On June 28tH, in a program to be repeated June 29th and 30th, Visceral Dance Chicago (VDC) closed its 11th season with a gala performance of Carmen.maquia by Gustavo Ramírez Sansano, a re-envisioning of the thrilling saga told in opera and ballet, which takes the audience deep into the passionate overstory of the original, while crafting a new and vibrant underpinning of youthful high spirits, joie de vivre, and a subtle playful attitude.
Nick Pupillo, Founder and Artistic Director, talked about Sansano’s approach to working with the Company. “Gustavo is fantastic with them! He knows exactly what he wants, what he needs. It’s a big push for my dancers to help develop a character, and they have stepped right up, fully inhabiting their roles. Sansano’s movement vocabulary is so stunning and unique- he IS contemporary dance”.
The same could be said of Visceral Dance Chicago, which exploded onto the scene in 2012, and immediately claimed an important part of the Chicago dance aesthetic, melding athleticism and grace on a backbone of rigorous balletic power. Notes Pupillo, “The piece requires a lot of personality, it’s filled with romance and strength; my dancers have what it takes and more: they have the desire AND the discipline”.
In this reimagined vision, performed in the intimate modern art-drenched ambience of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E Chicago Ave., Luis Crespo’s minimalist sculpted/rounded mobile white scenery, and a backdrop of a winking Picasso-esque face, framed the breathtaking dancers of VDC in cunningly crafted backless-seeming costumes by David Delfin, reconstructed by Maggie Jarecki and Zoe Rose.
One dozen of the cast is in graceful white, Carmen alone is in dauntless black as the instantly recognizable music of Georges Bizet and the deathless body-prose of VDC propelled the audience deep into the soul of the immortal tale of grasping love, newly imbued with a resonance of fluent reciprocity. Many of the ladies at the gala also wore charming flamenco inspired gowns; some wore red roses in their hair!
Mercurial, fearlessly coquettish, raging-cat competitive, the seemingly boneless and physically completely controlled Laura Mendes as Carmen turns every head, male and female, either with desire, jealousy or both– including Tyson Ford’s as Don José. He is a powerful creature from myth, bendable and fluid, capable of sweeping all who watch into the web of his intrigue and the showstopping turns of his limbs. But Carmen matches his ardor; even as she consents to fall under his control, she betrays him into the empty abyss when two-timing him with the glorious bullfighter Escamillo, danced by Justin Bisnauthing, a hero for all seasons.
Mendes, the week before her debut in the lead said, “I relate to Carmen as a young woman. I know how deeply her actions have consequences beyond what she may have intended or foreseen. She WILL get what she wants in the moment. She is persistently seductive. She leads with her heart, guided by her emotions. She may be young, but she is no ingenue! She is a thorough human being, energetic to her soul.” Expanding on this immediate approach to the personality, Mendes reflects, “In a way, everybody in the story is obsessed with Carmen! The cigarette girls hate her and the guards and gypsies want her because she is different; she is a woman, unstoppable, and the blackness of her garment signifies insanity, not evil: it’s the love that eats you alive”.
Rounding out the players in the ineffable drama are Alessandra De Paolantonio, expressive, ephemeral, haunting the stage as the forlorn and betrayed Micaela, lovely beyond measure in her attempts to win back José, shocked and daintily shrinking at the screeching fight between Carmen and the cigarette girls, Grecia Cruz, Nia Davis, Kaliana Medlock and Erika Shi. They are indispensable to the village, to the gallant rugged guardias, danced by Gabriel Canepa and Andres Castillo Gomez, and to the ingenious modern gitanos, Da’Rius Malone and Javares Selby, sexy, sinuous and wonderfully insouciant.
Malone, making his debut with VDC, remarked, “My heart is in contemporary dance. What I enjoy about Nick (Pupillo) is his firm direction and decision and how he insures that each dancer can stand alone individually yet move together flawlessly as an ensemble”. And his take on “Carmen”? “It’s a physical demonstration of how the power of love in society can drive us all to extremes of behavior.”
Sansano’s choreography melds contemporary and classic styles- universal and yet haughtily/erotically Spanish- to powerful effect as the combined physical chemistry of the dancers in the dance, softly and sensually lit by David Goodman-Edberg, carry us into another world of magical realism.
For information and tickets to all the great programs of Visceral Dance Chicago, go to www.visceraldance.com
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