2024-09-09 03:01:00
Gustavo Friedenberg He is a choreographer, director and dancer with a unique career. He started taking theatre classes as a teenager and never stopped; at the age of 20 on a trip to Spain he fell in love with flamenco, he immersed himself in the genre becoming flamenco dancer She studied professionally (she is still today) and then entered the National University of the Arts (then IUNA), encouraged by a friend. “When I entered the course I discovered what dance-theater was and it blew my mind, it opened up an unknown world to me,” she tells Page/12 The artist graduated in choreographic composition. He continued with a master’s degree in art criticism at the same institution and this diverse training is reflected in his activity. He teaches flamenco in his private studio, dance-theater and art criticism in the Arte en Barrios Program, creates shows that cross languages and are the result of long research processes and is also a critic of performing arts in publications such as Balletin Dance, About BUE y Critical Tuning, your own digital space.
Just released in the Cultural Centre of Cooperation To inhabit a birda show inspired by the story “The Metamorphosis of Mr. Lopez” by the Spanish Ruben Perez PomboThe play combines dance, acting, puppets, object theatre, music, a synthetic set in grey tones and subtle costumes in harmony with the stage space that turns to colour. These elements come together in a production with poetic airs and great plastic beauty, which flows very fluidly through humour, tenderness and emotion. Friedenberg is the general and choreographic director, the protagonist together with two very talented actresses and also responsible for the dramaturgy together with the author, who received the 2015 Xuventude Crea Award in Galicia for this story.
The story tells the tale of a man in a Galician village who, following the early death of his father, goes to work in a cement factory leading a monotonous life. After retiring and finding himself alone (his children live abroad, his wife died) he develops a fondness for birds to the point that his house becomes a sort of zoo with all kinds of species: chickens, quails, pheasants, herons, flamingos. There are complaints from neighbours, he himself suffers an attack from one of his “guests” but nothing stops him. He has formed a new family, atypical indeed but he feels at ease.
The process of creating the stage version dates back to 2021 when the director met with the actress and visual artist Eliana Pereira Rejala wanting to generate a new project. The memory of Pérez Pombo’s story immediately came to mind, which Gustavo learned about in Europe at a meeting of Eugenio Barba’s Odin Teatret company. “A story that fascinated me, the world of birds, the radical transformation of the protagonist at a very advanced age, the metaphor of flight as freedom… All things that were on my mind. It came together Daniela Fiorentino, a tremendous puppeteer actress who graduated from the Teatro San Martín puppet school and we started working together with the idea of mixing our practices. We did a clinic for creating artwork with Fabiana Capriotti to explore our ideas. We presented ourselves to the Iberescena Program in the line of international co-production and we were one of the five Argentine projects that received financial support, which allowed us to complete the work,” Friedenberg describes.
Assembling their own bodies with the puppets and objects, which are of different sizes and are handled with different techniques, was one of the most worked aspects and one that came to a very good end. In this sense, Fiorentino stands out by integrating and modifying her body, her voice and her face with the many puppets she manipulates, forming an organic and very expressive unit. Various birds and even the protagonist’s father come to life with her excellent manipulation. Pereira also does it very well and achieves a beautiful scene by making the protagonist fly as a child on a large peacock. She is above all the narrator who carries out the story in Galician and Spanish, while Friedenberg expresses himself through movement in an abstract, contemporary, powerful dance that flirts with elements of flamenco.
The title of the story and the title of the play reflect the change that Mr. López goes through in the last stage of his existence, but the two materials allow for different readings. “I think that in the story the transformation is more closely linked to death and in the staging we give it another twist: a mutation to a different life, to a different being, thinking about the change in relation to the trans. That is why The work has a background related to gender and diversity: they are bodies that decide to transform themselves. It is something that we hint at, some may or may not read it. And not only in the case of the protagonist, but also the character of the narrator who knows everything that is going to happen, leaves the grey and puts on a colourful dress, heels, playing a little with the mythology of enchanted Galicia with witches, nymphs, goblins. With the author of the story we worked on this character in that line and I think that the essence of the original text is maintained in the staging,” he comments. The truth is that one could think that the life of the protagonist ultimately has very little grey: from the singular family that he created to his transformation into a non-human species following his true desire beyond the cost that it implies.
“I don’t do works every year. They are processes that take a lot of time in my body and mind. This year is special because I worked on two at the same time: To inhabit a bird y Split) by Belén Galain, the work that won the Germán Rozenmacher Prize for New Drama in 2023. We performed last May and we are returning to Rojas in October participating in the FIBA,” he says enthusiastically. It is a piece about exile created from different stories: that of the exile experienced by the daughter and wife of the writer and political activist Osvaldo Bayer The play is about the life of the young author, who left his village and emigrated to Argentina. The actresses Lilian Timisky and Camila Cobas and three dancers from different genres (Mónica Romero, flamenco; Lucía Lacaban, contemporary; and Flavio Zuñiga, jazz and acrobatics) come together in a choreographic montage created by Friedenberg that takes place largely on a kind of bridge-staircase. “The dancers are on stage all the time. I didn’t want them to illustrate the words, I wanted them to be ‘Susanos’ and I think we managed to get to that point: that the dance has substance and that it enriches the action,” she concludes.
*To inhabit a bird It is presented on Thursdays in September at 8:30 p.m. in the Solidarity Room of the Cultural Center of Cooperation (Avenida Corrientes 1543).