The Teatro del Bicentenario prepares for the world premiere on December 2 of Anima Animal(with performances on December 3 and 4), the first own creation of the prestigious dancer Herman Cornejo. It is an impressive piece of contemporary dance that has the choreographic direction of Anabella Tuliano, founder of Grupo Cadabra, who interpret the piece together with dancers from San Juan.
Cornejo, winner of the Benois de la Danse (comparable to the Oscar in cinema) and recently recognized at the Dance Magazine Awards, one of the most prestigious honors in dance, arrives for the first time in San Juan with his international project based on ” Caaporá”, a ballet written at the beginning of the 20th century, based on the legend of the Urataú bird.
The music for Anima Animal is an original creation, arising from the meeting of two talented composers, Noelia Escalzo and UJI. Both of different styles and languages, and they joined called by Cornejo and Tuliano. While Escalzo is a composer of academic Latin American and folk music, Uji is a composer of electronic music and DJ specialized in the rhythms and sounds of nature and tribal.
The richness of moving between two compositional worlds so different and equally rich is significant. Both aesthetics give Anima Animal an exquisite and new sonic breadth.
They worked remotely, he from Buenos Aires and she from the Sierras de Córdoba, to light a piece of music that blends with the powerful choreography of Tuliano and the interpretive and technical talent of Cornejo, who is currently considered one of the best dancers in the world. .
“The ballet scenes are endowed with purely orchestral, electronic moments and moments of both living together, so that the expectation is continuous, looking at what is to come. The song of the Urutaú in its circular melodic structure, remains in the soul of the music, not from the literal, but from the essential, which makes the musical motifs of Anima Animal personal and unique. The orchestration, at times evoking the Guarani culture in its specific musical instruments, such as the harp, allows us to explore from the place of origin and not being a mere spectator”, explained Escalzo.
“Writing for Herman is a luxury. It doesn’t matter what music you make. His body, his movement will add to it, ”said the Cordovan composer, who highlighted the work with Uji. “We were both clear that we were working based on ballet. Not from our own ego. That human value that is immense. I talk about bars and he talks about seconds. I speak of dynamics and he in frequency and in Hertz”, he graphed
Escalzo used to compose a sound base with real orchestral instruments.
“I bought a virtual orchestra with part of the instruments of the Boston Symphony, of the Berlin Philharmonic. So I could choose if I wanted a European violin or if I preferred an American wind. So when you listen to the music, the orchestra will not be in the pit, but the sounds will be real orchestra. In addition, in the most orchestral part of the ballet they will be able to detect the ‘soul’ of the Urutaú that is always present”.
For Uji it is the first time that he is related to ballet. “In the first talk they told me the history of the work and about Nijinsky and I was fascinated with the possibility of being part of this creation. They asked me to work with another composer and I said ‘well let’s try it.’ I had done collaborations before, but with someone with whom you have some musical affinity, in this case it was someone I didn’t know, who speaks another musical language and lives in Córdoba,” she said.
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“Luckily with Noelia we had something important, which was the will to do something together, I began to listen to her music, she my music, we began to soak up the cadences, what each one likes; because there was a great challenge and it was that it sounded like a coherent work, it could not have happened, but you don’t even realize that there are two composers” assured Uji.
“I composed the music that the play requested, when a more tribal scene was needed, I used elements of the music that refer to ancestral music, which is one of my specialties, when I had to make a more esoteric scene, I resorted to other tools of electroacoustic music”, explained the artist.
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How Anima Animal Arises
Born in St. Louis, he has been principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater in New York for 20 years. Cornejo has great admiration for the career of dancer Vaslav Nijinsky and connected with him through the roles he had to dance in his career, he came to ‘Caaporá’. It is a ballet created in 1915 by Alfredo González Garano and Ricardo Guiraldes and which was presented to Nijinsky, but which he never performed. That project, which is based on the legend of the Urutaú bird, was the inspiration for Cornejo to create Anima Animal.
In the new story Cornejo deepens the feeling of the native peoples and their connection to the Earth. “I wanted to understand the connection that the tribes had with the Earth, spirituality, respect for the stars and then create a new story bringing these inspirations, but expressing the true essence of the indigenous people and bringing to the stage the message of caring for the Earth. ” assures the dancer.
The functions of Anima Animal
FUNCTIONS: December 2, 3 and 4, 9:00 p.m.,
TICKETS ON SALE: $800, $1500, $2500, $2800, $3000.
Available with: Youth Ticket (for children under 24 years old (admission at 50% of its value)
TB Ticket Office Hours Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., and Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Online through tuentrada.com or at the following links.
The music of Anima Animal: a meeting between two talented Argentine artists