Report from ADF: Le Hip Hop/Campagnie Kafig

Photo by M. M.

I like France a lot. I like hip-hop less. But I’m game. The problem for me is that I’ve seen so much of it I’m oversaturated. So, yawn, there you go spinning on your head again. I could very well have caught a case of hip-hop resistance syndrome (HHRS). Compagnie Kafig’s performance of Recital at the American Dance Festival provided ample ground for me to examine my malady.

I’ve always appreciated that fearless French spirit. (The revolution worked out well, didn’t it?) This handsome troupe just dripped with can-do verve (I assume it was of the French kind). They smiled, beamed really, and generally looked as if they were having a fine time. I nearly forgot that existentialism began in France.

Director Mourad Merzouki tried his hand at doing something different with hip-hop. Innovation is just so French. Just think about what they do with scarves. He sets his dance in a smoke-filled recital hall. Music stands arranged in a “v” clutter the space—so much so the dancers look concerned about the space drought. I witnessed them holding back on their spins, knots, and human pretzel twists. In hip-hop, holding back is not a good thing. And, I’ve never thought of the French as a holding back lot, so I am puzzled by this.

Later in the dance, violins come into the picture--a curious choice and not all that conducive to dancing. Finally, those music stands get hauled away and raised in a clump over the dancers. I spend the rest of the dance worried that they are going to fall on my new French friends. Also, I wondered why the emperor from Star Wars was popping in the background. I’m happy to see him exploring international relations.

I did enjoy the part when the young Frenchman tried to unscrew his head. I, too, want to unscrew my head. Quelle illusion. I liked that there were no violins and music stands in his way too.

In a dark corner, I saw a fantastic corkscrew action. Why is this wonderful display of human drill virtuosity happening upstage right? Then I remembered, the French are a humble people.

Monsieur Merzouki rescues hip-hop from its humble origins by making it a “theater event.”
Is hip-hop happening on the street these days? Has the street moved on? Something about this thought made what was happening on stage look a bit old-fashioned. Could the hip be falling out of the hop? Is France interested in second-hand pop culture?

The audience just bubbled with happiness, sometimes screaming out words. I wanted to join in, but, I don’t speak French. The best part was the encore. Finally, Campagnie Kafig could do what they do best--entertain with hard-to-do tricks, like walking up walls. I want to try that at home. But first, I will unscrew my head. Much of what Campagnie Kafig did involved the head. Once, one of those strapping lads flew across the stage--on his head. I worried, just a bit, about their brains. Don’t the French eat brains?

Now, it’s been said, (by me, actually), that bits don’t make a dance. Actually, in hip-hop they do. There was some great dancing, one magnificent head spin, and several bordering-on-impossible feats. Not enough for a total cure, but I definitely like the French more, and am doing my best to like hip-hop.


Note: The author would like it to be known that she loves the French people, that several of the members of Campagnie Kafig are actually French Algerian, that she stands firmly that “freedom fries” are a silly idea, that the French got it right about the war, and that secretly, she desires to be a thin French woman.

10 for 10: TAMALALIA 10 at IBP

Tamalalia 10, Infernal Bridegroom Productions, August 11, 2005

I woke up in a dead, dark funk, unable to focus, unsure of my future. Nightmares of bacon wearing red tights and my mother with a pad of butter on her head flooded my thoughts. No more TAMALALIAS? Is there a purpose to go on? Will summer ever be the same in Houston? Should we all just block out July 07’ in mourning?

I finally learned how to pronounce it and zippo---it’s gone. OK, OK so I didn’t bother to see TAMALALIA 1-9. (I’m from Buffalo-we hibernate in the summer.) I never watched Friends either and then missed the final episode. No way was I going let that happen to TAMALALIA 10. It could be career suicide. Besides Tamarie Cooper, the originator and subject of this musical extravaganza is a Houston legend, an institution, a walking Greta Garbo Lucille Ball hybrid.

Why make a musical about a flying car when you can use your own life for material? Cooper finds a song and dance number for just about every aspect in her life, from her pathetic love life (so that’s what happened to sensitive, depressed artist guy after I dumped him) to her troubled years in gym class. No subject is off limits. Drugs, drinking, it’s all there, wearing fabulous outfits. Can cocaine-man (Jeff Miller) dance or what? Food, also dancing, makes a strong statement. I too, prefer my bacon (Richard Jason Lyders-Gustafson) to have a little ballet training.

As a musical adventure, TAMALALIA is an effort to explore what happens when you take over the top, over the top. Even the wigs are worth a visit. With a snazzy band, a cast of a hundred of Cooper’s closest friends, it’s just a feast for the ADD-minded. If you remembered to take your medication you can just hone in on Cooper’s face. She makes Jim Carrey look like a slacker. Hell, you can be entertained by her left eyebrow. The girl has face extraordinaire. Cooper ends her 10-year triumph with a cosmic bang. After this, no one will dare make a musical about themselves.

The cast and band are all terrific but it’s Cooper that provides the glue that holds her madcap show together. When it’s over even straight girls want to take her home to meet mom.

There’s still time. Go see what all the fuss has been about. Don’t be one of the few Houstonians that has never seen a TAMALALIA. Consider your future. It almost happened to me. Don’t let it happen to you.

