Tambourines

Dance creation by Trajal Harrell premiering in Spain, reinterpreting Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter through the body, movement and social gaze, at the Sala Verde of the Teatros del Canal.

This dance piece by Trajal Harrell, which premieres in Spain as part of the Festival de Otoño at the Sala Verde of the Teatros del Canal, is based on the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne published in 1850. Its protagonist, Hester Prynne, is a single mother of a child conceived outside marriage and refuses to name the father. In seventeenth-century Puritan North America, that silence is considered an intolerable challenge, and the punishment is to wear a scarlet letter A on the chest.

The work does not transfer the story to the stage literally. Harrell uses the body, movement, costume and theatricality to examine identity, desire, shame and belonging. The letter ceases to be merely a literary symbol and becomes a mark on the skin, raising the question of who has the right to decide which bodies may be displayed, desired or expressed freely.

The gaze also dwells on the collective dimension of punishment. Faced with contempt and exclusion, the creation asks where a woman publicly branded might find support and solidarity.