MEXICO CITY.- He Folkloric Ballet of Mexico Amalia Hernández will have her first presentation accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in the emblematic Hollywood Bowl of the Angels.
The concert will take place on July 18, when the orchestra will be conducted by Latin Grammy-nominated maestro Carlos Miguel Prieto. It will also be a milestone in Prieto’s career, as it will be his debut at the Bowl, a venue with a capacity of 16,000 spectators.
The Amalia Hernandez Ballet has performed here before, but they have never done a joint gala with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The ballet usually goes to theaters with capacity for thousands of people in cities like New York and Chicago, but the Bowl is one of the largest stages it conquers in the United States.
“Working with the Philharmonic was unthinkable,” said the ballet’s general director, Salvador López, in a video interview from Mexico City. “It’s a great event.”
Program
The goal of the ballet, which has been active for 73 years, is to spread Mexican culture at the highest level and pay tribute to great Mexican authors.
The program includes works such as Sensemayá by Silvestre Revueltas, Danzon No.2 by Arturo Marquez, Huapango by José Pablo Moncayo, danzones by Agustín Lara and mambos by Dámaso Pérez Prado. In the case of the music by Lara and Pérez Prado, their choreographies are new and will have their world premiere at the Hollywood Bowl.
The Ballet includes dances from all over Mexico, from Tamaulipas to Chiapas, passing through Michoacán and Jalisco.
López is the grandson of Amalia Hernández, who was born in 1917, in the post-revolutionary era of nationalism in which artists, mostly men, such as muralists, musicians and authors whose mission was to highlight Mexico through art, stood out.
“Amalia is raising her hand in this era where she is one of the few women who dares to undertake a project,” said López.
Hernández spent years visiting indigenous villages to research their traditional dances, which in some cases can last for days, and created a show with a synthesis.
“He extracts the most important, the most relevant, the most brilliant aspects of these dances,” Lopez said. “And he manages to fuse them and create a brilliant interpretation, without waste.”
In other cases, such as in pre-Hispanic dances, Hernández turned to books and engravings to get an idea of the movements and instruments that could make up the dance.
“There is no documentation of whether or how they danced,” said López. “Through enormous creativity, he managed to weave together a dance and choreographic project that goes beyond research, I think it goes beyond that, and it is a creativity that is captured in these pre-Hispanic works that are marvelous.”
Ballet
The Ballet Folklórico has been based at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City since 1959, but López stressed that they are undergoing continuous renovation.
“We have brought it up to date, with a different dynamic, with different theatrical techniques, with a generation of dancers who are much better prepared,” he said. “What I always say is that it is a ballet that is many years old, but it is not an old ballet, it is not an old company; it is a company that has known how to update itself.”
60 dancers and 20 technical and management staff will travel to the Hollywood Bowl.
Years before, López was part of the corps of dancers performing floreo de reata, a type of charrería, an art that he has proudly practiced for years. The floreo continues to be part of the ballet show.
“I did it for 25 years, I did these performances, I traveled all over the world with my grandmother,” she said. “I think it also allowed me to understand a little bit of this whole artistic part, this whole musical part, and also to understand the dance sense of ballet.”
López recalled the character of his grandmother, who died in 2000, as a person constantly seeking to improve.
“She said that she didn’t live off of what she did, but that she lived off of what she wanted to do,” he said. “She hadn’t yet made the most of her talent, that she was still looking for how to create the best choreography of her life, she was always moving forward, and I think that’s a very powerful message.”
Source: AP