This weekend, NYU Abu Dhabi’s Red Theater saw one of its biggest shows of the season: Noche Flamenca’s Antigona. Based on Sophocles’ classic play Antigone, the performance has been adapted and directed by Martín Santangelo with his wife, the acclaimed flamenco dancer Soledad Barrio, to create the phenomenal musical and visual piece, Antigona.

####What was the motivation to tell the story of Antigone through flamenco?

Santangelo: Well, originally it was motivated by a Spanish theme or something that happened in Spain. So, it was good to use one of the languages of artistic expression of Spain. That was the motivation. In the process of doing it as I learnt, it made and it continues to make more and more sense because Greek classic theater was never spoken; it was always danced and sung and accompanied by music.

Levy: (Pointing to Santangelo) He knows the music, he knows the rhythms, he knows how the balance between the voice and the guitars and the instruments and the dance has to work.

####Does anything change each time you do the play? As a performance that relies so much on the individual energies of the actors and the musicians, but also on the director himself, do any of the technicalities change in the play?

Santangelo: Yes. I’d always be rehearsing the play as a process of discovery. I am rehearsing now at 6:30 [p.m.] because I saw something and I’m like, Oh, I can express that more clearly.

Levy: Finessing and finessing and finessing.

Santangelo: Yeah, we’d always be rehearsing. But it’s taking advantage, in that sense, of each one’s expertise and knowledge of flamenco and composing. It’s composing, more than anything.

Levy: And it is also development. I mean people often ask at these Q&As how long it takes to put together, and when they hear four years or five years, they get surprised. Well, that’s what it takes to get this. … It took 3 and a half to four years to get to a place where it was really ready to show and that’s what it takes.

####What are the political inclinations of the play? A similar question was asked by an audience member in the post-show talk, but what is your take on it?

Santangelo: I think it is pretty clear that the political perspective is that if you become a dictator, you lose your humanity. That’s what I think Sophocles was saying, I think that’s what he was saying about Creon. That you become a dictator, you lose your niece, your son, your wife and you lose your country. We lose the possibility to organize and to rule.

Levy: Consider the fact that Sophocles wrote into it that Creon realises [that] at the end. He could have written it with Creon just continuing being the king… He wants us to realize, exactly what [Santangelo] was saying. He wants us to see that he has this moment of realization.