Since 1981, Stella Arauzo has been in the tutelage of a legend. She was 17 years old when she joined Antonio Gades Spanish dance company, and by 1988 she was dancing the lead role of Carmen.
After Gades’s death, Arauzo became artistic director of the company and 20 years onward, she’s still dancing Carmen. This week Cairo Opera House hosts Arauzo and her company, performing the production that made her name 20 years ago.
A fascinating history lies behind the production. Gades, hailed as the best choreographer to emerge in Spain during the Franco regime, not only popularized flamenco, but brought it to an international stage. His celebrated collaboration with Carlos Saura, arguably also the best Spanish filmmaker of that generation, produced an incredibly well received movie version of “Carmen.
Today, the movie stands within their trilogy of flamenco movies (including “Blood Wedding and “El Amor Brujo ) as having lifted both flamenco and French composer George Bizet’s original “Carmen out of the realm of cliché and oblivion.
“I’m not a folklorist, but I studied folklore as a poet studies grammar, Gades remarked before his death. “A poet searches for the word and if it doesn’t exist he creates it. My idea was to do something more with that folklore, not steal it from the village and prostitute it, but to gather up its essence and do something else, tell a story through movement.
That his version of Carmen exists today is a result of copious notes to his successors; detailed sketches left with explicit instructions on how to execute the movement.
“There is a very special code left by Gades, Adrian Galia, dancing in the role of Don José, told Daily News Egypt. “You never get lost; he gives you all the pieces.
Having never worked personally with the choreographer, Galia performs a legacy, alongside the blurry remnants of Gades’ himself. The film version of “Carmen features Gades as Don José, in a parallel storyline that features Gades as dance teacher, a mirror of his character. He falls in love with his soloist, Laura del Sol, playing Carmen.
And thanks to the film’s self-reflexive storyline that we get, for example, three splendid dance numbers performed right after Don José kills Carmen. And if it is in fact Adrian Galia dancing with Stella Arauzo, then perhaps there is a new parallel line – different from Gades dancing with his student- for in this case the director Arazou chose her Don José.
“It is always the woman who chooses the man, laughed the companies’ technical director in a small press conference held at the Spanish embassy on Wednesday. Gades described Carmen as “a free woman who had that concept of freedom that she would rather die than lose.
Of her work as Carmen, Arazou says, “it goes in both directions. Since I started dancing with him at so young an age, my own personality and expression was molded by Gades. He pushed her to seek a full embodiment of Carmen, in technique and emotion.
Arazou said she truly identifies with the character. Indeed, wearing light blue cowboy boots and a low cut peasant blouse Arazou did not appear far from whom she would portray that evening. Still, she displayed a kindness and humility that did not prepare this reviewer for the raunchy hip swaying, knife wielding prowess to come.
The performance progressed in a series of alternating solo and ensemble pieces, yet never was the work as vivid as when Arazou and Galia took the stage together in duet.
When they first came together, marching in a dramatic beam of light across the stage, my eyes strained to see them. The performance at times, a lively cabaret, with live singers and guitarists, also demands a more intimate viewing because of its attempt to create a popular atmosphere. The large ensemble took turns jeering and jabbing one another in dance-offs reminiscent of 60s’ musicals.
As mentioned above, I was most fascinated by the lead soloists who performed with accuracy discernible even from the balconies’ nether world. Similarly, in the role of Toreador, Carmen’s fatal love interest, Jairo Rodriguez held the stage with a surgeon’s precision. The first moments of his characters’ introduction were performed without music. Calmly, yet with the passion of a man in his trade, he dressed before a mirror, his pink cape waving in sparse movement that broke strongly from the lively numbers set to the lyrics of the poet Lorca.
All in all, “Carmen alternates between enjoyable ensemble romp, sizzling duets and abstract art. Its flamenco indeed ascends much of what had been popularized before and after it. In 2008, Antonio Gades’ Carmen remains vital, and in a few brief moments, a genius contribution to its forms.
“Carmen is playing daily until Nov. 15, at 8 pm, in the Cairo Opera House. Tel: (02) 2739 0132.
