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Victor Auijada's Rubberdance turned what could have been a misguided mishmash into a deft blend of urban, contemporary and classical dance.

by Deni Kasrel

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Published: Mar 6, 2007

Rubberbandance Group arrived at the Annenberg Center with a great backstory: The company was founded by Victor Quijada, who started out hip-hopping in Los Angeles clubs before learning formal dance genres and working for Twyla Tharp, Eliot Feld and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal.

With Rubberbandance, where he is both a dancer and choreographer, Quijada calls upon all of those experiences. Thankfully what could have been a misguided mishmash turned out to be a deft blend of urban, contemporary and classical dance. The integration seamlessly generates an adroit amalgamation, a distinctive hybrid.

The lean, mean production — featuring five dancers in street clothes — opened with a six-part suite of short dances. Each selection had a specific mood. The opener, Secret Service, done to an excerpt from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, offered ominous suspense, with dancers surveying one another, then gamely intermingling. Shifting forward, back or sideways, both together and apart, the movement included slow-motion flips and wavelike episodes of dancers gently rolling over one another's backs. Meditations on the Gift, a tango-tinged riff on the fickleness of romance, had two dancers engaging in playful combat, their arms and legs alternately embracing or pushing the other person away. The Traviattle juxtaposed dancer Joe Danny Aurelien's muscular, energetic moves (high leg kicks, deep backbends) against Anne Plamondon's lithe, ethereal gestures. Its spirit hinted at a hip-hop "battle," where dancers go against each other, performing increasingly daring and/or intricate moves, their bravado tempered by refined elegance.

Hasta La Proxima took up the second half of the program. Moodier and more narrative in nature than the prior works, it including snippets of recorded text. This, too, presented scenarios of relationships; only here, there was overt aggression and a lingering sense of disconnection.

(d_kasrel@citypaper.net)

Rubberbandance Group

Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Feb. 27

 

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