Dear tangueros, I wanted to say a few words to encourage the tango crowd to come see "Crimes & Whispers". I've been disappointed not to have seen more tango dancers there -- this is a show the community really ought to support.
Why? It seems like most stage productions treat the tango as a flashy, exotic novelty whose main purpose is to exhibit legs and sequins. Those shows don't have much to do with why we dance. Speaking for myself, at least, tango is not just an excuse to play dress-up on the weekends. "Crimes and Whispers" is a rare performance that takes tango really seriously -- not just because it's about Argentine history, but because it's using the tango (and other kinds of dance as well) to explore the tough emotions that are a part of that history. So this show is actually telling two different neglected stories that need to be told: about Argentina's disappeared, and about the tango as a serious art form. True, we don't bring issues as weighty as the ones in this show with us to the floor, but it is this show's attitude toward dance -- its humanity, its wish for shared experience -- that I would like to bring to our own modest little works of improvisational art in the milongas. Please do come see the show if there are still tickets! It's well worth it. Cheers, Paul ------------------------------------------------------------ Posted on Thu, Jul. 13, 2006 Tango's passion ignites story of Argentine turmoil BY LINDA SHAPIRO Special to the Pioneer Press Political repression and social upheaval don't spring to mind as apt subjects for dance. But choreographer Gerry Girouard, known for his abstract and gymnastic choreography, became fascinated by the story of abduction, murder and deceit that took place during the military dictatorship in 1970s Argentina. He had started studying tango at the Four Seasons studio in Minneapolis with Argentine native Florencia Taccetti. Hearing her stories of growing up under the junta rule, he began to envision the tango as a historically rich form that could become the emotional core of a dance-theater work about those harrowing events. "Tango has this struggle inherent within it that mirrors the society of Argentina in that time," said Girouard, who traveled to Buenos Aires last summer on a Minnesota State Arts Board grant to study tango and experience first-hand the vibrant Argentine culture. He returned determined to create a work that would reflect the struggle between justice and power in Argentina but uncertain how to go about it. "There was no way I could create a dramatic through line that was both honest and articulate," Girouard said during a recent interview. So he enlisted Off Leash Area Theater directors Jennifer Ilse and Paul Herwig as dramaturges, directors and performers in the creation of "Crimes and Whispers," which premieres this weekend at the Jawaahir Dance Theater. The three got together with Taccetti, who also performs in the piece, to brainstorm about Argentine culture and the tango. "Tango is a hybrid form that evolved from the interaction between European and African immigrants in the 19th century," explained Taccetti. "They all lived in the same areas of Buenos Aires, where they started dancing together." Additional influences came from the gauchos who occasionally came in from the pampas for a night on the town and from Spanish dance forms. Culturally, tango evolved from a kind of rough-and-ready street dance of the working classes to a highly stylized form popular in ballrooms around the world. The four collaborators opted to use the flavor of tango, combined with Girouard's athletic dance vocabulary, to explore the story of the thousands of people kidnapped, tortured and murdered during the military dictatorship. Herwig's set will transform the theater into a representation of Plaza de Mayo, the main square in Buenos Aires, combined with the feel of a decadent (and decaying) tango studio. It also incorporates a wall of photos of the junta's victims. The piece focuses on the madres the mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared who silently circled the perimeter of the Plaza de Mayo and whose potent protest captured the attention of the world. During a recent rehearsal, the 10 performers took tango-based moves into scenes of violence and mayhem, rebounding off walls, cowering blindfolded in corners or gently cradling pieces of fabric representing lost children. To lush and melancholy music by local composer Neverwas, they carved out a dynamic tale of fear and repression. The performance will also incorporate a group of dancers performing traditional social tango in the show's opening scene although they, too, wind up among the missing. Girouard sees the issues of "Crimes and Whispers" as universal. "The junta wanted to bring back traditional family and religious values that they believed had been lost," he said. "That mindset exists in many cultures and eras, including the present USA. But my job is to catch the audience viscerally then get them to think." Linda Shapiro is a Twin Cities freelance writer. What: "Crimes and Whispers: A Tango of Despair and Defiance" Who: Gerry Girouard and Off-Leash Area Theater When: Friday-July 23 Where: Jawaahir Dance Theater, 1940 Hennepin Ave., Mpls. Tickets: $17-$10; 612-724-7372 © 2006 St. Paul Pioneer Press and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.twincities.