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No rose, but plenty of bite

By Catherine Shu
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Jul 26, 2008, Page 16

PHOTO: CATHERINE SHU, TAIPEI TIMES

When Teresa Barja was performing flamenco several years ago in Taipei, an audience member suddenly stepped up to her with a single long-stemmed rose.

Was it a tribute to Barja’s dancing finesse, or her elegance and poise?

“He wanted me to put in my teeth,” says Barja, still somewhat incredulous at the memory. She refused to bite, tossing the rose aside, and went on with her dance.

But Barja — the flamenco name of choreographer and Soochow University theater professor Catherine Diamond — decided to send up the stereotypical image of a flamenco dancer as a sultry lady brandishing a red rose during a scene in The Daughters of Bernarda Alba, the first full-length flamenco dance-drama performed in Taiwan. Audiences can watch the show tonight and tomorrow at Crown Theater (皇冠劇場).

That scene is one of the few light-hearted moments in the four-act performance. The rest of the drama, based on The House of Bernarda Alba by poet Federico Garcia Lorca, is dark, befitting a play that was written just as Spain was descending into civil war. Lorca was shot by Nationalist troops only two months after completing the drama in 1936.

Beta Chen rehearses the role of Bernarda Alba. PHOTO: CATHERINE SHU, TAIPEI TIMES

Set in Andalusia, the original play centers around the five daughters of the title character, who struggle against the oppressive social mores rigidly upheld by their recently widowed mother. Barja collaborated with the lead dancers — Beta Chen (陳雅惠), Jessie Wang (王思穎), Luisa Lu (呂姿儀), Lucia Huang (黃惠汝), Sandra Tsai (蔡明娟) and Paco Lin (林志遠) — to create solos that would contribute to the narrative while deepening the audience’s understanding of each character.

PERFORMANCE NOTES: WHAT:The Daughters of Bernarda Alba (白納德的女兒) WHERE: Crown Theater (皇冠劇場), 50, Ln 120, Dunhua N Rd, Taipei City (台北市敦化北路120巷50號). Call (02) 2521-5680 for more information WHEN: Tonight at 7pm and tomorrow at 2pm and 7pm TICKETS: NT$500, available at the door ON THE NET: www.mirasol.com.tw

While adapting the play, Barja cut the number of daughters down to three, partly to fit the number of dancers available, but also because she wanted audiences to have a sense of each of the women as individuals.

“In the original play, they are catty, they are cruel, they are repressed throughout the whole play, but I thought that would make us and the audience feel really grim, so the middle part is really kind of light-hearted, and then it descends into darkness,” says Barja.

Part of the challenge faced by Barja and her dance team was adapting a play by one of world literature’s most renowned prose artists into a performance that relies solely on movement, gesture and traditional flamenco music. Before each scene, the dancers and Barja would discuss the character’s motivations and brainstorm ways to express that through music and dance. Since the lead dancers have studied flamenco in Spain, Barja wanted to make sure each person’s individual training and background showed through in their solos, which the dancers choreographed themselves.

“I’ve helped them dramatize it, but they’ve contributed a lot of who they have learned from, so there are a lot of styles, which is precisely what I wanted,” says Barja.

For Sandra Tsai, the dancer who portrays Poncia, Bernarda’s long-suffering servant, the flirtatious tanguillo was the perfect dance for a scene where she describes her first date with her husband to Adela (played by Huang) and Martirio (Lu), Bernarda’s lively, curious and rebellious younger daughters. The dance is sexy and coy, but humorous, as Poncia pantomimes her lover’s tender (and not-so-tender) caresses, all the while playfully gripping the infamous rose.

“The tanguillo is a kind of folk music in Spain. It’s funny, and allows an aged woman like Poncia to play-act her first time with her husband,” says Tsai.

Meanwhile, Paco Lin, who dances the role of Pepe El Romano, the young heartthrob who plants the seeds of jealousy and discord among the sisters, is only on stage for a few minutes, but his two solos are pivotal to the narration.

In the first one, he courts Angustias (Wang), Bernarda’s eldest daughter, who he is marrying solely for her dowry. The dance is the rhythmically imposing farruca, which is traditionally danced only by men. Pepe dances it to Angustias, not with her.

On the other hand, Pepe’s second dance is a secret tryst with Adela, his true love; the duet is slow, sensual and yearning. Lin chose to dance the taranto with Huang, to a traditional song from Linares, an Andalusian mining town.

“The mine workers didn’t see the sun when they were working underground and they had to struggle to survive,” Lin says. “No one knows about Pepe’s hardship, so this is the song I chose for him.”

Tsai says the most challenging part of rehearsal for her was the acting, particularly in her interactions with Bernarda (Chen), who is torn between her duty to protect the social standing of her family after her husband’s death and her longing to take comfort in Poncia’s kindness.

“We had to work on our body language, our eye contact. Teresa tries to help us understand the correct way to use our voice and our eyes,” says Tsai.

In one particularly touching scene, the two dance together, almost as equals, before Bernarda suddenly catches herself, and as if to punish her for their careless lapse from propriety, brusquely tosses a rag to Poncia and orders her to scrub the floor. The abrupt ending to the tender, emotionally nuanced duet between the two women is startling and dramatically effective.

Flamenco has been part of the Taiwan dance scene for just a decade and Barja, who spent half a year creating The Daughters of Bernarda Alba, says that she would not have attempted a flamenco project of this complexity five years ago.

“All these dancers have studied in Spain, they are very into flamenco and they are very committed, so on a dance level I felt confident these are people who could do this,” says Barja, who hopes to pull together enough funding to tour the production through Taiwan and Southeast Asia.

She adds, “It’s a first attempt, but I’m not going to use that to apologize for it. I think, though, that if we get more chances to do it, we will get better.”
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