Delighted to announce that I've been awarded with the National Dance Award for best classical choreography for "A streetcar named desire", created in 2012 for the Scottish Ballet. This award is given by the Circle of critics in the UK. The ceremony was held at The Place in London on January 28, 2013.
"A Streetcar Named desire" has been awarded the South Bank Sky Arts Award this week. I was very honored to receive the award from the hands of British choreographer Akram Khan!!!!
After a successfull premiere of my new pieces "AGUA VIVA" especially created for Ballet Nacional Dominicano, and the new duet "A DEUX" for former Dutch National Ballet Soloist Michele Jimenez and Washington Ballet soloist Luis Torres Ortiz, I finally have some time to post some information about the evening that took place at Bellas Artes in Santo Domingo. The evening presented my piece "Nube Blanco" performed by Ballet Hispanico and "Agua Viva" by Ballet Nacional Dominicano including the new pas-de-deux sandwiched in between.
All pictures are by photographer Alex Saint-Hilaire. www.mediacana.com
“Aguas vivas”, evolución entre aguas hispánicas
By Roira Sanchez
“Nube blanca”, coreografía de la colombiana-belga Anabelle López Ochoa, invitada especial, es una exquisita pieza coreográfica que hace gala de todas las combinaciones plenas de sugestión entre el baile flamenco y el toque de la contemporaneidad, destinada al total lucimiento de los artistas, provocando que ningún espectador presente en la sala aparte la mirada del escenario.
Mientras que la pieza “Agua viva”, estreno mundial del Ballet Nacional Dominicano con la coreografía de López Ochoa, exhibe figuras que a través de un juego escénico logran irradiar fascinación, al tiempo que enriquecen una pieza que exhibe el sentir de la cultura latina fusionando distintas técnicas que, en definitiva, hacen de una pieza una gran estructura danzaría con naturalidad y humanización plena del movimiento."
“Aguas vivas”danza, música y canciones
By CARMEN HEREDIA DE GUERRERO
El programa inicia con el ballet “Nube, Blanco” de la coreógrafa Annabelle López Ochoa, interpretado por el Ballet Hispánico. La pieza inspirada según la propia coreógrafa en recuerdos de infancia es una verdadera sinfonía de movimientos expresados en diferentes lenguajes danzarios, donde la expresión corporal y hasta la palabra adquieren relevancia y se adhieren a un todo coherente en su diversidad. La música utilizada, hermosas canciones del ayer en la emotiva voz de María Dolores Pradera, motivan los diferentes momentos, algunos de evocación y añoranza, otros de alegría o tristeza. Pero el énfasis, la impronta en “Nube, Blanco” es el ritmo que marca la creatividad desbordante de Annabelle López, y se decanta en los sugerentes y continuos desplazamientos y formaciones de gran belleza.
Hay segmentos estupendos, sobresale por su novedad, aquel en que los bailarines con solo un pié calzado marcan el ritmo de la emotiva canción “Y ya”. Este despliegue de inventiva, la idea, solo puede ser expuesta por los bailarines, únicos capaces de proyectar en el espacio la creación danzaria, y cuando éstos poseen nivel técnico y capacidad artística, la composición coreográfica se convierte en obra de arte, esto se ha producido gracias a los excelentes bailarines que integran el Ballet Hispánico de Nueva York.
“A Deux” es un paso a dos impregnado de lirismo, en el que Annabelle López hace uso de hermosas y novedosas elevaciones que proyectan a la bailarina en un plano espacial. El excelente bailarín Luis Torres supedita su participación al lucimiento de la bailarina, ofreciendo un magnífico trabajo de “partenaire”. Michelle Jiménez muestra sus magníficas condiciones, la belleza de sus extensiones coronadas por un magnífico empeine producen una sensación de vuelo.
El ballet “Aguas Vivas”, cierra la primera parte. En esta pieza creada por Annabelle López para el Ballet Nacional, la coreógrafa utiliza el mar como metáfora del movimiento y el agua como fuente de vida. El “collage” musical es propicio, cada fragmento se aviene a los diferentes motivos; aquí como en sus anteriores ballets, su capacidad para crear danza se manifiesta. El mar en su constante vaivén no podía ser mejor fuente de inspiración, pero no sólo ese aspecto exterior, hay en las profundidades marinas una alegoría que utiliza para expresar las recónditas emociones del alma.
Los bailarines del Ballet Nacional con profesionalidad supieron expresar cada momento, cada individualidad brilla y con plasticidad elocuente transmiten los elaborados diseños coreográficos.
Aguas Vivas, cautivador espectáculo de la danza hispana
By José Rafael Sosa
Gran espectáculo que puso el alto la danza dominicana.
El espectáculo se guardaba sus esencias para el momento culminante en que se abrieran las cortinas del telón para hacer conciencia de que lo imposible es una dimensión que puede saltar en mil trozos de ilusión para dejar ver lo que el entrenamiento y, sobre todo, la pasión por la danza, pueden lograr.
