PINEDA: A Popular Ballad in three Parts 

Federico García Lorca wrote Mariana Pineda 'when he was barely twenty years old and with a strong romantic flair,' as he declared in an interview after its first premiere. However, the origin of the work dates back to the poet's childhood in Granada and an encounter between the young Federico and the bronze statue of the piece's Liberal heroine, 'perched atop a pedestal, her hair loose, gazing off yonder, the flag of liberty held close to her body.' Lorca also remembered himself holding hands with other children and singing the verses of the popular ballad 'with a melancholic tone, something which seemed tragic to me.' At the beginning of his career as a playwright, the poet felt the poetic imperative to turn that 'vivid memory from childhood' into a play.

'There are a thousand different Mariana Pinedas. Mariana the heroine, Mariana the mother, Mariana in love, Mariana the embroiderer, but I was not going to "do" them all.' That is what Federico García Lorca said of his protagonist after the premiere of this piece in 1927. Of all those possible Marianas, we aimed to deal with the one that Lorca summoned: 'a woman of deep Spanish roots who sings the verses of her life to love and to liberty in a way that embodies the universal concept of those two great feelings... of freedom itself.'

In the first version of this piece by the Flamenco Ballet of Andalusia, Granada native Patricia Guerrero takes on the challenge of being the body and soul of Mariana. A version that explores the spiritual and expressive strength of Lorca's theatrical poem. Accompanied by an exceptional team, Patricia Guerrero gives us a striking and vibrant Pineda – Granada born, universal, and decidedly Flamenco. A danced poem for theatre because, again in the words of Federico, 'the stage cannot be anything other than emotion and poetry: communication through word, action, and gesture.