La Bella Otero goes on tour to the Granada Festival

After returning from Colombia, the Ballet Nacional de España presented La Bella Otero last weekend at the Teatro del Generalife, once again featuring Granada-born Patricia Guerrero as guest artist and with the special collaboration of Maribel Gallardo.

Rubén Olmo has placed dance at the service of storytelling in order to achieve a fusion of styles — from folklore to flamenco and stylized dance — to tell, through dance, the story of a woman who reinvented herself after a tragic event in her childhood, triumphed as an artist and courtesan, and ended up ruined by gambling.

“I have always said that, many years ago, before I had even begun my career as a choreographer, I found some postcards of La Bella Otero in a second-hand shop. When I discovered that one of the most famous women of her time came from a village in Pontevedra, I knew I had to create a ballet about her life. But I knew I needed the support of a major company in order to stage it as I imagined it, as a large-scale production; directing the Ballet Nacional de España has allowed me to make it a reality,” explains Rubén Olmo about the origin of his choreography.

The plot, dramatized by Gregor Acuña-Pohl, has selected some of the most significant moments in the artist’s biography that could be expressed through dance, without attempting to be exhaustive. “I have tried to stay close to the historical figure and turn it into a ballet that moves the audience, without judging her. The most important thing for me was to show a person with great magnetism, charisma and strength.”

Granada-born dancer Patricia Guerrero, who on this occasion was returning home, was also very excited to take up this role again after her last performance in Bogotá last November. “It is a role that I am passionate about and that gives me so many good things.” “I am portraying a great woman, many things about whom I admire, and I very much enjoy having the opportunity to perform her.” The young dancer and choreographer trained in the companies of Mario Maya and Rubén Olmo. She is currently a leading figure in avant-garde flamenco and received the National Dance Award for Performance in 2021. For Patricia Guerrero, “La Bella Otero is a work with a harsh underlying story, but it is dynamic, entertaining, fresh, and full of colour and energy, which will make us all enjoy it, both on and off stage.”

To embody the protagonist in her later years, Rubén Olmo has counted on the special collaboration of Maribel Gallardo, répétiteur of the Ballet Nacional de España. “Taking up the character of Madame Otero again, beyond what it means to step into the shoes of such a fascinating woman despite her tragic life, means reliving the emotion of feeling the stage and the warmth of the audience. Unfortunately, the artistic life of a dancer is very short, and only rarely does life give you an opportunity like the one I am fortunately experiencing, intensely and gratefully,” says the Cádiz-born dancer.

The music for this operatic ballet was created by composer and conductor Manuel Busto, who coordinated the musicians from different styles who composed the music for this ballet, integrating them into the symphonic score he created.

The remaining compositions in the work were created by Alejandro Cruz Benavides, Agustín Diassera, the group Rarefolk, and flamenco guitarists Diego Losada, Víctor Márquez, Enrique Bermúdez and Pau Vallet.

Alongside the creation of such a complex and varied score, another of the challenges of this dramatic ballet has been the design of the nearly 200 costumes needed to dress the dancers in such diverse periods and settings as a Galician village, Belle Époque Paris, or a café cantante. Canary Islands designer Yaiza Pinillos is especially proud of her personal reworking of the Byzantine-inspired, jewel-embroidered costume that La Bella Otero wears in one of her most iconic portraits. In addition to the difficulty of designing costumes that reflect a period while allowing the dancers to move and change easily between scenes, there is also the use of wigs, beards, moustaches and hats required to characterize the characters.

For set designer Eduardo Moreno, the challenge was to design a single architectural element that would help identify the time and place of each scene with only a few simple additions. The lighting designed by Juan Gómez-Cornejo, for its part, envelops the dancers, adding an emotional element to each setting.

Since its premiere at Madrid’s Teatro de la Zarzuela in 2021, La Bella Otero has also toured to Seville, Albacete, Málaga, Lorca and Bogotá. On Friday the 23^rd, it premiered in Granada, and at the end of this week it will be presented in Oviedo.

Program:

LA BELLA OTERO

GRANADA FESTIVAL
Teatro del Generalife

June 23^rd and 24^th, 2023, 10:30 p.m.

Ticket sales:

https://granadafestival.janto.es/