Carmen Suite

Ballets by Eno Peci and Alberto Alonso

In a new creation Eno Peci examines the moments before a decision that are characterised by doubt, pressure and reticence. Burden Loops does not tell us of finding the “right path” so much as of living in a state where the decision itself becomes an endurance test. Within their movement vocabulary, the dancers also find themselves in a moment of pause – between expectation and uncertainty, the urge to move and a lack of orientation. Here their bodies become the means of expressing the tension between a requirement to act and the uncertainty of its outcome.

 “Sometimes I would think: why did Bizet write an opera? It should be a dance!” is what the legendary prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya said about the work that she would dance in a creation by the Cuban choreographer Alberto Alonso and which became a remarkable triumph for her.

To an arrangement for percussion and strings by Rodion Shchedrin, whose percussive and pointed instrumentation recast Bizet’s composition in a new mood, Alonso choreographed a truly expressionist ballet. Set in a bullring, whose animal symbolism Alonso associates with the strength and power that makes Carmen who she is, the choreographer concentrates entirely on a woman who wants to live a free and independent life. As a result, the stage provides the scene not for a love triangle but for an existential struggle for freedom, passion and self-determination.