Hot Latino Experiences and Spanish Roots
With each other, immigrants and visitors to the U.S. share their culture, its roots and its transformations in the new setting. Newcomers also share with the broader community and create new audiences. From Latin America and the Caribbean come many immigrants who carry with them their dances influenced by Spanish colonalization, European immigrants, African slaves and indigenous Indians. Festivals spotlighting the many manifestations of diverse Latino identities and their heritage are popular in Washington, DC.
Washington Ballet Artistic Director Septime Webre turned up the heat with ¡Noche Latina! At the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts he presented a carnivalesque travelogue celebrating the pulsating cultures of Latin America with live music, intense dancing and unbridled fun. ¡Noche Latina! explored Argentinean tango, Brazilian samba and bassa nova, Mexican folk music and the Cuban salsa. The caliente (passionate) fiesta featured the company's premiere of modern dance choreographer Paul Taylor's take on the tango, "Piazzola Caldera," paired with Webre's reminiscent "Juanita y Alicia," a tribute to his family's Cuban heritage. Nacho Duato's "Na Floresta" captured the essence of Brazil's rainforest. The Washington Ballet did not dance authentic tango, Brazilian or Cuban dance but choreographed reflections on them, interpretations, nuanced essences and sensibilities.
México's traditional Mariachi style Los Amigos musicians heralded the evening as they strutted down the aisle in big sombreros and gaucho pants and then mounted the stage, all the while serenading the audience. An American, Daniel Sheehy, a UCLA Ph.D. in ethnomusicology who plays the trumpet, led the group.
At intermission, Mystic Warriors, playing a new age version of Andean traditional soulful music greeted the audience in the theater lobby.
A musical interlude featured an unusual quartet, Celso Duarte Fusion Jarocho, from México, led by Celso Duarte, son of a Peruvian who played son jaracho from Vera Cruz, Mexico, on Paraguayan harps. The group blends African, indigenous, jazz and Spanish rhythms. A female vocalist sang, stamped out spirited rhythms with her feet and played a tambourine.
Webre's "Juanita y Alicia" was performed to the sounds of Sin Miedo, a local Cuban group. French pianist Didier Prossaird leads this band in velvety renditions of songs made famous by Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club. Recorded music accompanied other dances.
In homage to Argentina's tango, Taylor's "Piazzolla Caldera" is a modern dance rendition of sizzling sexual encounters and sad rejections in smoke-filled milonga (dance halls). The late Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was quoted in the program: "The flawed confusion of human beings, impregnated with sweat and smoke, smelling of lilies and of urine ... as impure as old clothes, as a body, with its foodstains and its shame, with wrinkles, dreams, stupidities, doubts, affirmations ..."
Artistic Director of Compania Nacional de Danza in Spain, Duato set "Na Floresta" to music by Heitor Villa-Lobos. The dance evokes the culture, ecology and spirit of the Brazil's Amazon rainforest. Born in Valencia, Spain, Duato combines classical and contemporary technique in folk-tinged choreography against a soft green abstract forest background. Villa-Lobos, a native of Rio de Janeiro, drew upon the indigenous folk cultures and itinerant street musicians of his homeland and western classical traditions for his music.
Webre's "Juanita y Alicia" nostalgically recalls memories of his family's life in Havana, Cuba, during the 1920's and 1930's, based on the stories he heard as a child. "Inspired by my childhood, this work invokes the feeling of a living family album, drawing from my mother's stories about growing up in Cuba with her eight siblings," says Webre. The backdrop is a projected large sepia picture of his Cuban family along with the Sin Miedo musicians.
The sensuality of Washington Ballet's Latinos, Luis Torres from Puerto Rico, Alvaro Palau from Columbia and Laura Urgelle, from Cuba, shone through their dancing. Washington Ballet's outstanding American dancers captured much of the Latin flavor, e.g., Jason Hartley, a powerful performer and acrobat; Jonathan Jordan, who is often paired with Hartley, Jared Nelson with prince-like elegance; and Morgann Rose, a dancer of passion and drama. Other immigrant dancers, Maki Onuki from Japan and Runqiao Du from China, were not left behind.
