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The García Lorca Hall of Gran Teatro de La Habana presented this weekend the piece María Viván by the Compañía de Danza Combinatoria Rosario Cárdenas, as part of the activities on the centennial of the famous Cuban dramatist Virgilio Piñera (1912-1979).
The first version of the choreography was inspired in the poem with the same name written by Piñera, and was created by Cárdenas herself in 1997 to celebrate the 85th birthday of the author of Electra Garrigó. According to the company’s general director, the piece “was born deep inside of me, as tribute of friendship and acknowledgment to the extraordinary production of our world dramatist”.
Using dance images, María Viván – with Rosario Cárdenas again playing the leading role – flirts with the vernacular tragedy and Piñera’s expressions of the theater of the absurd. Although her main source of inspiration was the original lyrical text, each scene of the piece is also a symbolic wink to other plays by the writer.
The “photogenic consumptive” – as Viván is called at the end of the poem – has been represented with sensible provocations, in a declared challenge with her shadow interpreted by Jakelín Balladares – sensual and eroticist but at the same time cruel and surrealistic before the immortalized image with María Viván’s “flowered dress”, “forget-me-not hat” and “charmingly kitsch smile”.
With a peculiar stage and wardrobe design and original installation, all created by artist Jorge Luis Miranda Carracedo, María Viván evidences the expressive force and splitting that characterizes many of the dancers of Rosario Cárdenas’ company, who interpret several roles. The performances will continue next weekend in García Lorca Theater, at the usual hours.
