Tchaikovsky can go to Spain? But can you adapt as classic a work as the Russian composer’s Swan Lake to the fiery footwork and song of Spanish flamenco?
Having interpreted everything from Romeo & Juliet to Peter Pan and Moulin Rouge, Karen Flamenco now presents Swan Lake.
A mere look at the posters around town for the show make it clear that this is not your usual ballet. Two opposing dancers face off, one in black and the other in white, with their shawls flying high about their heads as though they were birds wings.
It’s an arresting image.
“This poster really is catching a lot of attention and that’s good because Swan Lake was a little bit of a question mark for me,” says company founder Karen Pitkethly. “It has such strong connections to ballet, but we have done other previous ballets like Sleeping Beauty and it went well. Still, the music is so familiar in this one and so much of the audience goes to Swan Lake mostly for the music.”
Taking the narrative line of love, tragedy and jealousy into the song and dance of flamenco is a demanding process. Pitkethly says that there were some fantastic opportunities to marry a flamenco song to the storyline.
“I take a moment of jealousy and add it to a flamenco song where the audience can really get both the story and the emotion coming from the style,” she says. “Flamenco is not any one thing, it is the combination of the dance, the singing and the music which completes the experience. You need all three components for it to work.”
So Pitkethly is pulling the story through with the various parts and letting each element deliver the impact of the storyline. Sometimes, it can be just a solo vocal. Then it can be the guitarist, singer and dancers in ensemble. And then sometimes, she capitulates to Tchaikovsky’s genius.
“There will be a live string quartet as well, playing many of the more familiar waltzes such as the Spanish Dance,” she says. “And then there will also be some of the classical themes being played by the flamenco musicians as well. So it’s a blending this time, which really should be nice for the audience.”
A production like this takes around nine months to develop. Pitkethly says that it’s getting progressively easier to realize her vision as the company dancers are “amazing” and the musicians she collaborates with are really getting it. Many artists appear to be drawn to her thinking outside of the box.
Karen Flamenco Studio was established in 2009. The Mount Pleasant facility has approximately 150 students enrolled at any given time. So the fire and spark of Spain’s famed cultural export is burning strong in Vancouver.