He’s a “movement junkie”, while she’s described herself as “Lucozade on legs”.
So a collaboration between the innovative Catalan dancer and choreographer
Rafael Bonachela and the artistic director of Southbank Centre, Jude Kelly
OBE, ought to be an explosion of effervescence.
They’re going to need all their combined fizz and flair as they team up to
mount a spectacular revival of the musical Carmen Jones. Oscar
Hammerstein II’s adaptation of the Georges Bizet opera opened on Broadway in
1943 and was made into a film starring Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte
in 1954. It featured an entirely African-American cast and shifted the
opera’s story of romance and murder from 19th-century Seville to the South
Carolina and Chicago of the 1940s.
Hot-blooded gypsy Carmen became a restless worker in a parachute factory, Don
José turned into Joe, her GI lover; and the toreador Escamillo was reborn as
a boxer, Husky Miller. Kelly, who will direct the new production, and
Bonachela, an SBC associate artist, have characteristically given
Hammerstein’s version a vigorous shake-up. Their Carmen Jones
will be set not in America, but in 21st-century Cuba. With a Latin
sensuality, the faded, crumbling grandeur of the Havana streets and a strong
sense of culturally rich folk history, this is a new bold take on the
musical: Bizet meets the Buena Vista Social Club.
Their efforts to pull it off are likely to be subject to considerable
scrutiny, and not just because Kelly and Bonachela are reinventing a musical
theatre classic – Carmen Jones is one of the central productions
in the all-new Royal Festival Hall. Kelly, in 2001 a close contender for
leadership of the National Theatre and now chair of Culture, Ceremonies and
Education for the Olympics Organising Committee, put the Battersea Arts
Centre and the West Yorkshire Playhouse on the cultural map. She is renowned
for her formidable energy levels and routinely referred to as the most
powerful woman in the British arts. It’s hard to imagine her being daunted
by any challenge – but even she acknowledges that running Southbank Centre,
where she was appointed artistic director in 2005, is a gargantuan task, and
one that brings with it awesome levels of responsibility.
It was a performance in the Purcell Room by the “bad boys” of British
contemporary dance, Michael Clark and Stephen Petronio, that gave direction
to the ambitions of the 18-year-old Bonachela, who had first arrived in
London one week earlier. “I didn’t know that kind of work existed, and as
soon as I saw it, I thought, that’s what I wanna do,” he recalls. “So for me
to be part of this, it really is – mind-blowing!”
It will be his job, as choreographer of Carmen Jones, to help Kelly
present a show that will have a similarly devastating effect on today’s
audiences. It’s a tall order; Bonachela has worked with everyone from the
prestigious contemporary company Rambert to world-famous choreographers
Merce Cunningham and Twyla Tharp to Kylie Minogue, but he’s never
choreographed a musical before.
On top of that, Hammerstein’s musical, with its preCivil Rights setting, is
often regarded as a dated period piece. On the other hand, Carmen Jonescombines
the pizzazz of musical theatre with the exigence of an operatic score. That
means it’s a good fit for a creative duo whose love of busting the
boundaries between genres and high and popular culture is borne out in their
eclectic CVs. Recently returned from a working trip to Cuba, Bonachela is
bubbling with ideas and drenched in South American sunshine. Add to that
Kelly’s own taste for Latin and Hispanic flavours, and their collaboration
on the show begins to make perfect sense.
“I work a lot with flamenco,” says Kelly. “I’ve directed three of Paco Peña’s
shows. When the performers finish a show at night and you get to a
restaurant, everyone carries on singing and dancing. The community in Spain
all sing and dance too, it’s a way of living. It’s about expressing passion.
There’s a lot of pain in it – most flamenco is about broken hearts and
poverty. There’s a lack of inhibition about saying, ‘This is how I feel.’ Carmen
is full of people saying it how it is, which is a very Latin quality. So I
wanted a choreographer who could not only do dance, but would take on the
idea that this was a community of people who made sound, made dance just as
a part of the way they live. And I felt that Rafael got that immediately.”
“It’s Latin blood, Latin identity,” agrees Bonachela. “The heat is a big
thing, to be able to be in the street so many hours of the day, so many days
of the year. When I was a kid I used to be out in the streets at 10 o’clock
at night. From when you’re little, you always listen to music. Singing and
dancing, they are part of the Latin character.”
There are other persuasive reasons, too, for relocating the musical’s action –
the pervasive sense of a military presence, of poverty, and of the longing
to escape to a better life. Bonachela speaks of the ubiquitous power, in
Cuba, of the American dollar, and of a people who freely shared their
feelings and hopes for the future with him.
“People in Cuba are very, very open, so you’re going to go for a walk, and
about 20 people are going to approach you. Part of it is a business thing –
they want to sell you cigars, they want to sell you anything else you could
possibly imagine! But because I speak Spanish I could get away from all that
and say look, ‘I’m not a tourist, I’m here working.’ And I would sit and
chat. Nobody there really dreams of becoming a doctor or an engineer. They
want to box, to dance or sing – those they think of as ways to get out, to
be able to make some money.”
He found contemporary dance artists in Havana creating their own blend of
Afro-Caribbean and Spanish influences; he hopes to absorb what he saw and
produce choreography for Carmen Jones that will be a physical
language of storytelling rather than an opportunity for virtuosity.
What Kelly roguishly refers to as the show’s “band” will, in fact, be the
Southbank Centre’s two resident orchestras, the London Philharmonic and the
Philharmonia, who will take turns to play at performances. The collaboration
is a step towards establishing what Kelly hopes will be a “community of
artists. That sort of interaction is, I think, what a place like this could
be really good at.”
The production itself is co-produced by commercial impresario Raymond Gubbay –
a partnership Kelly sees enduring into the future, along with many others
she plans to establish. Due to the demanding nature of the score, the cast
is drawn from both the operatic and musical theatre worlds. As in
Hammerstein’s original vision, all the performers, led by the South African
star Tsakane Valentine as Carmen, are black.
“That’s partly why I chose the piece, apart from its brilliance,” says Kelly.
“I feel strongly that there just aren’t enough opportunities for black
British or black American musical performers to demonstrate their talents.
There aren’t enough vehicles, and as a result their voices often don’t get
trained for demanding work like Carmen Jones. It’s a circle that
needs breaking.”
Accordingly, Kelly, never one to spot a problem without tackling it, has
established Voicelab at the SBC – an initiative that provides vocal training
for singers at all levels, some professionals, some amateurs, some whole
choirs. Over 18,000 voices will be raised in song over the SBC’s celebratory
RFH reopening weekend. Just the prospect of it raises the spirits – and it’s
that uplifting quality that Kelly believes is at the heart of great musical
theatre.
“It has a complete sense of expressiveness. It’s such an exacting genre, it
has to be joyful even if it’s tragic. And that comes from the attack of the
energy and the lyricism. It’s a celebration of human feelings. People come
out of the theatre more in love with the energy and vitality and passion
that humanity has to offer.”
In the face of such powerful creative conviction, it’s difficult to disagree.
Carmen Jones is at the Royal Festival Hall, July 25 to September 2 (0871
663 2584)
