A musical still in search of its soul

From time to time, it happens again. A foreign producer or a team of creators approaches Cuba, fascinated by its natural charms or the warmth of its people, with the idea of creating a show that reveals such wonders to the world. It has happened more often than you might think, and that's why sometimes you can find in old Europe or in other latitudes a proposal that announces itself as that kind of revelation, sifted by the demands of a market that ends up imposing codes, stereotypes and exoticism in that image -with very few exceptions. In Cuba, where we complain about the poor health of musical theater, there are nevertheless many of those factors that a show of that nature needs, and yet we lack the support, the impulses and the interests capable of letting us produce, without the obligatory need of that foreign look, a stage event that can represent us, and that makes us feel less burdened by the scarce presence of the conjunction of music, words, action and dance on our stages. On this island, yes, as it is said again and again, where there is plenty of good music and no shortage of excellent dancers. And where reality, by the way, is not always as rosy as proposed, to the rhythm of the final rumbantela, several of those stagings that seem to live and be created only to be consumed outside our territory. 

Expensive, risky, thought on a scale that has to seduce the audience and at the same time ratify itself as an art form, today's musical theater is on very different coordinates from the frivolous and self-indulgent image that many believe is still its essence. The renewal of its concept, which Rodgers and Hammerstein set in motion with the premiere of Oklahoma!in 1943, was the starting point for much more daring, bitter works, less dependent on tinsel and happy endings, to redefine the genre. From Kander and Ebb to Sondheim, from Lin-Manuel Miranda to Pasek and Paul..., other less descriptive, less predictable keys have also come into play, keeping alive a very complex art form, while at the same time not losing touch with its classics and hits. In Cuba, where the national theater was forged in that relationship of music and plot since the days of the bufo, it moved to the Alhambresque model, and there was a lot of revue theater, there was a company like the Teatro Musical de La Habana, founded in the mid-1960s by the Mexican Alfonso Arau, and today only an almost ruined theater remains of it, there in its corner where the Alhambra once stood, much nostalgia for milestones like A day at the siteand the question of why we are burdened with such an obvious absence in our cultural panorama, in addition to several aborted or scattered endeavors.

As has happened with several of those shows I referred to at the beginning, Almaa musical by Iván Belaustegui", as it is promoted, puts this question back on the table. Along with many others. The interest and experience of foreign creators has been, as it happened with Arau himself, a useful impulse that has made us remember, from time to time, that here we have enough potential to resurrect a model of musical theater that is truly ours, and not an imposture, because there are good voices, excellent instrumentalists, solidly trained dancers, and excellent designers. But in the musical that is not enough. Nor are good intentions enough. As I have learned working in favor of the genre, it is essential the conjunction of talents that, beyond their egos, combine in that virtuous product that must reach the premiere, and that is accompanied by an arduous process of rethinking, search, selection of the best material, and respect for the proposed theme. Much of this has been lacking in several of the aforementioned proposals. Among the recent exceptions, it is worth remembering VidaLizt Alfonso's show, which managed to seduce the national and foreign audiences: a dance-musical bet, which traveled through the history of our country intelligently skirting all the dangers that this postcard implies. I could mention much less fortunate examples. But I will spare the reader that and concentrate on the positive and negative aspects that I could perceive in Almawhich premiered at the Avellaneda Hall of the National Theater of Cuba, from December 16 to 18.

Photo: Frank D. Domínguez / Taken from social networks.

First of all, in interviews its director rightly said that this is a dance-musical show. But the promotion of the show, with a graphic that seems more characteristic of The Lion King and an exotic vision of color and the African, insists that we assume it as a "musical". Starting with the arrival in Cuba of slaves from Africa, who bring their gods, their culture, their rich legacy, a thin dramaturgical line is sketched that is divided into two acts. In the first, through a flat use of shadow theater, the irruption of a ship on stage, smoke, curtains, elements of aerial balancing, the rough transit of the Africans to the Island is described (and I want to emphasize this). Since the word is not present, since dialogue is dispensed with, since the characters are immediately separated into bad European slavers and good and imprisoned Africans, everything becomes predictable at a level that often borders on elementariness. White pantomime often replaces the suggestion of dance language, and although there is no lack of images that the audience, eager for a spectacularity that has not been present on the national stage for a long time, responds to them with pleasure, almost none of this theatricality achieved through theatricality can firmly sustain what the first act tells us without too many nuances. Add to this that the choreography of Joan Morell (assisted by Nilda Guerra), in his attempt to tell us the story of Yaya, the young warrior who stars in this segment, quotes over and over again steps and images that seem to come from classics of modern dance that delved into our folkloric heritage, going to extremes that more than quotes from those works, seem minor copies of them. I'm not against quoting and evoking the glories of yoruba suite or Súlkaryto cite two unavoidable references, but I think it should have been done with more creativity, something that is lacking in many moments of what we saw, perhaps because of the desire to narrate everything through movement, and reduce from that language the role of the dancers to other stereotypes: classical dance steps for the enslavers, contemporary dance elements for their antagonists, and so on.

