Monday, March 28, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
“Look at you. You’re young. And you’re scared. Why are you so scared? Stop being paralyzed. Stop swallowing your words. Stop caring what other people think. Wear what you want. Say what you want. Listen to the music you want to listen to. Play it loud as fuck and dance to it. Go out for a drive at midnight and forget that you have school the next day. Stop waiting for Friday. Live now. Do it now. Take risks. Tell secrets. This life is yours. When are you going to realize that you can do whatever you want?”
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Dance Review
Flamenco, Hip-Hop and Bare Midriffs
By ROSLYN SULCAS
Published: March 20, 2011
If visitors from another galaxy descended on Earth and happened to land at New World Stages Theater No. 1, where “Between Worlds” (“Entre Mundos”) is playing, they would find a useful shorthand guide to life here.
1. Humans are divided into sexily attired, impeccably coiffed flamenco dancers and sexily attired, shaved-headed, face-painted goths doing a vague form of hip-hop.
2. Midriffs must be bared to allow breathing.
3. Shoes come with microphones.
4. Amplification easily survives apocalypse.
5. People from warring tribes will become exhausted and reconcile if a beautiful woman in skimpy outfits dances long enough.
6. There is no point to this planet.
As an Earthling reviewer, however, I had no spaceship available to transport me out of “Between Worlds,” an overblown, highly colored, crudely conceived spectacle that aims directly at the sensationalist entertainment category. And it’s possible that the packed audience was in fact entertained by the dance, which is given its pretext by a barely-there story: Two tribes remaining on a parched Earth after some sort of catastrophe are saved by the arrival of a pure soul who reconciles them and brings rain.
The story isn’t the biggest problem. There are plenty of dances with thin narrative lines, and flamenco in particular struggles with the problem of conveying plot. Its strengths lie in the almost symbiotic relationship between dancer and musician, in the rhythmic complexity of that relationship, in the raw passion that surges through the arching torsos, the staccato footwork, the rich curves of arm and wrist.
“Between Worlds,” created by Pablo Croce (who also gets the director’s credit) and its one-name star, Siudy (who is credited as choreographer), offers almost none of that. The music (by Ernesto Briceno, Diego Franco Moreno and Roberto Castillo) is mostly recorded and overamplified, with onstage drummers and a singer (Joaquin Gomez) presenting the live musical component.
Although Mr. Gomez, who has a fine voice, brings a little soul to the piece, he is overrun by the relentless showbiz assault. The competent female flamenco ensemble rattles away in tightly choreographed groups; the “urban” crew does some hip-hop lite and a lot of aggressive posturing. Fences, occasionally formed into cages, create opportunities for soft-porn scantily clad draping-in-despair poses.
Most problematic, though, is Siudy, a Venezuelan-born dancer around whom the show has clearly been conceived. She is tall and pretty in a ripe-peach sort of way, and as far as I could tell she had a decent flamenco technique. But her dancing — and there is a lot of it — is overlaid with so much posturing, so much affected arm rippling, so many elevated agony cum ecstasy expressions and such shameless milking of applause that you soon fervently wish she would just get on with betraying her urban tribe lover and bringing the rain.
As with the rest of the show, Siudy is all style and little content. “Between Worlds” is slick enough and well danced enough. But it has an exploitative edge that makes you long for that spaceship to arrive.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
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