Mauricio Wainrot: a documentary about the San Martín choreographer is released.

From his first creations for the San Martín Contemporary Ballet, produced in the late 1970s, to the present, choreographer Mauricio Wainrot has conceived a volume of more than 40 works mounted for that company and also for numerous other groups around the world.

And now, more than four decades later, part of that journey is reflected in the documentary Wainrot, a behind-the-scenes film directed by Teresa Costantini, scheduled to premiere on June 24 at 7:00 p.m. in the Lugones Room of the Teatro San Martín. Over the course of almost an hour, fragments of some of his works are interwoven with episodes from the personal life of this artist born in Buenos Aires and the son of a family of Polish-Jewish immigrants. The documentary is a snapshot of a copious and long journey that chooses, moreover, to focus on a few salient points.

In cinema, regardless of the genre, editing is essential; and from the countless hours accumulated, it was undoubtedly inevitable for Costantini to arrive at a selection. In this case, it was determined by the implications that different works had for their creator.

About The Tempest , of which we can see fragments of rehearsals and others already on stage –all of them with performers from the Ballet Contemporáneo del San Martín– Wainrot says: “Between 2006 and 2018 [referring to the original premiere date and that of its revival] a storm passed through me; 12 years in which many things happened to me, some very difficult but also others good. The Tempest is based on the last play written by William Shakespeare and is my favorite creation. Prospero, the main character, is a very powerful man, but at the same time an intellectual who loves books and the stars and is fought by other political powers.”

Regarding his A Streetcar Named Desire based on the play of the same name by Tennessee Williams , he says: “When I was studying theater – I was very young – I wanted to act in A Streetcar… and play the character of Kowalsky, for whom I think I had the type.”

Ultimately, he never did, but many years later he translated this drama into choreographic language, playing with what dance allows: including characters that are only mentioned in the text but do not appear physically, that is, who are not embodied as such.

Two more openly personal and contrasting circumstances appear in the documentary. On the one hand, there is the mention of the tragic death of Carlos Gallardo, a visual artist, costume designer, set designer, and life and work partner of Mauricio Wainrot. Gallardo died in December 2008 in a car accident; they were traveling together to Córdoba to spend the New Year holidays: "I was driving on the highway, and because of the amount of water accumulated on a slope, the car started to spin, went off the road, and we crashed into a tree. I saw Carlos lying there and wanted to die."

In contrast to this somber memory, a humorous anecdote emerges that takes Wainrot back to his childhood: “My father saw me dancing—I was about six years old—and asked me if I wanted to study dance. He then took me to the National Dance School. There were 200 girls, 200 mothers, and me, the only boy. The director told my father: 'Your son is wonderful, but he's too shy.' And off we went; my angry father walked ahead of me with his hands in his pockets. It was my first failure in dance.”

There are several testimonies that punctuate the documentary: from Paloma Herrera, Julio Bocca, José Miguel Onaindia , María Ricceto, Luis Faldutti, Igor Yebra and Andrea Chinetti, current director of the San Martín Ballet, who introduces the theme of Anne Frank : “Mauricio created the role for me and it was very important for me as an interpreter to discover the theatrical aspect of a character. The performance would begin and I was no longer myself; I was in Anne's skin, in her suffering and in that wonderful world that her imagination had created.”

The infamous diary of the teenage victim of Nazism was the basis for the choreography that opened up the prospect of an international career for Wainrot.

"Anne Frank wasn't just a huge success here, and people welcomed it with such force because it was a response to the terrible years of the dictatorship. It was also a success in a subsequent production in Sweden and then in Germany. In both countries, the same thing happened: at the end, there was no applause. And then, very slowly, it began to get louder and louder. I was incredibly emotional and remembered my father, who, like my mother, had lost his entire family in the Nazi concentration camps."

The early Anne Frank and the recently revived The Tempest are two temporal extremes in Mauricio Wainrot 's production, which, moreover, always has a choreographic project ahead of it. Thus, Wainrot, Behind the Scenes, presents itself as a portrait of a choreographer, of his desires, ambitions, and achievements, but at the same time reveals itself as an expression of the history of dance in Argentina.

* Wainrot, Behind the Scenes will be presented on June 24 at 9 p.m. in the Lugones Room of the San Martín Theater, Corrientes 1530. There will be two more screenings: on June 25 at 3 p.m. and on June 26 at 6 p.m.

*On Tuesday the 24th, starting at 7 p.m., the Contemporary Ballet will perform a suite from Estaciones porteñas , choreographed by Wainrot to music by Astor Piazzolla, in the theater lobby. This will be followed by an open discussion with the choreographer and Teresa Costantini.