The National Folk Ballet closes its 2022 season with two previews important; We will now devote ourselves exclusively to the premiere, which will occupy the stage of the Cervantes Theater from this Friday 2nd December to Sunday 4th December (the second premiere is the following weekend), and which has to do with the work of Astor Piazzolla. It will be free to enter.
Between times with Piazzolla is a work created jointly by four choreographers: Mariano BaloisLeonardo Collo, Laura Rotatta Y Julius Zurita. In fact, each has separately conceived one of the four sections of the port stations by Astor Piazzolla, using the language they carry with them.
And from the juxtaposition of these pieces, united by the narration of Piazzolla’s music, a total work was born.
Let’s go by parts: Mariano Balois has extensive training in tango and folklore and a great professional career here, and above all abroad. He was part, as an interpreter, of the National Folklore Ballet for which he also created, in 2019, a work in homage to Mariano Mores.
Leonardo Cuello is a relevant choreographer in the panorama of contemporary tango. He runs his own company, but has also worked in other fields, including San Martín Contemporary Ballet. A few years ago you created a work inspired by the carnivals of the past for the National Folk Ballet.
Laura Roatta has a great trajectory in the language of jazz, contemporary dance and stage tango. He is in charge of his own company, but has worked a lot in other spaces; among them, also with the Contemporary Ballet of San Martín.
Julio Zurita is a choreographer and musician. Immersed in many different projects over time, he moves in the world of tango; to mention a milestone, collaborated with Gustavo Santaolalla in the show suburbawarded by the City of Boston Association of Critics.
Spring
Let’s start with Mariano Balois because he was somehow with him between times…
He says: “in 2021 Mariano Luraschi, who was in charge of the National Folkloric Ballet, asked me to create a tribute to Piazzolla by myself, or to share a work on the port stations”.
The idea did not convince him at all. “I have to be honest, I was not attracted to working with this composition. Already He’s too busy, it’s almost a cliché. I would have chosen other less known scores by Piazzolla. But I later found that the experience of working with such different aesthetics was very positive for the Ballet; and for me to share with these colleagues,” he defines.
And he continues: “My piece corresponds to spring. There is no specific plot, but the trigger was a personal story that I lived many years ago: I fell in love with a man and a woman at the same time. That’s what I’ve tried to bring to the scene: three facets of a relationship. There are three protagonists and a group of dancers who embody the prejudices we know a part of society has.”
And he concludes: “For the main roles I chose dancers who had an emotional and therefore physical closeness to each other. It seemed important to me for what they had to interpret”.
Fall
Leonardo Cuello reflects his work thus: “First of all I would like to say that we knew it from the beginning we had complete freedom to create. It is true that strategic matters had to be agreed upon; for example, how many dancers would we work with”.
“Otherwise,” he says, each has turned its own aesthetic upside down. However, a fusion was achieved thanks to the fact that Laura Roatta proposed metal structures right from the start, which we all used in the end”.
“The distribution of workstations happened very naturally; in my case I asked which one hadn’t been picked yet and it turned out it was autumn, my favorite time of the year; I love its colors and its transformationthe days get shorter, the air gets colder,” says Cuello.
“Those were my images, which also inspired me the costumes designed by Francisco Ayala: no slits in the skirts or thin straps, but more autumnal dresses, in velvet, fairly closed; and all the costumes, for men and women, in different shades of what Ayala calls “an autumn symphony”.
Winter
This is Laura Roatta’s story: “I chose winter in principle because it is my favorite section of the port stations Y I also opted for a live version of the quintetbecause it has all the freshness and power of ‘live’, but at the same time the sensitivity and intimate atmosphere that the work required”.
And he says: “I was inspired by a poem by Roberto Juarroz, which speaks of beings locked up in the labyrinth of memory: ‘The lives you have abandoned survive your own shadow'”.
Continue Roatta: The dancers of the BFN have today tools for dealing with different languages, so it was interesting and fluid to cross contemporary dance with tango. On the other hand, I have been carrying out this merger for some time, a task to which my assistants Soledad Buss and César Peral contribute all their wealth and experience”.
«The Piazzolla project was conceived a year and a half ago in the midst of the pandemic as a cinematic version and today it takes the form of a theatrical-choreographic staging», he concludes.
Summer
And finally, in alphabetical order, here’s what Julio Zurita says: “My section of the work is built by a concept that derives from the musical composition itself. It grows and advances until it reaches a moment of intense harmonic tension which determines a suffocating climate, like any summer in Buenos Aires”.
“From there I set out to create this piece that happens in an instant on a hot summer day on a city street. I decided to work with twenty four dancers, basically the entire companyand I elaborated the choreography thinking, in some way, of saturating the space, using a certain accumulation of movements”, he says.
“I also worked with the company’s technical staff, who put together luminaires to use with the idea of doubling the space and enriching the contrasts. It’s a purely formal and choreographed piece. I composed it especially for the Ballet Folklorico Nacionalexploiting the great scenic weight of each of its components”, he concludes.
Information
Between one timetable and another with Piazzolla can be seen from Friday 2 December to Sunday 4 December, at 20:00 at the Teatro Cervantes, Libertad 815. Free entry booking in alternative theater.
WD extension
Source: Clarin
