Chicago's Luna Negra Dance Theater was at the Ordway Center in St. Paul on Tuesday for just one night. It's a shame they couldn't stay longer. The 12-year-old company founded by Cuban-born choreographer Eduardo Vilaro has much to offer from its repertory dedicated to the work of contemporary Latino dance makers.
Inspired by melodramatic Brazilian soap operas and the hyper-masculine Samba, Fernando Melo's "Bate" showed off a playful spirit -- strategically-placed curtains and set pieces revealed just parts of bodies in the opening minutes. The six dancers also injected physical comedy into the mix through exaggerated inhalations and exhalations of breath paired with oozy dissolves into the floor. The ensemble movement was particularly noteworthy for its hints of vulnerability in the otherwise powerful and propulsive phrasing. A shower of rose petals put the exclamation mark on a work obsessed with both beauty and brawn.
"Paloma Querida" (2010) paid homage to Frida Kahlo. This is tricky territory, given the iconic 20th-century Mexican painter's pop-culture omnipresence, but choreographer Michelle Manzanales delivered a fresh perspective on a biography that often seems on the verge of becoming myth.
Renée Adams, Monica Cervantes, Veronica Guadalupe and Kirsten Shelton portrayed four aspects of Kahlo's persona -- passionate, gender blurring, patriotic, and broken (the result of a serious bus accident that left her in pain for the remainder of her life). With each successive depiction, Kahlo's image grew in dimension. The parts assembled into a whole. Her story is not often told through movement, but Manzanales does so with a sense of reverence and a desire to present familiar biographical details in a new light.
The final work of the evening, 2001's "Flabbergast" by Gustavo Ramírez Sansano, explored stereotypes about foreign places -- especially the ones we hold in our minds when we've never even visited them. Transformed into a pack of perpetually distracted tourists, the dancers careened about the stage to the cocktail-hour beat of a soundtrack from Juan Garcia Esquivel. Broad comedy fueled movement that reveled in kitsch factor.
This troupe has a strong theatrical bent but as with the other works on the program what stood out was the dancing itself -- strong, nuanced, well-integrated into the performers' bodies. For such a brief visit, Luna Negra sure knows how to make a lasting impression.