Aguas Vivas ha sido uno de los puntos más destacadamente anotados por la embajada de Estados Unidos, por el criterio de selección, por la calidad de sus talentos y, más que todo, por el encuentro que, con nosotros mismos, nos proporciona, fuerte mensaje que debía estremecer conciencias Aguas Vivas parecía ser, a la distancia que permite la prisa y la presión del trabajo periodístico, otro buen espectáculo de danza de tinte internacional y local para presentar estrellas de la danza, como tantas veces se ha hecho.
Pero no era así. Era la vieja historia de la fuente del arte como vía de encuentros de gentes y pueblos, más que la suma de la estelaridad y los curriculums de los talentos participantes, de los que habría mucho qué decir.
Luis Torres, solista del Washington Ballet, estuvo pleno al interpretar las coreografías de la colombiana Annabelle López Ochoa, quien diseño y orientó al Ballet Nacional Dominicano, para dar con el estreno mundial de Agua Viva, en el marco de una colaboración entre compañía que hablan el mismo lenguaje gestual. El espectáculo se guardaba sus esencias para el momento culminante en que se abrieran las cortinas del telón para hacer conciencia de que lo imposible es una dimensión que puede saltar en mil trozos de ilusión para dejar ver lo que el entrenamiento y, sobre todo, la pasión por la danza, pueden lograr.
Aguas Viva desborda el ballet multicultural tal cual se ofrecía a primera vista. Se trata, probablemente, del mejor espectáculo de ballet contemporáneo que se haya registrado este año en la República Dominicana a un público que durante tres días tuvo la suerte de una experiencia total de arte expresivo, rítmico, sutil, intenso, cuidadosamente desbocado en sus giros, en sus movimientos colectivos de cuerpos que parecían ser uno y no muchos tal cual eran a primera vista.
Aguas Vivas destaca por su singular manera de dejar una impronta que juega hasta lograr la fórmula mágica en la cual luces, movimientos, la extraordinaria banda musical que le sostiene, deja sin aliento a un público que apenas llega a preguntarse “¿Cómo se logra esta perfección?
I'm honored to have been chosen as one of the MPG performance gear messengers for the fall/winter 2012 collection.
The shoot was in Seattle under the direction of photographer Marc von Borstel.
Tennessee Williams’s great play A Streetcar Named Desire is, like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, beautifully suited to the requirements of ballet (indeed, there have been at least two dance versions of Streetcar prior to this new production by Scottish Ballet). Like Romeo and Juliet, Williams’s play – in which fallen southern belle Blanche DuBois finds herself in a small New Orleans apartment that is home to her sister, Stella, and her macho brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski – is constructed of scenes of tragic conflict, physical passion and dangerous tribalism (in Williams’s case the distinctive tribes are men and women).
Typically of outgoing Scottish Ballet director Ashley Page’s leadership, the piece is the consequence of an audacious experiment. He invited Nancy Meckler (best known as co-artistic director of the Oxford-based theatre company Shared Experience) to direct her first ballet in collaboration with the Belgian-Colombian choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa (for whom this is a first foray into narrative dance). The result is a brilliantly bold and sensitive ballet which is full of memorable set pieces.
From the opening, in which we see a delicate Blanche fluttering under a naked light bulb, to the conclusion, in which Williams’s symbol of death (a Mexican flower-seller who offers blooms in memory of the departed) is stunningly multiplied, the particular skills of Meckler and Lopez Ochoa complement each other gorgeously.
At the level of the narrative, they seize upon the visual possibilities of dance to represent elements – such as the suicide of Blanche’s young husband some decades past, or Stella and Blanche’s trip to a show – which are only alluded to in the play.
The scene in which we witness the strongly gendered rituals of the bowling alley, where Stanley and the other men strut their stuff like puffed-up cockerels, is especially ingenious. Set to the appropriately jazzy sounds of Peter Salem’s excellent new score (which veers, when required, into modernist discordance), the brilliantly choreographed contrasts and combinations of the sexes are akin to the best moments of West Side Story or Guys and Dolls.
Danced with real power on opening night by Eve Mutso (Blanche), Tama Barry (Stanley) and Sophie Martin (Stella), this is (not least in its brilliant and horrifying portrayal of sexual violence) a new ballet of truly tragic proportions.
Tennessee Williams as dance? I do declare! But Scottish Ballet triumphs with a perfectly told tale
Impossible is clearly not a word Nancy Meckler chooses to hear. The theatre director who made her name compressing vast, sprawling novels for the stage with the company Shared Experience has now tackled a famously text-heavy play for Scottish Ballet.
Attempting to replicate the experience of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire without recourse to the sweaty New Orleans drawl of its language might seem like trying to open a bottle of bourbon in boxing gloves. But with the collaboration of choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa (a novice to full-length narrative dance despite an impressive list of credits) and composer Peter Salem (originator of the music for TV's Call the Midwife and an aficionado of 1940s jazz), this danced version is thrillingly persuasive.
