Pennsylvania Ballet's "Carmen'

The literary figure of Carmen had already appeared in a few fictional works before Bizet immortalized her in his 1875 opera. So I can understand that a choreographer might want to tell her story a bit differently. But because Roland Petit uses the music from Bizet's opera— unlike say, John Cranko, who avoided setting his ballet of Eugene Onegin to the score of Tchaikovsky's opera— it's hard to avoid comparing the two.

Both the opera and ballet introduce Carmen and her eventual lover Don José outside a cigarette factory. Petit's staging initially leaves Sergio Torrado as José little to do but strut about the stage, removing and re-fastening his cape, or dragging his feet across the ground while he mimics bull horns with his hands. For his part, Torrado plays the role with tremendous gravity and hauteur, making it easy to see why Carmen would find him attractive. The cigarette girls dance, albeit minimally, flirting with José until Carmen arrives to pick a fight with one of them.

When she first sees José, Carmen seduces him simply by lowering the shoulder strap of her blouse. Riolama Lorenzo turns this slight gesture—like her every movement— into a delicate little thrill. Her seduction continues in a tavern and culminates in a hotel room: a spellbinding pas de deux choreographed to display a depth of affection that by itself justifies the frivolity and effrontery of many of the other scenes.

Here, José tries to corral Carmen with his arms as she tries to escape across the stage. Eventually he strikes her and she wilts into his arms. Despite this moment of violence, this lone scene and its simple movements suggest an immensity of bottled-up passion and lust.

Unfortunately, that passion is never released in the remaining two scenes. Here as elsewhere, the differences between this ballet and the opera appear in what's omitted.

José's sacrifice minimized

Petit can't be faulted for excluding José's fiancée Micaela from the storyline: Prosper Mérimée's novella doesn't feature her either. But Antoni Clavé's costumes— borrowed from the 2000 Ballet San Jose production— strip the epaulets and military designations from José's attire, begging the question of his identity and diminishing any understanding of the sacrifices he made to his army career when he took Carmen as a lover.

To be sure, Petit shows José participating in a robbery that precipitates a murder. But in Bizet's opera, José betrays his country, his corps, his family and his fiancée to chase after a woman (in some stagings a Basque separatist woman, to boot) who eventually spurns him for Escamillo's more superior alpha male interloper. When José kills Carmen at the end of Bizet's opera, you might well think the bitch deserved it.

Petit's José, by contrast, comes across as a bitter, controlling villain rather than the duped paramour— a jerk merely trying to rein in the passions of a too strident, free-spirited lover. And the ending evokes no sympathy, no sense of tragedy or fate, no feeling that we've witnessed the death of true love.

Corps wasted

I don't see what the Pennsylvania Ballet would gain by adding this work to its repertoire. It certainly doesn't stretch the talents of the company's dancers. With the lone exception of the vibrant chorus dancing in Scene II, Petit's choreography wastes the corps by arranging the dancers as little more than set pieces. They stand and hold chairs over their heads or sit in a block formation while monotonically chanting lines from the opera's libretto.

James Ihde's brief appearance as the bullfighter Escamillo squanders his talent as well. Decked in a pair of clownish pants and wearing a mime's face paint, he crosses and uncrosses his legs to Bizet's "Toreador."

If I must see this Carmen again, here's hoping the company simply extracts the third scene and pairs Carmen with some of Petit's other, more dramatic short works, like Le Jeune Homme et La Mort.♦


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