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La Cuadra hits New York's
City Center with Carmen
Salvador
Távora's work will be on the bill for three weeks starting September 12th.
Candela Olivo
Carmen, the legendary cigarette girl portrayed by Mérimée and
Bizet is coming to the Big Apple with flamenco airs. The Andalusian opera as interpreted
by the Sevillian theater group La Cuadra will open September 12th on the stage
of City Center, a theater which is annexed to New York's MOMA, Museum of Modern
Art. The production will be featured for three weeks.
Playwright Salvador Távora, director of La Cuadra, says "this is
the first time a Spanish theatrical work has broken out of New York's off-Broadway
circuits to hit Broadway itself and make contact with the average American audience.
For Távora, being able to get into one of New York's epicenters of vanguardist
art means the fulfilling of his objective "to place theater within the context
of contemporary art and do something different from the norm".
The show that La Cuadra brings to New York and for which eight thousand tickets
have already been sold, has eliminated the bullfighting ambience which brought
so much controversy to Carmen. In fact, Barcelona's banning of the work
on the grounds that it included a bullfight went all the way to the courts where
in the end the show was allowed to proceed "in defense of freedom of expression".
Salvador Távora points out that "the bullfight setting is just one
element that contributes to enrich the theatrical experience. It is presented
as a harmonious part of the art and only in those places where the practice is
permitted". Upon returning from the United States, La Cuadra will again try
to present the show in Barcelona, and later in the French city of Toulouse.
Carmen, played by the dancer Lalo Tejada, has been traveling around
the international theater circuit since 1996, with more than four hundred performances.
Japan, Australia, Austria, Portugal, Great Britain, Ireland, France, Germany,
Holland, Argentina and Mexico are part of the long list of countries which have
received the work which its creators define as "an Andalusian opera mixing
dance, traditional music of cornets and drums, as well as popular and refined
music".
The show which debuted in Sevilla's Xth Bienal de Flamenco (1998), is part
of a trilogy devoted to the bullfighting ritual and which, after Don Juan en
los ruedos, Salvador Távora plans to close with a sort of choral show
which he already refers to as "combination bullfight and Andalusian opera".
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