CARMEN.maquia – A hybrid story ballet for the 21st Century

About the Ballet — The ballet opens with a tableau: Don José, writhing in agony, his wrenching movement reenacting a trauma.  Then the action commences at the town’s cigarette factory where gypsy workers in filmy white dresses chit-chat. Enter a beautiful gypsy woman, Carmen. Her black dress and red lipstick set her apart. Flirting with the factory guards, the women evince unusual sexuality. 

To the clarion sound of a piccolo and trumpet, two guards engage in a half-militaristic, half-comic duet. Don José enters to form a trio. He is a dutiful, if bland, military man.

In a large group scene, Carmen commands center stage as she dances to the opera’s famous aria, “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” (“Love is a wild bird that no one can tame”). This lyric drives Carmen’s character: she must live freely—above all, in her love life. Don José becomes the target of Carmen’s sultry dance.

The scene changes with the entrance of a new character —a nice girl called Micaela. The ballet shifts to a softer tone as she engages in a rapturous solo dance, eventually joined by her fiancé, Don José. 

The duo is interrupted when a catfight breaks out at the factory with Carmen at its center. Don José, dispatched to adjudicate, instead finds himself grappling with Carmen in a magnetic duet. Using her every wile, Carmen escapes, leaving Don José to be punished and jailed.   The incarcerated Don José hallucinates about his newfound obsession,  Carmen.

A new figure appears. It is the brave and athletic toreador, Escamillo, who unfurls a leaping dance brimming with machismo to the famous “Toreador” song.  Carmen, aroused by this sight (as are all, both men and women), meets her match dancing a duet of surprising parity with Escamillo. The scene leaves Carmen torn between two men, and the story’s well-known love triangle commences.

Once freed, Don José, returns for a playful and joyous duet with Carmen staged to Bizet’s “Symphony in C” (famously choreographed by Balanchine for New York City Ballet). Military orders intrude on their lovemaking, and Don José’s instinct is to honor duty over pleasure. This angers Carmen who pulls away, a turning point that marks the close of the ballet’s first act.  

Act II opens in a mountain enclave (indicated by the set’s multilevel boxes) where the gypsy community dwells. Micaela, in search of Don José, arrives at the encampment and witnesses Carmen hewing to Escamillo.  However, she is still torn, so Carmen consults tarot cards. Her future bodes poorly. She brushes this omen off. Escamillo and Don José duel to no particular outcome, save their wounded male egos.  After unsuccessfully imploring Don Jose to leave Carmen, Micaela harshly reveals Carmen’s choice of Escamillo. The die is cast.

Escamillo hosts his triumphant wedding to Carmen. Don José appears to confront Carmen. She holds firm on her choice of Escamillo, enraging Don José. Delivering two visible blows from Don José, Carmen falls, fatally struck.

Interview with Eduardo Vilaro, Artistic Director of Ballet Hispánico — 

The story of an unfettered, wildly flirtatious, seemingly destructive young woman ruled by her emotions and sex appeal has a foot in three centuries. Carmen was originally published as a novella by French writer Prosper Mérimée in 1845. Then, in 1875 (exactly 150 years ago), Georges Bizet’s vastly popular opera premiered in Paris. Sansano assembled his sound score from a mélange of familiar songs from the Bizet opera augmented by other Bizet works (notably the slow movement of his youthful “Symphony in C” famously choreographed by George Balanchine for New York City Ballet).  “Carmen Fantasy” by Pablo de Sarasate completes the score.

Eduardo Vilaro, Artistic Director of Ballet Hispánico New York, points out that Carmen is neither “story ballet” nor a work of abstraction. It’s something in between. “CARMEN.maquia’s choreographic structure brilliantly uses both abstract movement language and design to serve the narrative,” Vilaro says.

The Ballet Hispánico New York version has such a clever title. In his naming of his contemporized version of this 19^th century tale of the ultimate femme fatale, choreographer Gustavo Ramírez Sansano, a Spaniard, seized upon familiar jargon: tauromaquia. Translated, it means “the art of bullfighting.”

Sansano surgically removed the bull and placed in its stead a bull of a woman, in doing so inventing a word, CARMEN.maquia, or “the art of Carmen.”  Bolstering his decision to value a depiction of character over place, he stripped his “Carmen” of its stereotypically Spanish iconography—no black lace mantillas, polka-dotted flamenco petticoats, or red roses clenched in teeth.   Even the choreography itself is freed from Spanish stereotypes.

With elements of the foreign and exotic removed, Soraya audiences may find a direct path into a torrid drama that, after all, culminates in a crime of passion. Sansano, in his choreography, picks up on the drama’s universal themes with relish: its love triangles that pulls between duty and desire.

A mid-career choreographer whose completed works includes ones for Nederlands Dans Theater, Compañía Nacional de Danza, Ballet BC, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and the Hamburg Ballet, Sansano applies a wide-ranging contemporary vocabulary for his dancers (in (stockinged feet not ballet slippers) manifest in a kitchen sink of relentless invention.  His skill in depicting emotional turmoil that propels the ballet, as well as his maneuvering of his corps de ballets around the stage is admirable. His pas de deuxs, particularly for Micaela and Don Jose, are forceful and deeply romantic.

The ballet operates on set designer/constructor Luis Crespo’s gleaming-white stage with corrugated stage set pieces and minimalist props. Against this backdrop, fashion designer David Delfin’s flattering gossamer sheaths for ladies and sporty togs for men pop in black and white to unify the boldly clean and fresh look of CARMEN.maquia.

Ballet Hispánico New York, which is the dance world’s oldest and largest ballet troupe immersed in the rich culture of the Hispanic diaspora, is purposefully drilling into similar genre.  “I am interested in reframing our Latine stories,” says Vilaro, “…to give a more nuanced version of beloved classics and restore the narrative with some authentic roots. Two years ago, we toured our Doña Perón, a ballet based on the life of Eva Perón by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. Next year we tackle Don Quixote.”

The notion of a vivid and rambunctious character-driven Carmen suits the fancy of Soraya Executive and Artistic Director Thor Steingraber, who is a former opera director.  “Carmen is one of those major cultural touchpoints, so it’s important that we keep revisiting it,” he asserts. “Something remains compelling about the femme fatale who has no domestic intentions and vacillates between the sexy bullfighter the dutiful soldier.”

Yet today’s audiences may not comprehend how audiencesfirst experienced the story 150 years ago .

“I think one of the beautiful things about Carmen is the feeling of freedom, I do what I feel, the same way that men do,” says CARMEN.maquia creator Gustavo Ramirez Sansano.

“The only difference is that women used to not do that.” Steingraber states without apology, “Make no mistake. The Carmen story is about sexuality. I can think of little else in the high art canon that is so visceral and sensual.”