Alejandro Cervera, waiting in the audience of the Colón, in front of his version of Carmen. Photo Costanza Niscovolos
After the good start of the season with the beautiful title Gisella, the Balletto del Colón, directed by Mario Galizzibrings to the stage a second extremely interesting program: Sinfonietta, created by one of the most important choreographers of our time, the Czech Jiri Kylian; and a new version of Carmen, world premiere of the Argentine choreographer Alejandro Cervera.
Sinfonietta is one of Kylian’s earliest choreographies and was created for the company he had directed for a few years, the Nederlands Dans Theater; there, and with out-of-this-world dancers, he would set up his extraordinary universe of him for many years.
It was released in 1978 in the city of Charleston, United States, and was an immediate and resounding success.. The source of inspiration for Sinfonietta It had been the score composed by his compatriot Leos Janacék, who, like Kylian’s grandmother, hailed from the Moravian region.
A moment of the “Carmen” test. He belonged to Paloma Herrera (former Ballet director), but was suspended due to the pandemic.
In this crossroads of peoples and civilizations, the Moravians have forged characters of great integrity, traits that are present in this radiant and joyful work. It is the first time that a choreography by Jiri Kylian has been incorporated into the Ballet del Colón and we trust that it is only the beginning of a journey.
Alejandro Cervera is already an artist known for this company, for which he has created several works, as he did for the San Martín Contemporary Ballet – of which he also directed – and for many others in the country and abroad.
Carmen it had come to him as a proposal from Paloma Herrera, the former director of the Ballet del Colón, in 2019; the project has been frustrated since the start of the pandemic and was resumed this year.
“Paloma Herrera asked me (at the time) for a great show, with many artists,” says Cervera. Photo Costanza Niscovolos
-Have you ever thought about creating a choreography inspired by Carmen? That is, in the work of Bizet or in the novel by Prosper Mérimée that originated it.
-Never. But curiously, she had regiment of the opera in 2018 in Tucumán and had a lot of musical and narrative material in mind. I was attracted to the idea for several reasons: on the one hand, that I could work on Georges Bizet’s music …
Also, Paloma Herrera asked me for a great show, with a significant number of performers, and this also interested me; I enjoy working in good sized spaces and with many people. And finally, it’s a story in itself suggestive: a 19th century woman who looks like a 21st century woman in the sense that she uses her life and desire for her freely.
-And this too is cruel …
-Yes, but what he does is go on with his desire; in this sense we could say that it is also cruel. But many forms of love and couple choices have a certain cruelty.
The Ballet del Colón is back. Rehearsal of the Carmen ballet Photo: Constanza Niscovolos
-When you talk about your interest in using Bizet’s music, do you mean that you don’t use the adaptations that have been made for other choreographies?
-Exactly. The sung parts of the opera have also been converted to an instrumental format. And it also occurred to me that while building the work, I needed links or transitions related to the scenographic settings …
In search of the sound of castanets, I found a flamenco song called martinete, very old, very wonderful. That’s how I invited Eugenio Romero, a singer who does it in a phenomenal way. But later I also added castanet sounds.
A young, free and hardworking woman
-What point of view did you give to work?
-I thought of Carmen as a young, free and hardworking woman. I didn’t want to highlight the gypsy. For this reason the characters of the cigarette manufacturers, workers of the factory where Carmen also works, appear in overalls. It was a very specific request to Renata Schussheim, who created the costumes: they are clearly women coming out of a day’s work.
-And were you at a precise moment?
-I don’t know if it will be read in this way, but I place it in the Spanish civil war and in that Spain won by fascism.
“I set the action during the Spanish Civil War, which Spain won with fascism”, Cervera frames the action.
-Because?
-For a long time, in the opera and in the novel, it was thought that Don José killed Carmen out of jealousy, which is a crime of passion. We now know clearly that this is a femicide. And I think that this kind of behavior and the submission of women are best established in a society like the one created by Francoism.
Abstraction, a desired good
Regardless of how the public understands it, was this position necessary for you?
-Yup. Since 2019 so many things have happened and it has been so long that a lot has changed in me in relation to work. And the initial Spanishness, reviewing the sketches this year with the set designer Laura Copertino, no longer interested me. She bored me. So we started thinking about something more abstract, more along the lines I’ve walked …
In the changing rooms, for example, the military does not have impeccable uniforms; They come from a war in which they killed each other among friends, between brothers. There are no precise historical references; only some data with an unmistakably Spanish color such as castanets, combs, palms, martinets. most iconic elements.
-You have chosen for the role of Carmen, in the different cast, four very young dancers who are still part of the dance troupe. Why this unusual decision?
-On the first day of rehearsals I proposed an improvisation scene about the fight between the cigarette girls in which all the women participated. And I saw these four girls with a temperament, a “stop”, a way of dealing with others that seemed beautiful to me and I decided to continue working with them.
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The version of Carmen by Alekandro Cervera, of the Ballet del Colón, opens this Tuesday, June 28 at 8 pm, at the Theater (Libertad 621). Shows until 7 July.
CJL
Laura Falcone
Source: Clarin
