Ballets by Antonia Mercé ★★★★✩
Performers: Compañía Antonio Najarro. Miguel Baselga, piano and musical direction. Place and date: Juan March Foundation (January 12, 2024)
This project is relevant, to which on this occasion the Palau de les Arts of Valencia is added, to recover and stage ballets created by Antonia Mercé, an adventure that was cut short with the sudden death of the dancer on July 18, 1936 in Paris. The reworked ones now premiered there in 1928.
We know the importance of that creative stage, little revisited, in which a group of young composers left an important work, part of a generational project that was cut short by Franco's coup d'état in 1936 and the subsequent war. Most of them later opted for American exile and a few (Pittaluga, Casal Chapí...) returned to Spain after the sixties to also end their lives in relative oblivion.
Perhaps one of the most visible, because he chose to remain in the Madrid of the dictatorship, was Ernesto Halffter, a disciple of Falla in the early twenties, and who wrote the orchestral music for the now recovered ballet Sonatina that, together with El Contrabandista by the Alicante-born Oscar Esplà made up the program now offered for a week to a full house in Madrid.
There would be a lot to say about the aesthetic intent of this group of musicians who collaborated with La Argentina in the years 1927-1930 on successful European tours and proposing an aesthetic that was sometimes refreshing and far from traditionalism, not well explained in the proposed texts. It remains to recover the work of Julián Bautista or Gustavo Durán, among others.
Musically attractive, the orchestral version reduced to three instruments is effective in a small room where, like a café-concert, dance and musicians integrate with the spectator; The careful costumes (very similar to the originals of the great dancer) and the small dance group that works – seen by a layman – with sensitivity, grace and good technique, represent a coherent show with character.
In terms of expression, the rhythmic dependence at the beginning of El Contrabandista detracts from a score that reflects more sensitivity. And very well expressed in Halffter's music is the master's dependence on him Falla. Halffter in those years directed the presentation tour of El Retablo and here he suggests transforming dancers into puppets.
