Feb. 22, 2002 – Barely back home from a month-long tour of 15 mainland cities across 12 states, Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico travels to St. Thomas this weekend for a subscription season performance Saturday night at the Reichhold Center for the Arts.
The company will perform two works — the full-length Bizet classic "Carmen" and "Latinissimo," which features choreography to songs any fan of Hispanic pop music will recognize. It's the same program that was featured on the Jan. 12-Feb. 10 tour.
"Latinissimo," a new work which means "very, very Latin," will open the program. The choreography is set to the music of Gloria Estefan, Julio Iglesias, Ricky Martin, Rafael Hernandez, Tito Puente and tango composer Astor Piazzola, among others. Twenty members of the company dance the work, with principal dancers Rebeca Canchani, Armando Seda, Amparo Rodriguez and Jose Rodriguez featured.
The "Carmen" ballet is a new version for 20 dancers commissioned by Ballet Concierto in 1994. The full-length (51 minutes) work was choreographed by Miami City Ballet's resident choreographer, Jimmy Gamonet de los Heros, to the classical music of Georges Bizet that has become one of the world's best-loved operas. The company has performed the work to effusive acclaim in such diverse venues as New York City, Cairo and Hawaii.
Principal ballerinas Maria Teresa Robles and Rebeca Canchani "each offer an interpretation of the title role that has impressed audiences as well as critics, who have favorably compared them with such legendary ballerinas as Renee Jeanmaire, Maya Plisetskaya and Alicia Alonso," publicity for the company states.
The plot revolves around Carmen, a fiery and freedom-fixated gypsy, and Don Jose, the country bumpkin soldier she seduces. He goes to jail for her and deserts the army to join a band of gypsy smugglers, but Carmen soon turns her attentions to a handsome and haughty bullfighter, Escamillo. The finale, naturally, must be a crime of passion. The music includes some of opera's most familiar melodies including "La Habanera" and "The Toreador's Song."
Ballet Concierto was founded in San Juan in 1978 by Lolita San Miguel, a former Metropolitan Opera Ballet and Joffrey Ballet dancer who remains its artistic director. When the company made its mainland debut in 1990, The New York Times pronounced it "one of Puerto Rico's best-kept secrets." Since then, it has been hailed as one of the leading Hispanic ballet companies in the nation.
A reviewer for The Buffalo News wrote: "Young and vibrant, Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico is many companies rolled into one … this company dances as if each performance is its last — full of passion and drama. The dancers are winning: well trained, disciplined. They also bring a pleasure and generous exuberance to their performance."
Although grounded in the classical ballet repertoire, the company is known especially for performing commissioned works by Hispanic composers. Prominent among them is "La Casa de Bernarda Alba" ("The House of Bernarda Alba"), freely based on the last work by Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca and choreographed by Alberto Mendez, principal choreographer of Ballet Nacional de Cuba. Another is the ritualistic "Portal del Yunque" ("Gateway to El Yunque"), inspired by Puerto Rico's rainforest.
Through its annual Choreographers Festival, the company produces new works by invited Caribbean choreographers; a number of these are in its active repertory.
For more than two decades, Ballet Concierto has presented four seasons of dance each year in San Juan. In 1992, ballet superstar Fernando Bujones invited the company to perform with him for an additional season in Puerto Rico.
A number of its productions have been televised, among them "Carmen," "The Phantom of the Opera," "Giselle," "The Nutcracker" and "Romeo and Juliet."
Curtain time Saturday is 8 p.m. Tickets are $35 in the covered section and $25 and $18 in the open air. With funding support from the V.I. Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, tickets for students in the uncovered section are $10 and $8.
Ticket outlets are the Reichhold box office, the University of the Virgin Islands bookstore in the Sports and Fitness Center, both Modern Music stores, Parrot Fish Music, Krystal and Gifts Galore n St. Thomas and at Connections on St. John. They also can be reserved with a charge card by calling 693-1995.
