23 Feb 2022 | Centro Municipal de Juventud Russafa
24th - 27th Feb 2022 | Sporting Club Russafa
SILENCE IN
BLOODY WEDDING
About The Play
"DIFFERENCE" is Theatre International Festival 2022 will open with the creation of the play Silence in Bloody Wedding directed by Hiroshi Koike, a renowned Japanese contemporary theatre director with extensive international collaboration experience.
This experimental project will be based on BODAS DE SANGRE, one of the most famous works of the great Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca. Using his many years of experience in Asian theatre, Hiroshi will integrate his artistic vision and his original performing approach with the jewel of traditional Spanish art - flamenco. It will be a new and interesting contemporary interpretation of Lorca's classic work. It will be a new and interesting contemporary interpretation of Lorca's classic play.
Hiroshi Koike approaches this project as Difference is World. The world is full of differences. The future is asking mankind to observe and respect differences. Hiroshi Koike uses performing arts to envision a world that values coexistence and respects differences. Koike’s style of direction aims to create a harmony of differences by inviting the performer to be physically active in the process of creation and opens the space for the performer to welcome possibilities.
Koike’s performance will be inspired by the text of Federico Garcia Lorca - Blood Wedding to explore the theme of marriage, the cycle of life and love for women in the modern world. He is especially interested in the intersection of death and life in Lorca’s and other Spanish and Mexican art and culture.
Elements Of The Performance
The performance will have elements of flamenco dance, contemporary dance and movement, primal movement, and theatrical acting. Koike will also utilize “Slow Movement”, where performers will move at 1/100th of the movement in daily life, in parts of the choreography.
Slow Movement is a method developed by Koike. The performer breaks down their movement from beginning, middle and end and performs that single movement extremely slow. Slowing down awakens the senses of the performer and makes them more aware of the movement and energy of the body. Although the movement is extremely slow, the presence of the performer becomes much stronger and the action’s theatrical energy is enhanced on stage.
About Bloody Wedding
Koike’s performance will be inspired by the text of Federico Garcia Lorca - Blood Wedding to explore the theme of marriage, the cycle of life and love for women in the modern world. Federico García Lorca, the great Spanish playwright, poet and prose writer, was born in Granada in 1898, and was assassinated by Nationalist forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.
As a poet, Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27, a group consisting of mostly poets who introduced the tenets of European movements into Spanish literature. As a playwright, he is considered one of the peaks of 20th-century Spanish theatre. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, commented: "I have never seen grace and genius, the winged heart and the crystalline waterfall, reunited as in him. Federico García Lorca was the spendthrift elf, the centrifugal joy that gathered in its bosom and radiated like a planet the happiness of living".
Many people consider him as "Spanish Shakespeare" and one of the most important Spanish playwrights of the 20th century.
Bloody Wedding is one of Lorca's most representative works and, together with Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, are known as the "rural trilogy" and are still performed today.
Bloody Wedding is generally regarded as a play in realistic verse, but it is worth noting that Lorca's plays, unlike his poetry, began as works of a markedly surrealist character. Over several years of creative practice, he discovered that such a work was almost impossible to stage and so he returned to the path of realism, but it was no longer a simple return, but with a tone of realism containing elements of surrealism and fantasy.
The prestigious Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno divides writers into two types: "oviparous writer" and "viviparous writer". The former carry out the creative processes outside the body, while the latter do it inside. If so, Lorca certainly belongs to the latter. Lorca took a long time to conceive of Bodas de Sangre and finally completed the work in just one week.
Its premiere, on March 8, 1933, was a "decisive and indisputable success", and this poetic drama, combining reality and fantasy, was very well received and enthusiastically received.
While in the 1920s and 1930s melodrama predominated, reflecting bourgeois life, Lorca shied away from the creative current of the time and bravely chose tragedy as his own form of writing, breathing new life into Spanish theatre at the turn of the century. XX. In Bodas de Sangre, he combined tradition and modernity, heritage and innovation, elegance and vulgarity. That's what made it a success.
About The Artists
Hiroshi Koike (Japan)
Director
In 1982 Hiroshi Koike founded Pappa TARAHUMARA. He wrote, directed, and choreographed 55 productions with Pappa TARAHUMARA. Following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake Pappa TARAHUMARA dissolved. In 2012 he launched the Hiroshi Koike Bridge Project (HKBP). Its’ mission is to produce collaborative projects around education, dissemination, and creativity, creating bridges between different entities. Under HKBP, Koike has written, directed, and choreographed 22 productions around Asia. The Mahabharata Series was his latest international collaboration that brought together artists from 9 countries around Asia to produce a 6-hour long production that premiered in Tokyo in August 2021.
