The Mosaic Dance Theater Co. performing ‘Alhayat Raksa —Life is a Dance,’ in November. The troupe will present a collection of new dances, ‘Impressions of the Alhambra,’ scheduled for the fall.
Mosaic Dance Theater Co., which last year celebrated its 20th anniversary, is in the preliminary stages of creating a dance performance to conjure the splendor and majesty of the Alhambra, a 13th century palace-city built by the Moors and overlooking Granada, Spain.
The company, located in Glen Ridge, is dedicated to the preservation of the dance movements and folklore of the Mediterranean region — the Middle East, North Africa and southern Europe. The troupe doesn’t have a permanent home but performs in New York City and Essex County communities including Montclair.
Morgiana Celeste Varricchio, MDTC’s founder and producing artistic director, said recently that “Impressions of Alhambra,” a working title, will be ready in the fall. Its genesis may be a little surprising. It is drawn from the work of 19th-century American writer Washington Irving, known chiefly, even among schoolchildren, as the creator of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Ichabod Crane and Rip Van Winkle. Varricchio said he also wrote extensively about the Alhambra from his travels in southern Spain.
“Through his writings, he awakened people that the Alhambra was a treasure worth saving; a magnificent palace,” she said. “I was captivated by the legends and they stayed in my head.”
Irving wrote, she said, in a style readers do not find anymore.
“It’s an exacting project of Spanish folklore,” she said about the narrative she is creating, “but it’s all coming together.”
Irving published more than 40 tales and essays about the Alhambra, including legends about princesses, love, expeditions and enchanted statues, explaining that he hoped to convey, “that singular little world about which the external world had an imperfect idea … half Spanish, half Oriental … its mixture of the heroic, the poetic and the grotesque … to revive traces of grace and beauty fast fading from its walls … to record chivalrous traditions concerning those who once trod its courts, and the whimsical and superstitious legends of the motley race now burrowing among its ruins.”
Varricchio said she has selected passages that can be conveyed in movements.
“He paints a wonderful picture,” she said, “but his legends have to be shortened and I use his words as much as possible.”
The dance will possibly have two speaking roles, someone to speak as Irving and another person to narrate the legends.
“Before we get to the legends, we have to get to a feeling of Alhambra and the way of life,” she said. “When he took a trip to Spain in 1829, it was a whole different world.
I’ve been thinking about this project for 20 years. It all has to do with timing and it seemed like a good time now to explore the piece.”
Although her great love remains Shakespeare, Varricchio said she has drawn ideas from 19th century American writers — the so-called Romantics.
“I like the way they used words,” she said. “America was a brand-new country and its writers were exploring its zeitgeist or the spirit of its times.”
Varricchio will be working with a dancer trained in classical Spanish dances who is also a historian. This is because folk dances going back hundreds of years were not codified or arranged into a system.
“If you want to be authentic, you work with a historian,” she said. “Although I’m in the early stages of putting this work together, you always want guidelines.”
MDTC dances have generally been recorded for archival purposes with one camera, but in a 2022 performance, multiple cameras were used to capture the facial expressions of the dancers. But the dance is still recorded in one take before a live audience.
“There’s a different energy with live performances,” Varricchio said, adding that her dancers are not recording artists but live performers.
MDTC will be performing at the Roxbury Arts Alliance in the Succasunna section of that township, on April 4, in a performance of “Visions of the Near East.” Varricchio said it will be a travelog in dance drawn from the company’s repertoire.
“We celebrated our 20th year last year,” she said. “Like everything, costs are up and profits are down and small non-profits get hit hard. But I did a little googling and found, on the Forbes Money site, that 50 percent of nonprofits fail within a few years.”
Mosaic, she said, is doing what it can with its resources. The Alhambra project is being partially funded by an Essex County Local Arts Program grant.
Dancers to bring the Alhambra to life added by Daniel Jackovino on
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