[Tango-A] NA-C: "CRIMES & WHISPERS" A tango of Despair and Defiance. Reviews and Comments

Thu Jul 27 14:49:54 EDT 2006

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.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 · 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 Taccetti612-871-9651ftaccetti at yahoo.comwww.tejastango.com/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.

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