Diario de Sevilla. Rosalía Gómez (20-09-2008)
As in poetry, there are some times when what is most intimate, most personal, can also be what is most universal. This is what happened last night in the Teatro Maestranza, Seville. We were expecting a one to one experience with María Pagés and this is what we got, but the experience was bountiful, full of nostalgia, music, poems..... a performance of great beauty, a pleasure for our senses and our hearts.
There are always moments in life - especially those that end certain periods of time - in which one should be selfish and do something for oneself. This moment came for María Pagés - always so busy with her dance company, her beautiful stage designs, her ideas for choreographies - when the mythical Mijail Baryshnikov, none other, invited her to his New York Dance Centre, inviting her to simply create something personal.
This is how this "Selfportrait" was conceived - last night was the national début. In this performance, the dancer from Seville has taken a calm look at herself in the mirror, a sort of appraisal of her career and her personal life, for herself and for others. The show is, therefore, sober and intimate in structure, but so rich in content that, almost without being aware of it, the stage gradually and unobtrusively fills up with fifteen artists (musicians and dancers).
María presents herself before us with equal sobriety, no flowers, no ornamental hair combs. Her hair pulled back in a long plait and a marvellous wardrobe that starts off in black to go on gradually to vivid colour, showing off her stylised and sensual figure. Everything flows without obstacles within this intimacy, created especially by the lighting design, which slowly fills up with different nuances and tones. In the middle of all this, María Pagés is simply immense. With her stylised way of dancing that resembles a bird about to take flight, she dances and dances for pleasure. This is Flamenco dance, "Farrucas" - in the magnificent company of her male dancers - "Martiinetes", "Tientos", "Tangos", "Alegrias".... And pure dance with Saramago's poems as a background - one recited by the writer himself and the other by María - and "Nanas de la Cebolla" (Onion Lullabies), that she has admirably taken up again and reinvented. Then she goes on to give us a lesson in castanets and humour, dancing several hilarious "Tanguillos" (also makes a homage to the ups and downs of travels with her company). She also takes a look at her past creations, such as "La Tirana", with its play of picture frames and the enchantments of the mirror that can throw your image back at you and persecute you, or throw another image at you, of someone else. A look at "Banana Republic", her most popular performance, another at "Canciones Antes de una Guerra" (Songs Before a War)... Finally, she plays with a wonderful golden-fringed Spanish shawl, until the audience - her hometown (Seville) audience - falls at her feet, unconditionally.
