Carlos Saura’s Carmen – A flamenco dance troupe rehearses their version of Georges Bizet’s opera. As the rehearsal progresses, their dramas become strikingly similar to their production’s subject matter until the two become indistinguishable. But can it be as simply summed up as stating that reality and fiction meld into one?

The scene presented in the video above requires some preface. Antonio, the director of the flamenco production of Bizet’s Carmen, finds his Carmen after searching far and wide in a flamenco dance studio. At her first rehearsal, they dance a truncated and nascent version of the above. In fact, reflecting her nonchalance and perhaps the everyday nature of the event, she smokes a cigarette throughout most of it. Antonio does not even require her to change from her street clothes.

Immediately prior to the scene depicted in the video above, Carmen (who shares the same name as her character) arrives at the studio dressed in a plain jean jacket. Antonio has her rehearse the scene with another dancer. The curtains are open and the daylight floods in through the enormous windows revealing the paucity of the set. A group of chairs represent a bed. A mirror stands in for an armoire. A plain overhead light hangs from the ceiling. The vast wooden dance floor emphasizes the ordinariness of the set.

Antonio leads Carmen and his stand-in through a raw rehearsal of what is to follow. Their awkward, uncertain movements struggle to keep pace with his vision.

Following the hurried rehearsal, Antonio orders the stage to be cleared and the curtains to be slowly drawn. The scene changes dramatically. The once penurious stage is now richly adorned in majestic color and profound lighting. A silence ensues as Carmen begins her transformation with the adornment of a black shawl. The music abruptly ends the silence and the dance begins soon after.

“Carmen” is not so much about the intertwining of reality and fiction. It is about how art transforms ordinary life into the sublime. The destitute set becomes an Eden, richly adorned with the beauty of music and dance. It is fittingly appropriate that we never see the final production of the dance troupe’s rehearsals. Such a scene would rob us of an understanding that art is so essential to the human condition and that the human condition is in essence art. After the scene, the curtain opens and floods reality back into the studio, emphasizing the integration of reality with art. One may even venture to say that “Carmen” provides an answer to the age-old question of what constitutes art –

why, perhaps, nothing more ordinary than the human condition. If you are still not convinced, I invite you to press the play button above.