Related Articles
Federico García Lorca’s Blood Wedding belongs to the same harsh, Andalusian terrain as flamenco. It makes sense that the flamenco master Antonio Gaudes made a dance out of it, which filmmaker Carlos Saura artfully captured in 1981, to international acclaim. Ballet—the lingua franca of the Royal Danish Ballet, where another Blood Wedding premieres this month—makes a good deal less sense, at least until you remember La Sylphide. This crown jewel of the Danes’ 19th-century repertory is also about flight (literally, in its case) from marriage. It too sets duty against desire, superstition against intuition, and fate against will. Which is a lot to put on a budding choreographer such as RDB soloist Eukene Sagues, but the 30-year-old Spaniard just may be up to the task. Her choreographic style is at once weighted and dreamy, like a body plunged under water; her score, from works by Lorca’s friend and compatriot Mañuel de Falla, of Three-Cornered Hat renown, shares the playwright’s urgency and love of folk forms. And the play, the music, and the milieu are as familiar to Sagues—the child of Spanish theater people—as are the dancers, her peers. —Apollinaire Scherr
