'Cruel Garden' is one of the Ballet Rambert's classics, seen here in a television adaptation of its original production, choreographed by and starring Christopher Bruce. It has a beautiful, guitar-led score by Carlos Miranda.
It is based around the life and work of Federico García Lorca, the poet and dramatist martyred by fascists in 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Rather than being a biographical dance-drama, it takes images from his works - including symbolic figures such as the Moon, the Bull, and the Nightingale - to weave a mythic image of the Poet continually sacrificed and reborn, an Orpheus figure. He appears as the Bullfighter in a scene inspired by the 'Llanto per Ignacio Sanchez Mejias' (a bullfighter fatally injured in the arena) A flamenco-café sequence set to 'El Cafe de Chinitas', one of the folksongs which Lorca collected and arranged, treats sensitively the Poet's homosexuality (a factor in his murder). He then appears in a 'puppet' version of 'Blood Wedding', and as Buster Keaton, in a silent-movie style sequence based on 'A Poet in New York'.
I hope that either the BBC or the Ballet Rambert will consider releasing this on DVD. It is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful work, which kindled my love for Lorca, and which I still remember vividly after 25 years.
It is based around the life and work of Federico García Lorca, the poet and dramatist martyred by fascists in 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Rather than being a biographical dance-drama, it takes images from his works - including symbolic figures such as the Moon, the Bull, and the Nightingale - to weave a mythic image of the Poet continually sacrificed and reborn, an Orpheus figure. He appears as the Bullfighter in a scene inspired by the 'Llanto per Ignacio Sanchez Mejias' (a bullfighter fatally injured in the arena) A flamenco-café sequence set to 'El Cafe de Chinitas', one of the folksongs which Lorca collected and arranged, treats sensitively the Poet's homosexuality (a factor in his murder). He then appears in a 'puppet' version of 'Blood Wedding', and as Buster Keaton, in a silent-movie style sequence based on 'A Poet in New York'.
I hope that either the BBC or the Ballet Rambert will consider releasing this on DVD. It is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful work, which kindled my love for Lorca, and which I still remember vividly after 25 years.