INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Freedom beyond politics

The classic femme fatale a universal metaphor for freedom? Most definitely, claims Eldar Aliev, artistic director of Ballet Internationale. “Carmen is a symbol for people’s fight for rights, for freedom for their life. "There’s always someone who wants you to do only as they dictate." The saga of Carmen, originating as a Spanish legend, for centuries has been adapted into works of literature, opera, ballets, drama, orchestral music. Bizet’s opera version is probably the most widely known adaptation. Love, lust, vengeance, fate are its primary themes. In 1967 Communist Cuba, choreographer Alberto Alonso crafted a multilayered condensation referred to as “socialist realism.” Depicting on the surface what dance writer Robert Greskovic describes as “the corrupt wiles of a headstrong woman,” he also notes it “shows itself off with a winking smile and switch-blade legs.” This dual combination of layers of meaning with drop-dead choreography stood out during my conversations with Ballet Internationale dancers. Plumbing their relationships to their roles and with each other, talk turned to the feel of Bizet’s familiar music rescored by Rodion Schedrin. Breathtakingly exciting, Schedrin’s resetting is, at times, a skeletal rattling of the original. The rhythm of a Habenera, usually a dance of voluptuous character in slow duple measure, is transformed into ever-shifting tempos to characterize various levels of constraints in contrast to Carmen’s lack of restraint. The unrelenting demands of the choreography absorbs the dancers at the outset. These demands are as great on the corps of women and male dancers as on the leads. Those who have previously danced the roles help newcomers learn the correct movements. Irina Kamarenko and Karen Scalzitti-Kennedy, who shared the title role during the China tour this past summer, mentor Sara Viale for her first leap into the title role. Newly arrived Nourlan Abougaliev is shadowing Ogulcan Borova who has been dancing Jose. “I’m not Carmen in real life,” admits Kamarenko. “It’s difficult physically. Inside I’m thrashing. The tension in the music helps you.” Understanding Alonso’s view of Carmen and her impact on the other characters becomes part of the process once technique is mastered. While Bizet’s Carmen is largely love ’em and leave ’em, Alonso’s Carmen is deeper. “She knows who she is. She wants to be what she was born. She won’t change her nature for a political or social or personal demand,” Aliev asserts. When Carmen leaves Jose for Escamillo, “She still loves Jose, but not what his lifestyle prepared him for,” Scalzitti-Kennedy interjects. “At the end, even though he kills her she feels sorry for him. She’s thinking, ‘You’re alive and what kind of life are you going to live?’ Dying, she pats him on his face.” It’s an arresting gesture. The dancers, in ping-pong fashion, define Jose. He’s a soldier, regimented to do as he is told, never questioning authority, not thinking on his own. In an impetuous act, Jose lets Carmen go when she is supposed to be imprisoned for defying cultural sameness and being her unique self. Yet he cannot escape himself and give expression to what is in him. “Jose won’t fight for freedom,” Aliev explains. “His body lives but his heart and spirit die.” This is not classical ballet. The choreography is one of a kind, Aliev comments, who danced Jose opposite Leslie Browne’s Carmen in Ballet Internationale’s 1994 production. Browne went on to star in the 1997 film The Turning Point. Along with Carmen, BI will also stage the world premiere of Interzone, choreographed by Vladimir Angelov and set to the music of The Art of Noise. “It’s unusual for our company, completely different style,” Aliev states. “It took a lot of preparation to create. Koslov represents the younger generation of choreographers. Presenting a new ballet brings excitement. It is a way to build audiences.” And what is Aliev’s take on freedom in this work set “in a metropolitan city of the Western world?” “Freedom is not lack of good manners,” he asserts. “It is not the right to bully, abuse others.”