All in all, the first act is more interesting than the second, although the program handout (which includes profuse notes by Noel Bonilla that turn the storyline of Alma without saying much, perhaps because there is no plot as such), he assures us that this segment "is more theatrical, full of movement and music". What is certain is that the second leaps over 400 years and takes us, oh destiny, to a plot of land, because perhaps Alma, descendant of that Yaya from the opening act, could not have found another place to settle down or forge a better life. If in the previous act the smoke abounded, the work with silhouettes and backlights, here the image becomes much flatter, giving way to a series of numbers on popular dances that annul the scarce narrative will of what has already been seen, and when finally the heiress of that African warrior goes to the microphone to sing a song, she gives us, in this show that claims to be inspired by what has come to us from that continent, a famous bolero... of Mexican origin: Alma míaby María Grever. As if in our native repertoire (with apologies to the remarkable composer) there were not enough songs to make the premise of this musical more credible, which in reality it is not, since it is worth understanding it as a dance album, with a choreography that never manages to go from correctness to surprise, and a live performance of its soundtrack that, although it often falls into the same descriptive and non-diegetic nuance that would give more contrast and textures, is an incentive of the show in general, thanks to the sure gifts of Efraín Chibás (Pacho) and Explosión Rumbera.

Photo: Frank D. Domínguez / Taken from social networks.

In 2000, when Susan Stroman won the Tony Award for Best Musical with her play ContactThere was no small amount of controversy, because it was a staging that included no dialogue or original music. It was the only time such a thing has happened in the history of Broadway's most relevant awards, and it should function as a warning about how to assume or not the limits of the musical, and its ability to reinvent itself. I suggest to the creators of Alma emphasize in the promotion its nature as a musical-dance product, as well as revise that second act that at a certain moment ends up losing the threads of what it indicated to us, becoming an illation of dances that includes tributes to jazz and rock and roll, and that seems to stop there as if today the African heritage does not also beat in rhythms of our everyday life, such as hip hop or reggaeton itself. In the background, Alma does not manage to avoid many of the clichés of the genre, slipping at various times into the exotic and folkloric, and it is thanks to the talent of its dancers and musicians, as I said, that we can get to the final applause.

In this applause, beyond what I may say for or against the best and the failures of Almawas the audience. And I confess that I am glad that the Cuban audience can go to see such a proposal, beyond my remarks. A theater where music and dance, and a solid dramaturgical idea are unified, is an urgency that we all suffer, and that we should deserve, having here what could lead us to those happier results. We must always ask ourselves why a foreigner must arrive for musical theater to revive among us, almost always, and also come from his name and his team the investment that allows us to rescue a space, a theater, and an idea that we should defend better. Not to emulate the West End or Broadway, but to reflect from our authenticity what is understood there as a show and also as an industry -that strength that is so lacking in our theater in general. At AlmaA director from Argentina has taken a look at our trajectory as a nation, and although I believe that he has remained not in the soul, precisely, but on the surface of many issues, he also tells us that all that which he will now go almost immediately to show abroad, was already here, and that he has been in charge of putting it in movement and music so that we can praise it or discuss it. 

Photo: Frank D. Domínguez / Taken from social networks.

If only this same team, where there is no lack of valuable artists, could return to this island and find even more elements of its essence, and project them from less predictable keys, from a fusion of languages that is not limited to pyrotechnics or the commonplace. And that its members travel the world, and learn from the other audiences that are already waiting for them, that truth multiplied in another way. At one point in the second act, after singing that bolero by Grever, Alma, the protagonist, disappears. This is what happens with musical theater here, like an image that sometimes gets lost. Now, thanks to Iván Belaustegui and the institutions that supported him (the same ones that would not have to wait for this to happen again to do more for the genre here), that image has been back before us. And there is much that could still come out of it. Much creativity, the richness of what is ours, that could emanate from these experiences. If you really get to the soul of the treasure you are looking for.