Bernarda’s Ballad

– A Performance about Women, Not Just for Women – 

Premiere: 9th November 2024, Hungarian Heritage House

The fundamental motif of Lorca’s last, masterly written drama is the tension between confinement and the desire for freedom and fulfilment. The piece draws attention to the constraints imposed on female identity, as well as the limitations to women’s physical, mental and spiritual autonomy within a patriarchal society. The questions that arise in the play remain relevant to the present day.

Federico García Lorca was born in Fuente Vaqueros, a village in Andalusia, at the end of the 19th century. Lorca’;s profound love for folk music and folk poetry is evident in both his poetry and his dramatic oeuvre. Alongside the themes of folk songs and ballads – love, desire, hatred, loss – the feudal traditions that shaped Spanish rural life and the tragic human destinies they destroyed are at the heart of Lorca’s work. The House of Bernarda Alba is perhaps the most significant of these works. 

Following the death of Bernarda Alba’s second husband, her daughters, who are already of an age to be wed, are to mourn for eight years. The strict constraints and total isolation from the outside world that this entails tighten the suffocating system of social expectations and rigid moral norms around the characters in an almost tangible, carnal way. There is an insurmountable distance between the desires and needs of women, now left without men, and the reality of a dreary everyday life, which is plagued by a multitude of prohibitions.

Everyone, according to their own age and character, tries to thrive and survive in this environment: by either breaking or resigning, or by secretly or openly rebelling against unenforceable rules. Yet, the unresolved and unresolvable tension grows, the polished surface of discipline and obedience cracks, and a tragic end is inevitable.

Bernarda’s Ballad speaks primarily in the language of dance. The text, which comprises excerpts from the drama and some of the author’s poems, as well as a musical world drawn from folklore, evoke the poetry and emotional depth of Lorca, the overwhelming power of passion, through movement and dance.

Dramaturg: Mara Palla

Composer: Julcsi Paár, Fonogram award winner

Set design: Ákos Mátravölgyi, Blattner Géza Prize winner

Film effects: Enikő Sávári

Flamenco instructor: Katalin Inhof

Costume designer: Enikő Kocsis, Harangozó Gyula Prize winner and Bori Winkler

Scenic and lighting design: Kornél Papp

Artistic assistance: Dezső Fitos Honorary Young Master of Folk Arts and Haragozó Gyula Prize winner, Hungarian Artist of Merit

Director, choreographer: Enikő Kocsis, Harangozó Gyula Prize winner

Danced by the women’s dance troupe of the Fitos Dezső Company.