ADDA·SIMFÒNICA ALICANTE
JOSEP VICENT, director titular
ASUN NOALES, dirección escénica y coreografía
Rosanna Freda, asistente de coreografía
Joaquín Hernández, Diseño Iluminación
Luis Crespo, Diseño espacio escénico
Ana Estéban, Vestuario
Federica Fasano, Investigación
Germán Antón, Fotografía
Bailarines: Deivid Barrera, Rosanna Freda, Diana Grytsailo, Iván
Merino, Alice Pieri,
Laura Martín, Joel Mesa Gutiérrez, Salvador Rocher, Theo Vanpop, Jennifer
Wallen,
Samuel Olariaga, Araitz Lasa
What can surprise
in a performance of music that is almost known by heart, providing a scenario
for a ballet whose story one has heard and seen performed countless times? The
answer is just about everything. A story is as old as its current telling, if
the tellers have told it their way. This was very much the case last night in
Alicante when the ADDA Orchestra under Josep Vicent played Prokofiev’s Romeo
and Juliet to the choreography of Asun Noales.
One always needs
to be reminded of the power of human imagination, and this performance will
live log in the memory. Here there were no sumptuous costumes, no monumental
sets. Staging was accomplished with a few cubes that could serve as seats,
walls or plinths, and a pair of steel scaffolds that had vegetation on one
side. These could be rotated to present a garden, a balcony or a tomb. Costumes
were minimal, with the feuding Montagues and Capulets needing no obvious
uniforms to identify their allegiance.
But what was on
display was raw emotion, vividly portrayed by a quite excellent choreography.
There was not a single gesture in the audience’s view merely for the sake of
the gesture. Nothing was purely technical. Everything meant something.
The audience was
left in no doubt about the sexual nature of Romeo and Juliet’s
mutual attraction. And the fight scenes were utterly convincing, despite the
fact that no weapons were ever visible.
Perhaps the most
surprising aspect of the whole evening was the portrayal of Father Lawrence. Prokofiev’s
sensuous music was the raw material, but the choreography depicted a character
that was sinister, clearly devout and all too willing to help, but also someone
who wished to envelop and control. It was a depiction close to witchcraft, but
probably got closer to a medieval mind’s interpretation of religion, with its
capacity to deliver eternal damnation and suffering than any other I have seen.
Rosanna Freda and
Salvador Rocher in the principal roles were hardly off stage, but other
performances were also superb, not least the Mercutio, the Tibalt and the Nurse.
And everything was delivered by a dozen dancers.
This was a
minimalist production with wholly modern choreography, but the humanity that
was depicted was direct, very moving, and communicated so vividly that it rendered
considerations of “style” simply irrelevant.