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Last update: July 18, 2006 7:21 PM Dance review: 'Crimes and Whispers' Review: Tango tangles with military coup politics in a new dance work, "Crimes and Whispers." Camille Lefevre, Special To The Star Tribune The air was stifling hot, the room saturated with lethargy. As viewers fanned themselves, the dancers moved with a limpness that signaled impending heat exhaustion. It appeared the non-air-conditioned theater might suffocate "Crimes and Whispers," even as it conjured the torpor of the show's Buenos Aires setting. But the performers rallied. Florencia Taccetti and Jennifer Ilse, in particular, gave finely wrought performances, emotional and honest. While the 75-minute show -- co-produced by Gerry Girouard and Dancers, and Off-Leash Area -- was uneven in concept and execution, the two female leads steered the story away from melodrama, and into well-sounded depths of violence, despair and denial. In 16 tableaux-like sections, "Crimes and Whispers" re-imagines the time after the 1976 military coup, during which thousands of citizens permanently "disappeared" at the hands of the junta, and mothers started circling the Plaza de Mayo with pictures of the disappeared. Paul Herwig's sky-blue set, painted with cartoon-like cityscapes, houses secret doors, black-curtained openings, and panels that peel away to reveal images of violence. Violence also is conveyed through Girouard's choreography, a highly physical blend of tango, acrobatics and break-dance moves. Victims twist and cower beneath the feet and legs of the junta, who imprison their victims with horizontal one-armed balances. The mothers line up against the walls with their hands raised, as the junta pin them with wall-walking handstands. Elbows jut, legs lunge, and shoulder stands end in break-dance "freezes." Through their movements the characters argue, insult, plead and try to persuade each other. At the work's core are Taccetti , the mother who ardently tries to get Ilse's blind citizen to see, or at least acknowledge, the missing. Ilse performs much of the work blindfolded, which lends her torture scene with Girouard as the junta leader a wrenching, visceral quality. She often places her hand to her face, gently turning herself away from the truth. And in a friendship duet, she enfolds Taccetti in a choreography of embraces. Herwig's Death appears throughout the piece, a worn traveler in felt-hat and sunglasses who snaps Polaroids of his victims. Even he despairs at the junta's death toll, ripping open hidden pockets of misery to reveal the secrets beneath. Camille LeFevre is a Twin Cities dance critic. ©2006 Special To The Star Tribune. All rights reserved. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- · Twin Cities Reader Summer Books Issue · Vol 27 · Issue 1337 · PUBLISHED 7/19/2006 URL: www.citypages.com/databank/27/1337/article14534.asp HOME: www.citypages.com What's Wrong with Smart, Knee-High Boots and Sexy Leather Trench Coats? There's nothing wrong with fascism that a little selective blindness won't fix by Quinton Skinner The torture and murders committed by the late-'70s military junta in Argentina might have been lost to memory if not for the mothers and grandmothers who silently haunted the Plaza de Mayo in front of Buenos Aires' presidential palace. Some are still there. Their mute resistance helped break through a society's unwillingness to face the depths to which its government had sunk, and it eventually contributed to the regime's downfall. And so Gerry Girouard and Off-Leash Area wade into deep waters with Crimes and Whispers, which depicts the events of that time in an ensemble dance performance that is alternately surreal, wrenching, and seductive. The performance opens (too) slowly, with Death (Paul Herwig) snapping Polaroids on a painted set (designed by Herwig) that evokes Argentina's national colors (light blue and white) and the Plaza de Mayo. Things then speed up considerably, with an abstract depiction of the military junta's rise to power. The youthful dance ensemble (with principal choreography by Girouard) launches into a high-energy number, with four dancers in civilian clothes and three in black military uniforms. What first seems a celebration soon begins to suggest sexual aggression, glamour, and the dark, alluring power of militaristic nationalism. And so goes the recorded score by Chris Cunningham (working under the name Neverwas), a dense brew of accordion, cello, drums, guitars, and keyboards. Though tango makes up the trunk of the soundscape, rhythmic tendrils shoot out of it; at one point the descriptor "hypno-Latin" sprang to mind. Between the larger ensemble pieces, a dynamic emerges between a mother with a child stolen by the government (Florencia Taccetti) and a citizen living in willful blindness to the invisible dead all around (Jennifer Ilse). Ilse first moves, violently, to deny Taccetti's faded Polaroid, then later literally thrashes to avoid the semi-sexual dominating moves of the junta, here personified by the uniformed Girouard. His choreography features a signature move in which the dancers run up the set's walls with their legs while grounding themselves with their arms. The gesture lends a surreal edge that evokes the seduction, dominance, and acquiescence beneath both our romantic lives and our relations to those who govern us. The second act takes a detour into Argentina's 1978 World Cup victory, with a big pumping techno score playing against the irony of death taking place blocks away from the celebrations. (The scene is forced and facile, which seems to be the point.) By now Herwig has returned, dressed in a black hat and shades, to take a knife to his set and reveal painted ghostly faces and bloody hues beneath the pastel sky. It's natural at this point to wonder where the show is going. One hopes it isn't turning into a paean to the human spirit; really, if we're to learn anything from the previous century, it's that we need to triumph over human nature. Instead something complicated and unexpected happens. The music goes silent. Girouard and Ilse launch into a hard, entirely unsentimental dance about brute force and a population that refuses to accept the fact that it lives under an unscrupulous regime. Thudding into walls and the floor, the blindfolded Ilse squirms and tumbles to dodge the increasingly disdainful Girouard. Authoritarian government, the movement suggests, will grow bolder the more its people deny its abuses. Finally Girouard and Taccetti stage another silent showdown, this one violent and full of anguish. When the scene fades to black, the fight is still going on; there is no triumph to be had for either side. · Twin Cities Reader Summer Books Issue · Vol 27 · Issue 1337 · PUBLISHED 7/19/2006 URL: www.citypages.com/databank/27/1337/article14534.asp HOME: www.citypages.com City Pages is the Online News and Arts Weekly of the Twin Cities Florencia [email protected]/florencia.htmlIt is not because things are difficult that we don't dare, it is because we don't dare ourselves that they are difficult. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
