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February, Brno and Carmen

Reports
Author Tomáš Valníček
Darkness and void, fire and blaze, red and black. Passion, temperament and untamableness, frivolity and aggression, tenderness and love. The desire for liberty and freedom against the will to rule and command, the desire to live and let live against the desire to possess, to bind and suffocate. Animality and roughness, jealousy, fury and finally, death - these are the building blocks Carmen in Brno is built of, or rather, elements it is formed by. A production, which is just as straightforward, but also surprising and full of contradictions as the heroine herself.

Flamenco Element ...

The first thing that catches a spectator by surprise right behind the door is guitar staccatos, singer's high-pitched, sorrowful voice and rhythmic clatter of French heels on a wooden board: the beginning of the full-length performance is preceded by a twenty-minute study of female element in flamenco (Flamenco Element project). It is performed by a dancer and choreographer Jana Drdácká in the premises of foyer in the first tier that were lit and modified specifically for this event - and in the same breath one must add that it is by no means a purposeless endeavour. Apart from evoking an atmosphere of the milieu where the story of Carmen takes place, a theatregoer unfamiliar with flamenco also gets an opportunity – at least in a brief outline – to grasp something from the morphology of this Andalusian folk dance, which he or she finds useful immediately afterwards in the auditorium during the performance. Approach One - A Legend Called Carmen ... Carmen is a piece that certainly does not need a detailed introduction - a famous novella written by French writer Prosper Mérimée depicting the story of love and passion between the Basque dragoon Don José and a gipsy girl Carmen, which eventually grows into anger, despair and crime. Or an even more famous opera composed by Georges Bizet and its subsequent adaptation into an orchestral suite by Rodion Shchedrin, usually serving as the basis for various dance treatments of this subject that are quite often mounted in our country. The National Theatre Brno then presents to Czech audience a one-act rendition of this subject by the Spanish choreographer and director Cayetano Soto (as expected based on the music score by Shchedrin). The world premiere took place in Dortmund at the beginning of November last year, the Czech premiere in Brno was co-produced then by the Ballett Dortmund ensemble. Approach Two – Carmen Revisited ...

Choreographer and director of the production, Catalan Cayetano Soto would not deny his origin and offers the audience an approximately hour-long, briskly paced choreography, glowing with energy and impressive output of dancers from the very beginning till the last minute. He also refers to flamenco quite often – his choreography thus mingles with this Spanish folk dance both formally and metaphorically. It is clear right from the beginning that the refined elegance of well-defined techniques of classical dance is really out of question here. Instead we follow a ceaseless, fluent movement without a moment of respite with dancers reacting to each other in a more or less obvious patterns. There is no tension between motion and statuesqueness, just a constantly flowing and changing pace. Every move transforms smoothly into another, all mingles with energy, passion and trance, in duets crowned by challenging, almost acrobatic partner lifts with a continuous close contact of dancers, which puts extreme demands on perfect timing and flawless execution of each single movement. Moreover, by creating a vast variety of unrepeated elements Soto warms the heart of the audience with his choreographical inventiveness.

Similarly imaginative, though very nonhispanic are the costumes by Munich haute couture designers Talbot Runhof (incidentally, this is their premiere set of costumes created for a stage production). Female dancers are clad in layered, richly draped dresses in tints of pink and crimson that hide the contours of torso, but leave the arms and legs uncovered. On the contrary, costumes of male dancers consist merely of tight black trousers with high waist and short boleros.

This creativity and complexity is in stark contrast with the minimalist concept of functionally-designed scene (by Cayetano Soto himself). In front of the audience there is nothing but a dark, empty, undefined space, here and there broken by functional elements (iron grid, to which Don José is fastened in the Crucified Jesus pose; a reduced ceiling board with a series of round holes, out of which male dancers protrude, hanging upside down like carcasses on hooks), but also purely aesthetic references to Minimalism of 1960’s (diagonally hanging lamps in space as the allusion to Flavin’s Diagonal of Personal Ecstasy). This functional minimalism thus highlights the fundamental parts of dramaturgical structure properly, which in combination with conventional symbols (cards - fate) creates a clear, but at times also ambiguous and rather surprising picture of the story. Dramaturgy of this production refers directly to the literary source and in the prologue introduces the character of a narrator (performed by Marek Svobodník), who obviously represents the writer himself. With his ”unspoken“ dialogue with Don José in the Crucified Jesus pose the entire ballet starts to refer to all crucial moments of the story - from the first time Don José and Carmen see each other, through her escape from the guards, Don José’s demotion, the smuggling gang interlude and story of love and jealousy, ending with the murder of the heroine. Unfortunately, in setting the outline the dramaturgist and libretist Nadja Kadel gets here and there dangerously close to the border of absurd, which somewhat disturbs the audience and in effect proves rather counterproductive (for instance the story of the smuggling gang the part of which is Carmen too is depicted as follows: one of the performers hands her from the orchestra pit onto the stage enough things to equip a small antique shop with, topped with a plastic pig, which vigorously saluting dancers push around the stage with their feet).

The selection of music seems in the context of the production rather awkward too – apart from Shchedrin’s adaptation of Bizet's original score one can also recognize parts of some other pieces written by this French composer (the last movement of the second suite L'Arlésienne) interpreted by Janáček’s Opera House orchestra, but also recordings of Spanish and French chansons, and last but not least, flamenco. All this was apparently supposed to create a musical collage that would underline the complexity and universal nature of the piece.

Approach Three – Carmen Revived ...

In Soto’s concept there is no room for any lyricism or poetic flair, instead we can see an unidealised anatomy of emotions in their extreme, destructive aspects, driven by passion, desire and lust that constitute an insurmountable barrier between the need for liberty and freedom on one’s part and the inability to accept it on the other’s, which inevitably leads to the final tragedy. Both protagonists also enacted their roles in accordance with this scheme: Petr Kondler’s Don José is full of jealousy and intrinsic desire to possess that he cannot deny. Likewise, Markéta Habalová enacts her Carmen as a woman driven by desire for independence and need for constant flirting, which she cannot or would not reject, although she is aware of possible consequences from the very beginning. Markéta Habalová succeeds in portraying this tragic, intense conflict within herself more than convincingly. The last peak of the love triangle is the young picador Lucas (in other versions Escamilio the bullfighter), whose creator Luděk Mrkos boasts accurate and confident execution of dance technique, unfortunately, without any distinct emotional feel. To the delight of the audience very inspired and professional performances are seen throughout the ensemble, from the precise synchronization of corps de ballet to the perfect harmony between the protagonists. They also bear the burden of emotions throughout the production, while the corps appear in a more depersonalized, almost mechanical manner, instead of individuals we watch rather a perfectly synchronized, unstoppable machine that is inexorably moving towards the tragic denouement.

Soto’s Carmen is a production, which precariously treads the line between descriptiveness and straightforward rampancy on the one hand, just to catch the spectator by surprise by the ambiguity of a single scene, moment, movement, gesture, expression in just a split of second. When watching the production, the audiences find themselves in a world resembling a glass labyrinth, where several confident steps are followed by an unexpected hit into the wall. Where details gain unforeseen proportions, where bright, clear image is suddenly broken in myriad reflections. Where we casually catch surprising flashes of ideas with the corner of our eye, just to lose them by a careless movement of our head a second later. Likewise, this production is just as clear and straightforward, but also surprising and confusing as a maze of human emotions. Like Carmen herself.

Written from the second premiere on February 20th, 2010 Translation: Tomáš Valníček

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