Latinos's Spanish roots were acclaimed in The George Washington University Lisner Auditorium's 7th Annual Flamenco Festival. Indian, Arabic and Sephardic immigrants to Spain influenced what has become its national dance. What began as lusty gypsies celebrating with improvised interactive music and flamenco dance around a campfire, and then a dancer and guitarist performing on a tablao (small platform) in a bar or a café cantante along with a singer, was transferred to the concert stage. Here what started as re-creations of the campfire or tablaos became transformed again.
In lieu of flamenco puro (traditional) are narrative tales and rhythmic, emotional poeticized themes, minus the old-style atmosphere. Rarely seen are the men's toreador costumes and women's colorful flowered or polka dotted dresses. Of course, dance always changes and, indeed, our Western aesthetic demands innovation. So, dance museum performances and archival recordings are important to help to preserve our history so that we know what change is.
As part of Lisner's Flamenco Festival, Sara Jezez-Marlow, born in Nicaragua, taught a beginner's flamenco class to help participants understand what they would see. Each of three performance groups, whose members have stellar credits, are remarkably unique. However, they share the contemporary edginess of theatricality and greater fusion with other dance forms. The performances were sleekly staged, technologically undergirded, theatrically lighted with choreographed unison dancing in modern dress. The floor was miked. Modern dance movements, especially turns and pose, now make their mark in flamenco.
The dances retained the essence and integrity of flamenco with bodies played like instruments and typical flamenco vocabulary: zapateado (syncopated slow-to-furious percussive sounds made by the feet clad in flamenco shoes with their nail-studded heels and toe area of the soles), braceo (curved and angular arm work), floretas (articulate hand gestures combined with rotating wrists), duende (total absorption) and distinct palos (dances), each with its own compass (rhythm).
The first part of the Bienal de Sevilla began and ended with Olga Pericet, Manuel Liñán and Marco Flores in a unison trio but went on to feature a series of soloists. The men wore western business suits, with jackets at times billowing out or one side hand-held as a body extension.
Joaquín Grilo, a tall man appearing younger than his 39 years, engaged the audience with suspenseful transitions from lyrical movements, strutting about the stage and bursting into tornado-like percussive footwork. Isabel Bayón brought an elegant lyrical style. La Moneta captured the ferocity of a gypsy. Wearing a stunning pink and rose ruffled dress that cascaded to the stage, Pericet whipped its bata de cola (train) around her body and lifted it as body camouflage.
Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras presented "Sabores" ("Flavors"), a glossy new work that celebrates the many styles of flamenco. The show began with some dancers bringing the musicians' instruments and chairs onstage, while others warmed up.
Renowned for her virtuosic, rapid fire footwork and commanding yet elegant presence, Sara Baras is Spain's most popular dancer and a flamenco icon. She draws devotees in with a mere flick of her hem or hit of her tacon (heel) on the stage and keeps them riveted with a cappella stamps or skimming the stage on her heels. She received Spain's prestigious National Dance Award and broke box office records during a recent five-month run in Madrid.
Given their own solos, guest dancers Luis Orgeta's "Seguiriya" and José Serrano's "Alegrías" showed physical mastery in articulated and nuanced footwork. Corps performer Raúl Fernández's personal style in a solo in the Tangos section stood out. Baras performed "A Fuego Lento" ("Slow Fire") with Ortega and Serrano.
Compañía Rafaela Carrasco's "Una Mirada del Flamenco" ("A Look at Flamenco") was especially innovative The show began with a spotlight center stage on a dancer executing a choreographic phrase. Cut. Spotlight another dancer, cut, and then another. With an unassuming manner, Carrasco is an elegant yet gutsy dancer who integrated her four dancers into the whole. When she picked up a long black ruffled skirt lying nearby on the stage, she referenced the traditional style of a woman dancing in the long dress with a bata de cola. Prominent in Carrasco's work is a modern dance vocabulary of contractions, leaps, lifts and turns, bare feet, male partnering and cross-dressing (men dancing with frocks and bata de colas). The musical accompaniment had the usual guitar, but also piano, cello, Indian percussion clay pots and African drums. Percussionist Nacho Arimany vocalized fast staccato syllables similar to the accompaniment of classical dance from India. A male dancer played castanets to his solo.
Dances about Latinos and their Spanish flamenco roots gave us distinct original visions transformed from immigrants' roots. Fusion of forms and glimpses pf globalization flourished in the ¡Noche Latina! and the Flamenco Festival.