Performances continue until September 3 at the Axiom, 2524 McKinney. http://www.infernalbridegroom.com/
713-522-8443

Report from ADF: Dancer on a String/Brenda Angiel Aerial Dance Company

June 30, 2005

Forget eye-candy. It’s more like air-candy during Brenda Angiel Aerial Dance Company’s performance of Air Condition at the American Dance Festival. “Candy” is the operative word here—Brazilian choreographer Angiel delivered sweet thrills along with some empty choreographic calories. Each dance started out with an eye-opening wallop and then petered out. Still, Angiel’s ten fearless dancers perched, suspended, flew, walked on walls, and hung upside down with admirable confidence.

Air-Lines, held the most promise. Five dancers, suspended by short cables, appeared pinned against a black back wall like butterfly specimens. The scene wreaked havoc on our perception; it was as if the audience was looking down on the dance. Video projections of white light encapsulated each dancer in separate cocoons that expanded and contracted along with their shifting shape. Gradually the novelty of the new view wore off and I tired of looking at the tops of heads and their backs. The projections grew overly busy, the elevator music score droned in the background, and the harsh frontal lighting flattened the dancers like bugs on a windshield. Air-Lines disintegrated into equal parts June Taylor Dancers and the Hollywood Squares.

Other glimpses of sky-drama delighted throughout. Air Part attached Leonardo Haedo’s right arm directly into the cable in a clever extension of the body. Haedo hovered just above the surface of the floor in a stunning suspension. In the “Fourth Part” (of Air Part), a trio of angry red-dressed women used the men as a human staircase to the air space. Cristina Tziouras’s free-fall solo delivered the one, utterly delicious, illusion of the evening. David Ferri’s strong directional white side-lighting rendered Tziouras finally untethered. Ana Armas and Pablo Carrizo’s inverted tango in Air Force proved amusing. Enough with "Air" in the titles please.

Unfortunately, moments do not make a dance. Angiel’s choreography plays out more like sketches than complete dances. The visual punch that launched each of these works never reached a satisfying development. Aerial dance also poses some aesthetic concerns and Angiel crashes full-throttle into a few of them. The cables are ugly, clunky, and more importantly, completely visible. The heavy black robes that extend from the dancers’ backs make them look like macabre puppets. The metal cables attached to the front of the dancers’ bodies work more like an umbilicus, but lend an industrial feel. The illusion of flight, if any, feels limp.

Sure, there are affordances to being airborne in terms of playing with multiple views of the body and shifting perspectives. The territory also comes with major restrictions. There’s the plain fact that the dancers are always attached to a leash. Strangely, they look like a captive lot. Doesn’t that negate the freedom intrinsic to flight?

Judging from the audience’s enthusiasm they did not share my concerns.

Report from ADF: Maximal Minimalist/ Brian Brooks Moving Company

Photo by Amitava Sarkar

July 4, 2005

There’s nothing quite like merging candy and violence to get those choreographic wheels turning. Piñata, Brian Brooks’ new dance for five dancers and a billion bits of paper, draws its inspiration from those weird little tissue animals that birthday kids bash to smithereens in search of second-rate confections. Brooks demonstrates his simultaneous love for clean lines, exotic costumes, and innocent fun.

A white marley rectangle serves as Brooks’ canvas. The dance opens with a re-enactment of the smashing ritual. Enter the rest of the dancers, dressed like refugees from The Little Prince on Pierrot dress-up day, in frilly tops, knickers, pilot caps, bows, and shoulder feathers. The white floor transforms into an active surface making the dancers rise like crackle-pop-in-your-mouth candy, flipping and flopping like acrobatic fish. Brooks’ finesse with floorwork and the company’s mighty abdominals are in ample evidence.

Brooks introduces the color and costume changes sparingly in paint-by-number fashion. Repetitive diagonal side hops in an “x” pattern while outstretched arms release confetti and change the air from white to orange. Weena Pauly, looking like a floating blue-bowed angel, leaks blue confetti while bathed in Jeremy Morris-Burke’s also blue light set to Tom Lopez’s crisp score.

Throughout the dance the confetti takes on life of its own charging the space with a kind of champagne fizz. From snow globe effect, to punctuation, to a kind of amplification of motion, Brooks gets those paper pieces working for him. An elegant, but spare, kicking dance unearths the gathered multi-colored ground litter. And who could forget the giddy party toss in the bottom-scooting conga line danced to Senor Coconut’s zany tune.

Two dancers enter wearing curious black flamenco dresses and repeat the deliberate sequence of piñata evisceration (this time with a pointe shoe piñata) from the beginning. The rest of the piñata people return wearing even more fantastic black dresses complete with feathered head regalia. After a moment of mutual admiration they proceed to plant their feet into the floor and ride every delicious moment of Ravel’s Bolero with just their arms and hands. So, where is the black confetti? It’s invisible, as hand swoops stir Ravel’s intoxicating melody into the air. Stark, white frontal lighting illuminate ten soaring hands, diving and catching every note. It’s ravishing. Brooks and his troupe, Nicholas Duran, Alexander Gish, Jo-Anne Lee, and Pauly danced with charm, conviction, and agility.

At first it seems as if Brooks swerves off the path he has meticulously put forth in his hand ballet. A closer examination reveals the set-up stays the same; Brooks dresses up his dressed-down dance. Clearly, this strict formalist knows how to throw a party.