As a lover of everything exotic and, specifically, of Indian culture, I could not help but raise my eyebrows when I saw that kathakali, the most famous theater dance in the south of the country of curry, adapted a product as Spanish as He is our Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.
Represented in the town of Almagro, in Ciudad Real, during the month of July, Kijote Kathakali joins West and East, mills with palm trees, Cervantes with India.
Curry and saffron
In a theater in Kerala, the southern (and most tropical) state of India, an actor wrapped in makeup and jewelery gestures to mystical music, performing the puja (or offering) to the gods during a dance-laden theater play. mysticism, conceived almost as a ritual.
Kathakali is a little-known show in the West that consists of the representation of classic stories of Kerala culture. through actors who represent a story using body language based on mudras (hand movements) or nrta (dance steps). Meanwhile, a narrator tells a story in Malayam and the music takes hold of such an exotic representation. A result that draws on a long organization and, especially, hours and hours of makeup that the actors face with total dedication.
An art that has burst into the town of Almagro this summer, where its famous Classical Theater Festival has joined forces with Casa de la India and the Margi Kathakali Company of Trivandrum (Kerala) to bring viewers the reinvention of Don Quixote taking advantage of the fourth centenary of Cervantes and the celebration of the Year of India in our country.
For 90 minutes, a score of actors with makeup mounted on horseback and fought windmills without giving up Indian dressings, the actor Nelliyodu Vasudevan being the only one who gave up makeup thanks to the role of an Alonso Quixote both from here and there, as Spanish as universal.
The play Kijote Kathakali has been the great sensation of the Almagro Classical Theater Festival and the theater days in cities such as Madrid or Valladolid in recent days.