A Smoldering Gypsy’s Smoldering Time, Down at the Old Bull Ring
“Carmen” began as a Frenchman’s fantasy of Spain, first in a novella by Prosper Mérimée
and then, immortally, in Bizet’s opera. So it is no violation of
authenticity for a choreographer, especially a Spanish one, to tell the
tale in another style, even if that style is the angst-ridden
expressionism of, say, Nederlands Dans Theater.
Such
is the mode of Gustavo Ramírez Sansano’s “Carmen.maquia.” Made in 2012
for the Luna Negra Dance Theater in Chicago, which is now defunct, the
work has been adopted by Ballet Hispanico
as the first full-length narrative dance in that troupe’s 44-year
history. At the Apollo Theater on Saturday, the company premiere met
with ovations.
With modish black-and-white costumes by the fashion designer David Delfín
and a flexible set of accordion-pleated sections and Picassoesque
images of bulls and women, by Luis Crespo, this “Carmen” has a spare,
elegant, Modernist look. The music is a playlist of various orchestral
versions of Bizet’s score, shunning vocals, and the original story of
the titular Gypsy seductress and the naïve soldier Don José is basically
intact.
Intact,
though not always clear, as many details in the printed synopsis prove
illegible onstage. Sometimes the opacity stems from symbolic props and
the multipurpose set, yet, more fundamentally, the trouble seems to be
that Mr. Sansano is not particularly interested in storytelling.
Neither, really, is he that concerned with form, except for the formal
expression of emotional conflict.
“Carmen.maquia”
alludes to tauromaquia, or bullfighting, and its various tangled duets
have some of the shifting power dynamic of a bullfight. But the
principal struggle is internal, as revealed in the convulsive solo that
begins and ends the work: Don José, tortured by the desire that will
destroy him.
Rippling
and twitching in rapid agitation, compulsively making the body snap
back on itself, Mr. Sansano’s movement language can express indecision
all right. But despite some Spanish inflections, vacillation is about
all it expresses. The choreography is busily attentive to the music at
the level of notes, accents and even tone color, especially in
cartoonish bits that clash with the dour expressionism, but rarely in
longer phrases and contours. Just as there’s no singing in this music,
there’s little lyricism in the dance.
Mr.
Sansano has the skill to show the conflict between desire and duty by
interrupting a duet reuniting Carmen and Don José with an ensemble doing
military maneuvers in the aisles of the theater. And there’s a
structural symmetry to the succession of duets, as the leads swap roles
of pursuer and pursued.
Ballet
Hispanico fielded a fine cast. Kimberly Van Woesik’s Carmen had a
seductive, fatal insouciance. The precise Christopher Bloom brought to
Don José both a boyish nobility and a hangdog defenselessness. As his
rival, the bullfighter Escamillo, Mario Ismael Espinoza was fully
believable as a lady-killer threat, and Min-Tzu Li, as Don José's jilted
girlfriend, gave firm shape to the choreography’s Martha Graham-like
moments.
But
“Carmen.maquia” is theatrically static. Its dance vocabulary, cramped
and oppressive to begin with, proves inadequate. Like Don José,
“Carmen.maquia” can’t quite handle Carmen.
