Or how to stage a Lorca play without words

Silvia Calado Olivo. Madrid, February 2003
Translation: Gary Cook

Mariana Pineda was a heroine of the liberal cause in 19th Century Spain, whose short and turbulent life came to an abrupt end when she was hanged for embroidering a revolutionary flag. Her story was immortalized in a traditional folk ballad, which inspired Federico García Lorca to pen his well-known play depicting her life story. Stripped bare of political connotations to focus on the love themes, Mariana Pineda is taken to the territory of flamenco dance by Sara Baras, Manolo Sanlúcar and Lluís Pasqual. This creative trio - choreographer, composer and stage director respectively - spoke to us about how the project evolved.

The Catalan theater director explains how simply it all came about: "Sara and her producer came to present their ideas for the project. You shouldn't leap headlong into anything like that, so I took my time pondering over whether literature like this really could be told without words, beyond words." And Pasqual drew up a script where he "endeavored to draw upon the emotions in the text, leaving the chronological order behind and jumping to the moment before her execution. Then Mariana Pineda's life is portrayed as a series of flashbacks featuring the three men who had the deepest impact on her." But he knew that to pull this off he "needed a filter: the music of Manolo Sanlúcar." And that's when the trips to Manolo's hometown of Sanlúcar de Barrameda began - "to spend every moment listening to the music".

Sara Baras in 'Mariana Pineda' (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

The composer and guitarist, for his part, faced the difficulties of expressing a story through music, "which is one of the most abstract arts." But he managed to mould it into something tangible: "I think every story can have its own music, the music that fits best. In the case of ballets, the cast of emotive characters in stories has to be translated into sounds, to give them an air of authenticity. And I try to be faithful to the idea they give me as far as possible, if they don't ask me to create one. My job is to help that idea along, to build on it." Evidently if Manolo Sanlúcar was their choice of musician, flamenco was their choice of music, but the artist didn't stop there. "The music has to lend itself to el baile. The flamenco styles all have their own rhythmic and tonal characteristics, but I had to weave them into a danceable musical story. So it isn't traditional flamenco - I've borrowed too from Andalusian music, after all they're close relatives of each other, they share the same roots." The modus operandi was "Choose a theme, work on it till it unfolds and develops into something that isn't just a series of falsetas, into musical stories that tell a tale just as well as a libretto."

So what of Sara Baras? Besides creating the choreography, she takes on the lead role as she did in 'Juana la Loca', as "I love strong, passionate, dedicated characters, those are qualities that flamenco demands of you over and above good technique." The difference is that back then she admitted to being apprehensive about performing, but the bailaora from La Isla de San Fernando has learned that lesson now. "I learned a lot from Juana la Loca, it was the first time I performed to a script and it's totally different from performing, say, a soleá. It isn't about performing as an actress; it's about performing as a bailaora, acting with your whole body. I'm lucky in that I'm surrounded by people who help me no end... The first day Lluis came, we all tried to cry, laugh and make faces to act out the story. In the end though he told us to just dance and forget the rest. But I follow a script; I try to feel the way Mariana must have felt. I put myself in her shoes." And many lessons have been learned from this process: "The first thing I learned was to hold back a little, to know when was the right moment for the face, when to use the shoulders, the hips, when it's time for a moment of tranquility." And maybe with that phase firmly behind her she feels able to criticize "the newcomers who come rushing in, doing more and more complicated stuff. This project has woken me up to the fact that there's more to dancing than rushing around. You don't want to give the audience your all as soon as the curtain's raised." And this filters through into her personal life: "There's no need to rush life." She reflects that "I never imagined that at my age I'd be alongside these figures who were already big names when I was a little girl." Figures who've taught her to "value each little thing, each note, each silence... and the same applies in everyday life."

Music to tell a tale

And speaking of notes and silences, she adds that the music has been a driving force. Her dancing "winds its way through a lot of flamenco palos, but you won't find a regular alegría or soleá style among them. The music tells a story, that's why I didn't specify any particular palos at the outset, I left it all down to Manolo Sanlúcar to create the music. Sure, there's soleá, there are tangos, there's soleá por bulerías... but only as melodies that change according to a script." The composer adds that he discovered his preferred style of making music years ago. "I saw that when guitarists were playing a soleá, they played a few chords to announce the fact, defined the structure, then proceeded to play a series of falsetas: one borrowed from Niño Ricardo, another from Sabicas, another from Borrull, another from Molina... And I asked myself how can you make a piece up from chunks of different stuff - where's the musical philosophy behind that? But there were also artists who constructed something in a more creative way, they'd work on an idea, let it unfold, and develop it, build on it. Since I was 18 I've been making my music that way." And this project was no exception: "I thought about what that woman must've been thinking, and sooner or later a melody would come to me, and I'd get a feel for whether it should be a soleá or a seguiriya or whatever... I come from a musical, Andaluz background, so the style is never gonna come out sounding like anything else", just flamenco and traditional Andalusian styles. And that's how he found the right music to go with the story in question. "I'd never boast about my work, but one thing I can say is that I'm honest, so much so that I never borrow even one segment of a piece to put it into another. Even if I wanted to I couldn't reuse the smallest fragment to play a concert of my well-known songs. I find it harder to go back than to take the reins and carry on creating. The creative process is something addictive."

Manolo Sanlúcar and Sara Baras (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

And speaking of creativity and the dangers of opportunism, the tocaor denies that this is a sign of the times. He recalls an anecdote from more than four decades back: "There was a concert, with two guitarists. One was a lesser-known artist - I'm not gonna mention his name - and the other was the genius Niño Ricardo. The lesser-known guy played a guitar solo, raised his right hand in the air and played a fandango with his left. That's cheap showmanship, but the audience gave him a standing ovation. After that Niño Ricardo played and nobody had a clue what was going on. These days the same is true... maybe things are even worse. There used to be people who'd make a real effort to understand a book, but nowadays if it's more than light entertainment it isn't worth it, nobody's looking to better themselves spiritually. What's happening today is happening because people let it."

And with respect to working on 'Mariana Pineda', he makes special reference to the gratification he encountered in working as a team. "It's beautiful to feel yourself boosted by your colleagues. At the end of the day we're just like plants, we need to be watered from time to time." And he was unstinting in his praise, especially for the bailaora: "I'm awestruck by Sara Baras, her greatness, her ability to step outside of herself and into a personality vacuum, in order to take on Mariana's personality as her own. I've seen that in very few artists. What normally happens is that instead of playing the role of that character, the artist shapes the character to fit himself. I never thought of squeezing in ten different time signatures so she can show off, and she never asked me to do that either... I admire her for that. I made the music I felt best suited to a character, a ballet for Mariana Pineda not for Sara Baras, and that's what helped me find the right music."

According to Sanlúcar, that attitude has meant that 'Mariana Pineda' has been "a more rewarding project, and unusually dynamic considering that it's been an experience divided between several artists. Instead of clashes there's been mutual influence, and every time one of us expressed an idea, the other two felt it just as if it were our own." For that reason "it seemed more like we were remembering than creating, it's like the whole thing was just unwinding". Manolo Sanlúcar, Lluis Pasqual, Sara Baras... and the stage director assures us there was a fourth member of the team holding it all together: Federico García Lorca.

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