celebrating the “in-between”
by Douglas Messerli
Contra-Tiempo Urban Latin Dance Theater joyUS
just US / Ana Maria Alvarez (and cast members) choreography, the production
I saw was on January 17, 2020 at the Bram Goldsmith Theater at the Wallis
Performance Center in Beverly Hills.
Through a mix of Salsa dancing and other Latin dance traditions, these
figures, spin, twirl, twist and turn, and generally perform in a highly
physical manner that, at times, is literally gravity-defying as they proclaim
their cultural affinities, and their right to be here, in Los Angeles, to be
performing in one of the wealthiest spaces in the larger LA community in the
middle of Beverly Hills.
Together they bring song (mostly through Toledo’s soprano renditions)
music from the band Las Cafeteras, fusing Afro-Cuban and contemporary dance
styles that utterly transform what we generally perceive as modern dance.
This troupe, displaying dazzlingly colorful tapestries, perform with
part of the audience onstage, divided into the two sides of the performance
space, as if to include those of us in the audience in their remarkable
athletics, and, at one moment encouraging the on-stage audience to participate
in their actions.
If this might not be described as the most elegant of dance concerts, then you wouldn’t enjoy, as I did, this exuberant company. The Contra-Tiempo group is entirely about expressing the excitement of their physical abilities and their bodies, dresses whirling like Turkish dervishes, and male asses displayed as true sexual enticements. Sex, in these dances, is nearly everything. This company does not at all hide what they have to offer, and the audience clearly enjoyed their displays of what dance, open, joyous, proffers.
Dance, after all, is a sexual act. I once recall a kind of stodgy friend
mocking his wife for attending dance concerts: “She just likes to see all those
thin male crotches!” I wanted to reply, well don’t we all? The male and female
bodies of dance are, in part, what it is all about. How can beautiful bodies
move so effortlessly, so beautifully through space? That is the true excitement
of dance, isn’t it?
And
I did, taking nightly classes at the Joffrey Ballet Company in New York. I was
not a natural. But I so enjoyed those difficult hours at the barre. And, in one
wonderful moment, when asked to pirouette, I accomplished it, and was praised—something
that rarely happened in such daily exercises.
The
Contra-Tiempo company is a rather wild group, a sort of off-shoot of modern
balletic dance; yet their beauty and energy are something that no one who loves
the movement of the body might resist.
Los Angeles, January 18, 2020
Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and
Performance (January 2020).
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