Choreographed
and directed by
Antonio Gedes
|
Fuenteovejuna
Ballet Nacional de España
Sadler's Wells
16 - 22 June 2003
Antonio Gedes' epic of dance theatre is based on an actual occurrence in fifteenth-century Andalusia, in the Cordoban village of Fuenteovejuna. The local lord (the "cacique") covets a beautiful girl in his feudal domain, and is determined to enjoy her. She is Laurencia, daughter of the village headman, and she is affianced to a poor peasant called Frondoso. After an unsuccessful attempt to seduce Laurencia, the cacique abducts her on her wedding day, and rapes her. She manages to escape, and tells the villagers what has happened; whereupon they rise up against the cacique, storm his house, and kill him. When a judicial enquiry begins and the magistrate asks who committed the murder, everyone in the village steps forward and with one voice says, "I did!"
As a tale of despotism and defiance, played against a background of rural solidarity forged by song, dance, and the optimisms of romance, Gedes' Fuenteovejuna is striking and powerful. And it is all the more striking for being told in the idiom of Spanish dance and song, both of which lend themselves marvellously to this form of narrative. A critical anticipation of a Spanish dance-play might expect flamenco and its offshoots to be too limited in vocabulary for the wide range of emotion and incident integral to the tale; but it proves otherwise. Flamenco is as if made for the expression of sexual desire between man and woman, and it thrillingly captures the rivalry between man and man as they pigeon-pout their threats to one another. But in Gedes' imaginative choreography we find it capable of depicting harvest, village life, rape, military procession, and the gamut of life and feeling besides. It is a remarkable achievement, and not to be missed.
AC Grayling
|
|
