FGE Review – El Banch

Good thing about a festival the size of “Enescu” is that you can expand your audience target by including more than classical music concerts. And that is something that the organizers of the “George Enescu” Festival have taken in consideration for a long time. Besides the well-known concerts with the greatest orchestras of the world, the Festival provides different other areas of interest like world music or jazz concerts. Even ballet representations are among the Festival’s program. This is quite great because also dance enthusiast can enjoy this Festival and are able to meet the best dance ensembles and groups from around the world. I remember that in 2007 edition I had the privilege to see the Bejart Ballet Lausanne live on stage. Unfortunately, Maurice Bejart died two month later.
This year I’ve seen El Banch, which is the National Ballet from Chile. It has quite a long history dating back from 1945 and is now being directed by Romanian choreographer Gigi Caciuleanu. Another motive to be proud and present to the show.

I have to say though that I hate ballet. I despise it! But I’m just referring to the classical one. There’s nothing that could bore me to death more than classical ballet. Opera too, but that’s another story. But modern ballet or contemporary ballet it’s a different story. It’s actually upside down. It has almost no relation to the other. Perhaps is the visual expression of what happened in music also. Choreographers like composers just wanting to get out of the composition rules that have been there for ages. Just express the feelings inside and showing the possibilities of the human body, without wearing a “tutu”. Modern ballet it’s more intimate for me and probably that’s why I like it so much. I may not understand it all the time but that’s even better because it makes me want to understand it.

El Banch came to the Festival with an impressive and interesting show. It was an evening with Bach reinterpreted. Not his music of course, but one vision of movement coming out of his music. Noche Bach was a great performance and the only thing that really bothered me was the music. The Bucharest National Theater, where the show took place, doesn’t really have the best acoustic speakers in the world and if you want to play Bach from a CD you really need great acoustic otherwise it will get very pithy and noisy and disturbing. But besides that, just the idea of combining a modern dance interpretation using such an old soundtrack made the show very successful. It was almost a paradox that your ears could hear such strict composition and your eyes were following such free expression of body and mind.


I recommend everyone to go to this kind of ballet once in a lifetime. Forget about the “tutu”. It’s still time to discover new things. And maybe looking at those dancers on the stage will make you question yourself about your body weight and condition. And watch out, among the spectators you’ll definitely find other ballerinas and dancers too. Skinny bitches all around you. Start sucking it up!

2 Comments FGE Review – El Banch

  1. When We Dance 11/11/2011 at 2:09 pm

    i am so impressed with this blog…glad to found it…^_^

    Reply
  2. Alexandru Damian 13/11/2011 at 12:46 pm

    Thank You for your visit and thank you very much for your kind words. I'll make sure to update it as much as possible!

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Alexandru Damian Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.