There is a common language between maestros and students, between the choreographer and dancers. This is the language learned in dance classes and rehearsals, and only dancers speak it. They use it every day throughout their careers, constantly, right up to the very last second before the curtain rises. Then it disappears. The audience must not know about the existence of this taboo language.
The formal base of this language is French, but it is continuously enriched by other sounds, singing, humming, clapping, whispering, different ways of counting, as well as hand mimicry in order to evoque movements of either feet or arms. This is the system of communication of ballet.
Ballerinas Don’t Speak is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Florencia Werchowsky, in which this hidden language emerges on the scene, even takes center stage. In the work, ballet dancers must deconstruct their artistic schemes in order to try what repertoire forbids: using the voice. And so the dancers and students of the Teatro Colón become singers in this play.
Each scene evoques the everydayness of their careers, the training, the routine, the anguish of being an artist, the cultural bureaucracy, the body as an instrument, the ambition. The dancers sing the language they dance to tell the life they live.
This secret dialect does away with the barrier of the curtain, and exposed to the audience, no longer taboo, is the tongue of a nation without a land, sung, danced and celebrated on stage.
Singing Dancers
Amalia Pérez Alzueta, Luciana Barrirero, Silvia Grun, Antonio Luppi, Virginia Licitra, Roberto Zarza, Magdalena Cortés (all members of the Ballet Estable del Teatro Colón).
Angelina Casco Guiñazú, Noelia Díaz, Celeste Díaz, Patricio Di Stabile, Pedro Soriano (all students of the School of Dance of the Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Colón).
Written and directed by
Florencia Werchowsky
Original score by
Diego Voloschin
Musicians
Diego Voloschin, Bárbara Togander, Ezequiel Finger
Artistic Assistance and Acting Coaching
Paula Pichersky
Voice Coaching
Bárbara Togander
Choreographic Assistance
Luciana Barrirero
Costumes
Victoria Naná
Video
Sebastián Schor
Lights
Adrián Grimozzi
Performed during May and June 2018, Experimental Center of the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, Argentina.