Not only does it crackle with Southern heat and sexual tension, but it's a model of storytelling. No need to have seen the play or the film: everything is here, from the big themes of masculine-feminine, earth and air, to the smallest detail. Even Blanche DuBois' la-di-da way of speaking finds its way into a mincing step and a ladylike twitch of the skirt. You see the veins stiffen in irritation on her brother-in-law's neck every time she does it.
That bare space is neessary for dancing in, but it's constantly redefined. Packing crates, stacked and restacked by members of the chorus to create the high-rise of New Orleans, are sat upon to suggest the jostling trolleybus of the title, or rearranged as cinema seats, or a living-room couch. Bare-boards theatre has been doing this sort of thing for 30 years. Amazing that it's taken this long – and Scottish Ballet's outgoing director, Ashley Page – to bring it to dance.
Tennessee Williams had toyed with calling his play The Moth, and this becomes Meckler's key image: the faded, fluttering Southern belle and the harsh bare lightbulb she is so intent on covering with a fancy Japanese shade. How clever of composer Peter Salem to have the popular song "It's Only a Paper Moon" issuing from the wireless when Stanley loses his rag at the disruption to his card game and throws the set out of the window. When there is violence, it feels horribly real.
The score, most of it live from a band in the pit, some of it recorded atmospheric noise, is the chief motor of this Streetcar. Drawing on a range of styles, from polite wedding waltzes to juicy New Orleans jazz to Philip Glass-ish noodling, it doesn't just underpin the action but offers emotional pointers ahead of the game. A blind man would know where he was in the story. The climax, where the "Paper Moon" theme shatters into a pile-up of discordant shards, isn't just a stirring aural metaphor for the chaos in Blanche's head, you can imagine it really is the sound in her head.
Scottish Ballet's principals prove first-rate, with Eve Mutso a mercurial and dangerously sympathetic Blanche, and Tama Barry a believably brutish Stanley, all scowl and pectorals. He even gets to roar "Stella!" like Marlon Brando. Sophie Martin's pregnant Stella is the moral touchstone, sensual and earthed. Her conciliatory duet with Stanley is not only startlingly gymnastic; it's almost certainly the most erotic thing on any stage right now.
By: Eduardo Carrasco. Photos by Gregory Batardon
Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, is young and beautiful, speaks five languages, but none of these languages perfectly expresses her state of mind. “With dance I always seem to get to the point”, says Lopez Ochoa, one of the choreographers that created ¡Noche Latina!, a new program celebrating Latin music and dance. The three movement program includes world premieres by Lopez Ochoa and Edwaard Liang . The ballets include music by singers, songwriters, and musicians of Spanish, Argentinian, Costa Rican and Mexican descent. Together with Trey McIntyre’s Like a Samba, their choreography will interpret stories of passion, romance, love and life in Spain and Latin America. Perform by The Washington Ballet at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.
The Colombian and Belgian Lopez Ochoa completed her dance studies at the Royal Ballet School of Antwerp, Belgium. After a 12-year career in various European dance companies, Ms. Ochoa decided in 2003 to focus solely on choreography. She has created works for numerous companies around the world. These performances mark Ochoa’s Washington Ballet debut.
Here are same of her comments about her work in “Noche Latina” to SOLUCIONES magazine.
SOLUCIONES: How did you created the choreography of “Noche Latina”?
Annabelle Lopez Ochoa: The first thing I look for is music that touches me, for this particular piece that would be part of the program Noche Latina it had to be from an Hispanic range. Personally I’m huge fan of Maria Dolores Pradera as I grew up with her music. It’s therefore not the first time that I use her music for a ballet.
As I was discussing costumes and colors with my costume designer I realized that for the Hispanic look we tend to reach out to the same color range. So for a change I decided step away from the cliché and have all the costumes white. This led me to the idea of the piece.
The piece is called “Sueño de Mármol”.
A man walks on stage and see a garden of marble statues that reminds him of the people and events of his own past. The memories are haunting him.
SOLUCIONES: What’s the message behind your choreography in this work?
Lopez Ochoa: The piece is at times quite melancholy.
It’s like looking at an old picture, which is a frozen moment in time and the recollection of that particular moment opens a drawer full of diverse memories.
We can’t change the past, we can only learn from it and move on forward. But at the same time we are a result of our past, we carry the blueprint of all that we’ve experienced.
SOLUCIONES: What dance means to you?
Lopez Ochoa: Dance for me is the language that is closest to me. I speak five languages (French, Dutch, English, Spanish, German) and I find myself in situations that none of these languages perfectly expresses my state of mind. With dance I always seem to get to the point.
Dance is a visual art form and can be very pleasant and soothing to watch but at the same time the physical aspect of it can conveys a deeper emotion to the public.
SOLUCIONES: What are your plan for the future?
Lopez Ochoa: My future plans after Washington are new creations for the following companies, Whim Whim Seattle, Ballet de Republica Dominicana, Istanbul Modern Dance Company, a new solo for ABT soloist Daniil Simkin, Atlanta Ballet and Augsburg Ballet and a revival of my piece “Requiem for a Rose” for Austin Ballet.
