For their first time in Wales, Danza Contemporanea de Cuba present three newly premiered works from some of the world’s most exciting international choreographers.
“Reversible”, by renowned Columbian-Belgian choreographer Annabelle López Ochoa, is at its most simple, a timeless battle of the sexes.
Male dancers, topless in masculine skirts, host a corner of the stage with the female contingent wearing the trousers in the opposite diagonal. Each group move in a huddling rotation from which their representative rises aloft as though Venus being born of the waves. The physical strength and exacting grace employed in creating this show-stopping moment so early in the programme can only offer clues on what might follow.
When the “king” and “queen” eventually descend to earth, a capoeira conflict, street dance motif sexually charges the air. The pair remove, then swap skirt and trousers only to discard them, instead staying equal in matching black shorts. Fierce and fast aggressive movements spray the dancers across the floor in a tense and dizzying display, with the capoeira motif reasserted in the brief duets of all the “occasional” couples.
Theo Clinkard is one of the UK’s most prestigious modern choreographers and it’s his work, “The Listening Room”, created especially for this company that Danza Cuba next present.
Twenty dancers, each in variously coloured t-shirts and summertime shorts, stand motionless in a line at the very front of the stage for what feels like a very long time. All wear in-ear headphones. All slump, slowly. Are they waiting for something? Are they commuting? A short, low hanging strip light brings to mind an underground train station so by design or not, my mind travels down that track.
To Steve Reich’s recognisably American “Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings”, this seeming commute story unfolds with individuals in their own worlds guided by travel and whatever their headphones deliver. Individual travel soundtracks with arms occasionally held aloft as through using straphangers on a tube train. Everyone is an individual in their own cosmos and the mood is light and airy, conveying the community of strangers in a big city, alone but part of something bigger. Following the performance, I learn that much of the movement has been uniquely improvised in response to the soundtracks and text being played through those headphones.
The final dance is “Matria Etnocentra” by the Cuban choreographer George Céspedes. A rhythmically compellingly representation of the Cuban national journey from the 1962 revolution. In three chapters, all dancers in combat trousers and white t-shirts bearing the communist red star, move as a cohort with military precision. Like a four-to-the-beat, starling murmuration, strength and artistry is might in numbers.
Moving on, for this generation the shirts are gone and individuals perform leaps and falls, exploring themselves and new influences in apparent distress. How does one remain an individual when living in a regimented society? Little by little, couples then larger groups start to move in unison once more but this time with the addition of individual flare, as dance reinforces itself on the Cuban identity. A society of dancers is formed with the members still identifying themselves as Cuban in the white, blue and red of their national flag.
Enjoying an ensemble of up to twenty dancers in full vigour as they use full-sized stage at the WMC to such dizzying effect has made a profound impact on the audience. Such a rare treat to witness an international company possessed of such high skill and invention here, in the Welsh capital.