they pass streaming most of the choreographies I have put together for the San Martín Ballet and which have reached thousands and thousands of people. I’ve never been as famous as in the pandemic (Series). But the truth is, I’ve been coming from very difficult years.
Are you referring to your operations?
-Not only. In 2008 my partner, the set designer and costume designer Carlos Gallardo, died in a terrible car accident.; Two years later I had cancer from which I was finally cured.
But luckily in this period I was also able to do some very good jobs, many jobs that I love the song of the earth, to music by Gustav Mahler, and for which I was nominated at the Benois Awards in Moscow. All very beautiful things.
A complete production
For the first time in Argentina, the choreography of the show Carmina Burana, by Wainrot, is fully manufactured; ie with live orchestra and choir.
The first original took place twenty-five years ago at the Royal Ballet of Flanders. Mauricio Wainrot had already made two works for this company and then the director Robert Denvers asked him for another one (“a version of the firebird -says Wainrot- it was a bomb ”) and another and so on; in total, he performed eleven choreographies for the Flanders Ballet.
In 1997 he received from Denvers the proposal to create in this company an opera on the Carmina Burana, the well-known score of the German composer Carl Orff which had been written on a collection of medieval songs from the region of Bavaria and presented for the first time in 1937.
Wainrot says: “paradoxically, at first I refused“.
-Because?
-All the works that I have edited have always been chosen by me. But in this case it was a request from the director of the Flanders Ballet: “We must have a Carmina Burana“. Group choreography is my forte and Robert Denvers told me at the time: “You’re the coolest group choreographer there is. “He convinced me.
-Why were you not interested in working on the “Carmina Burana”?
I found the music very repetitive and some sections, like the one with SpringThey seemed very long to me. But the director asked me to make the effort and I started listening to her and listening to her and finding things I hadn’t recorded before. Then I told Carlos Gallardo to think of a colossal scenography. So it was. A lot of money was spent on production.
Zoom as an editing tool
As soon as the pandemic started, Mauricio Wainrot had to familiarize himself with the zoom platform: “Before it was to replace a duo for the Ballet del Sodre de Montevideo. It was a program that the director of the time, Igor Yebra, had conceived, exclusively for duets and dancers with chinstrap “.
To add; “Later I got used to it, because I also staged for the Ballet del Sodre A tram called desire. Likewise with the masks, but they didn’t look bad because the show takes place mainly in a psychiatric hospital and they didn’t look weird, except in a few scenes where I struggled to accept them; but the public had no problems, because the chinstrap was already part of everyone’s life.
-And the zoom, after almost three years, is already a familiar tool?
-Absolutely. The assembly of Carmina Burana there in San Juan he is in charge of Diego Poblete, Andrea Chinetti – directors of the San Martín Ballet – and Victoria Balanza, who also belonged to the San Martín company and is now in San Juan in charge of the dance area of the Bicentenario Theater. I cannot travel on the advice of doctors, but I follow everything with the zoom.
– Is it a daily task?
-Yes Every day. I watch the rehearsals, adjust the movements and give the instructions.
– Does the Teatro del Bicentenario have stable casts?
-No. But I want to say that it is an incredible theater, with fantastic corridors, dressing rooms and a fantastic stage. It looks like an opera house from Germany and in fact they bring many artists from Europe to conduct.
Both the previous director, Eduardo Savastano, and the current one, Silvana Moreno, do a job with the heart. They have always looked for a way to do things that are not done here in Buenos Aires; nor at the San Martín Theater and less at the Colón Theater.
I received more money than agreed The messiah, because Savantano joined an international opera association and the opera was shown in America and Europe. That is, they are constantly on the move.
-How do you collect the dancers who play the obra?
-They are people trained in dance schools, very well trained and, as far as possible, they want them to come from San Juan. Already when they danced three years ago The messiah They were very good and are now much better.
The inspiration of the Carmina Burana
–Finally, and returning to the work itself, what aspects inspired you to create the choreography? The themes that appear in medieval songs?
-Nerd. In myself Four Janis for Joplin or in me Ninth Symphony or inside The messiah There are important texts. But I don’t want to be repetitive about the texts, because the works already existed previously and I’m not interested in telling what has already been told.
I just let myself be carried away by the music and what the lyrics say Carmine… on the character of the jester or the turkey who cooks on a spit, it makes no sense to me as a choreographer. I’ve seen many versions of this cantata where things like this appear and I think that’s enough.
And he concludes: “I wanted to do a very nice job and I did it, letting myself be carried away by its rhythms, its musicality and the need for it to be danced a lot”.
Information
Carmina Burana It can be seen at the Teatro del Bicentenario de San Juan, with performances on 21, 22 and 23 October, at 9pm.
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Source: Clarin
