Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 December the National Folklore Ballet will stage a work by the young choreographer Alessio Mirenda, Four seasons of Vitaleon a score by Lito Vitale inspired by The Seasons, by Antonio Vivaldi.
The program is completed with another premiere that took place a week ago: the choreographers Laura Roatta, Mariano Balois, Leonardo Cuello and Julio Zurita they worked, respectively, on each of Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons.
A kaleidoscopic conjunction of seasons of every shape and colour, but just as tremendously intense was the month of December for the official folklore company.
As for this weekend’s premiere, it has one peculiarity: Alexis Mirenda was invited a few months ago to create an opera on the score specially composed by Vitale for the Ballet Folklorico Nacional (BFA); that means, an inverse path to the one that usually follows a choreographic montage.
Folklore and contemporary dance
Even the path taken by Mirenda is, in its own way, peculiar: he trained from his childhood in santafesina in folk dance, like so many kids from all over the country. But in her adolescence she discovered contemporary dance, she entered the San Martín Dance Workshop and then her Contemporary Ballet, where she was an interpreter for ten years.
Folklore, however, remained a part of her life in a fruitful association with contemporary dance; three of his precious duets created for the Cosquin partywhere he was awarded more than once.
How did your professional journey start?
-When I first saw the National Folkloric Ballet in Firmat, my hometown, I was dazzled by the works, the costumes and what the dancers did with their bodies; I felt like I could do it too, but I didn’t know how. Then I moved to Rosario to continue studying and when I was about 16 I was part of the Camín company, which always does the opening show for Cosquín.
Mirenda continues: “In Camín I met guys who were studying in Buenos Aires at the San Martín Dance Workshop: they had a fantastic technique. Being a very demanding training school, I prepared for a year to enter”.
“And when I had just completed the first year of the Workshop I was invited to join the Contemporary Ballet, which was directing at that time Maurice Wainrot. I was there ten years and then I left.”
-Because?
I think I’ve lost the passion. An official company inevitably leads you into a certain routine and I believed that the Contemporary Ballet, to which I gave everything, deserved more; I preferred that a boy of eighteen or twenty enter, as happened to me then, rather than continue to occupy a position that no longer gave me the same happiness.
your own company
-And at the same time did you support your Pucará folk company?
-I created it in 2013 and have never left it.
-For what purpose did you create it?
I wondered, and I still wonder, how to combine contemporary dance with folklore, two worlds so important to me. I wanted to unite them, but at the same time I saw that there was a lack of space for many people to develop in this direction.
He adds: “You don’t learn to be a professional dancer anywhere but on stage. Knowing where to stop for the light to give you, what the greeting is like, how to learn from mistakes. This is why Pucará was born”.
-Where do the company’s dancers come from?
-Especially folklore. She had started teaching contemporary dance classes and people came knowing she would understand them if they didn’t have the same kind of craftsmanship as a classical or contemporary dancer. it’s rare, folk dancers are not appreciated in the same way as others.
-However, for years theatrical tango, contemporary dance and sometimes ballet have been nourished by it, especially by men.
-Yes it’s correct. And it is also true that the appreciation I was telling you is changing.
-An independent folk dance company, what chance does it have to perform in theaters and make a living from the profession?
-Regarding the first, some cycles and spaces are opening in Buenos Aires. As for the second, I’d say it’s impossible.
Cosquín, that big stage
-The great chance to show itself is Cosquín, isn’t it?
-It is the big stage for stylized folk dance. Those who win in a previous competition, namely the Pre Cosquín, subsequently perform as part of the festival. In 2017 we received the Revelation award, the first time in 64 years that this happened with a dance company; they had always been musicians or singers.
And when they ask me why that happened, my answer is that ten years in San Martín gave me professional experience that I turned to Pucará.
-Could you tell us about “Four Seasons of Vitale”?
-A few months ago I received an invitation from the BFN to create an opera on the music of Lito Vitale, based on Vivaldi but with a folkloric tinge.
-How did you create your choreography?
-Lito was handing me the stations and then we exchanged ideas. He was very clear about the rhythms that fueled each part. From there I imagined the choreography with the influence of the poetics of Manuel Castilla. I wanted to take advantage of something that rarely happens: the possibility of asking the composer what feelings his music was born from.
Do you have any arguments?
-No, they are more like “states”. For the winter Vitale worked on malambo; for spring, something waltzed; summer, a zamba rhythm and autumn, a cueca inspiration. These rhythms are sometimes very perceptible and other times very underground.
-You said that you recently went back to dancing after four years of not doing it. What was it like going back to the dancer you were?
-The last time he was in the Martín Coronado hall of San Martín in 2018, the Ode to joy by Mauricio Wainrot. In these four years, many friends have insisted that I not disappear completely from the stage. Among them Victoria Balanza, who directs the dance area of the Teatro del Bicentenario de San Juan; i did there then Requiem by Joshua Cienfuegos e Carmina Burana by Wainrot.
And he concludes: “Dancing, for me, is living in a parallel world, a space and a time that are not real, everyday. Normal life is erased for an instant and we are another person in our own body.
Information
Cuatro estaciones Vitale can be seen this Saturday 10 December and Sunday 11 December, at 20:00, at the Teatro Cervantes (Libertad 815). Admission is free, upon reservation at Alternativa Teatral or at the theater ticket office.
WD extension
Source: Clarin
