Carmen Ballet
by Dagne Reloba
Publicado el 24 Oct 2023 2:21 AM
Ballet Carmen
History of a ballet
It was the dancer Maya Pliséstkaya who asked Maestro Alberto Alonso for a version of the classic Carmen. After attending a presentation of El solar, she approached the Cuban choreographer and dancer, and asked him to work with her on a version of Carmen from a new conception. Alberto Alonso said he felt challenged by Plisetskaya; not because he felt incapable, but because Roland Petit had premiered a version of the story on February 21, 1941 for Le ballets de Paris.
This is how Carmen Suite comes about, with music by Rodion Shchedrin, Plisetskaya's husband, who orchestrated the score with fragments of Bizet's opera, and using another of the master's creations such as L'Arlesienne. In the work, a lot of emphasis was placed on the dramatic, from then on, choreographer, musician and dancer worked together on the work. It was the first time since 1917 that a foreign choreographer was invited to perform a production on the Bolshoi stage. The staging received more than twenty minutes of applause on April 20, 1967.
The work was premiered in Cuba on August 1, 1967, with Alicia Alonso and Azari Plisetski in the central roles. The Cuban artist took over the character and, for many critics and publicists, Carmen...was her.
Alicia emphasized in her interpretation what the work owed to the classical heritage, she resolved all the steps with wonderful fluidity, the insular...Caribbean sensuality, the interpretation in play and enjoyment of the body and life...Maia preferred to enhance the components contemporaries of the work, her character was tougher, more casual, focused on dynamiting a certain tradition of false respectability in which Russian ballet was ossified. At first, this version was misunderstood or not well regarded by conservative eyes, the truth is that Carmen Suite marked a way of making and interpreting a classic...a before and after. Maia, with her Carmen in black, Alicia, with her Carmen in red...Both with unmatched strength on stage, breaking with stale ways of bringing ballet to the stage...by the hand of one of the most important choreographers of the world: Alberto Alonso.
VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH ALBERTO ALONSO https://youtu.be/vffPh3HDLpk
The ProDanza Company will take the stage in November 2023 with Carmen, sticking to the original version that Maestro Alberto Alonso left for the world ballet. In this way, Maestro Laura Alonso, at the head of the Company she directs, will present to the public with this performance, how she experienced the staging of Carmen Suite as a privileged witness of that moment in the history of world ballet.