Koike has produced work in 10 countries and his productions have been performed in over 40 countries. He has been invited to collaborate with artists around the world. His workshops that focus on reclaiming the physical body have been presented to professional artists as actor training and to the public for developing creativity in both Japan and overseas. He served as the Artistic Director at Tsukuba Cultural Foundation, Chairman of Asian Performing Arts Forum, Committee Member of Japan Foundation (2005 - 2011). He is a professor at Musashino Art University, where he is the first theater director to be appointed in the Department of Scenography, Display and Fashion Design. He is the principal and founder of Performing Arts Institute (P.A.I.), an educational institution for developing artists. He is the author of two books, a collection of essays on the intersection of art and society entitled Listen to the Voice of the Body and his theory of direction entitled Performing Arts Theory - Fushi Kaden for the 21st Century. His first anthology of plays entitled Journey to Night and the End of the World was published in 2018.
Koike is a very talented contemporary theater director. He is extremely skilled at using body, voice, and sound. It doesn't matter if with just a few lines, very simple props and equipment, he can fill all space and time with his work. He can even use percussion to interpret the intimate worlds of different men and women.
Juan de Pilar (Spain)
Guitarist
Juan de Pilar, born in Valencia, is a guitarist and composer of gypsy and flamenco lineage. He has an elegant and fine touch. He has been playing guitar since he was 15 years old. As a flamenco guitarist and international composer, he collaborates with different jazz, flamenco and classical music groups. He has travelled to countries such as Lithuania, Hungary, France, Italy, Sweden, Russia, Argentina, Ecuador, etc. He shares the stage with musicians of the stature of Perico Sambeat, Antonio Canales, Los Farrucos or Diego Amador among others. He has performed in important venues such as the Palau de la Música in Valencia, Teatro Real in Madrid, Teatro Caja Sol in Seville, Teatro Sanchez Aguilar in Ecuador, Teatro Principal in Paris, Teatro Romano, etc. He has participated in several recording projects and recorded as a soloist two albums "Oro Blanco" and "Tierra De Nadie". He is currently recording his third album as a solo guitarist.
Alberto Juan Alamán (Spain)
Cast
Alberto Juan is 21 years old and comes from Valencia. Although he has been living in Seville for the last four years, he is still taking flamenco classes. He is a Spanish dancer and flamenco dancer, which “is what I am really passionate about”, as he started dancing when he was very young. In 2018 he participated in a group that organised a Spanish dance gig in Alicante, and then he has been working every summer in another dance group that does flamenco, in different spaces and hotels in the north of Castellón.
Lorena Martínez (Spain)
Cast
A multidisciplinary artist who moves from the language of Spanish dance to urban and contemporary dance. She is always linked to performance as she considers it fundamental in dance, she does not see it as something independent. She has worked in several shows in the theatres of Madrid, including musicals. She has worked with Carlos Saura in his show Flamenco-India, she has danced in the Bolshoi Anniversary, Russia, among other experiences.
Silvia Ceresola Terraes (Spain)
Cast
Silvia Ceresola comes from Pego, a small town where she began to take her first steps as an actress. When she realised that she wanted to do theatre she studied drama at the Escuela del actor where she graduated two years ago. Dance has also been very present in her life, she currently puts all her energies into flamenco and any dance discipline that is put in front of her. She has worked in various street theatre and children's theatre projects, she has also played the lead role in the short film "black eyes" and is part of the cast of "l'hora fosca" in Ápunt. She is passionate about the wonderful profession she has chosen and art is her path to follow.
Marta Gómez (Spain)
Cast
She trained in classical ballet at the Conservatory of Riba-Roja del Turia. Then she went to the Jeune Compagnie PMDS (Paris Marais Dance School Ballet & Contemporary-Graham) learning and deepening in the technique of Marta Graham with the teacher and creator Maggie Boggart and guest teachers such as David Chase. She is trained in other qualities and tools of transformation with Maurice Causey and Patrice Zorzi. She works and collaborates with different artists and companies such as the French dance-theatre company Des Orah and Lee Mingwey in his piece 'Our Labyrith' for the Centre d'Art Contemporain Pompidou. In Spain, she works with choreographers Yoshua Cienfuegos and Maynor Chaves, and is trained in voice and expression courses with Monica Valenciano. She has also trained in theatre, participating in some readings and small format plays. Currently, she has worked for the Palau de les Arta Reina Sofia as a dancer interpreter in operas such as Verdi's Rigoletto, Wagner's Electra or Mozart's Requiem directed by Romeo Castellucci.
Time & Location
23 Feb 2022 Centro Municipal de Juventud Russafa
24th - 27th Feb 2022 Sporting Club Russafa
Video & Photos by: Marc Martínez
