• Submitted by: manso
• Arts and Culture
• 05 / 15 / 2011

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By Keith Powers / Dance Review. Sunday, May 15, 2011. For most Americans, Cuba is unknown. Two generations have gone by without any cultural exchange with our island neighbor, and we are certainly poorer for that.

Jose Mateo, a native Cuban and now longtime American, produced his third dance program inspired by the music of his native island Friday evening at the Sanctuary Theatre. And “Cubania,” with two older ballets and a world premiere, gives us a contemporary update of the remarkable aesthetic heritage that is going unnoticed.

Like America is, Cuba was a cultural melting pot. Mateo reaches back to the earliest “classical” roots of Cuban music with “Ayer Pasado” (“The Day Before Yesterday”), set to a piano score by the father of Cuban music, Manuel Saumell Robredo.

Saumell Robredo was trained in the European style but soaked up the African and Latin influences around him, and his compositions breathe with the same passionate fire as the wonderful music of Louis M. Gottschalk.

Mateo’s vision for “Ayer Pasado” had the men dressed in “Havana casual” — untucked shirts and trousers; women donned Degas “Danseuse” tulle skirts. The cross-cultural clothing references may have been intentional, maybe not. But the story line — a single female dancer (danced with heady interpretation by Madeleine Bonn, fast becoming a star of this troupe) unable to find lasting companionship among three other flirtatious couples — was a symbol of isolation.

“Escape,” set to an entirely different but equally engaging score by guitarist and film composer Leo Brouwer, has a more forthright political message, as a couple (Angie DeWolf and the forceful Mark Kehlet Schou) find themselves harassed by an authoritarian ensemble, with Schou eventually dead onstage. The lifts and carries in “Escape” were of note, the men of the troupe (notably the maturing August Lincoln Pozgay) dancing with distinction.

The evening’s premiere, “Pagano y No” (“Pagan or Not”), was an ambitious and physically demanding work involving the entire ensemble. It’s striking percussive opening, with Pogzay dancing solo, evoked Nijinsky’s “Afternoon of a Faun.” Avoiding the overtly political messages of the other works, “Pagano” offered an uncertain narrative, broken into three sections, with many dramatic and comic elements. The activity level was at fever pitch, and several fatigued dancers missed landings and slips. But the concept was strong, Aruan Ortiz’s score passionate and danceable, and “Pagano” becomes another gem in Mateo’s vast repertory of compelling choreographies.

“CUBANIA!”

Presented by Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre at the Sanctuary Theatre, Cambridge, Friday night. Through May 22.

Source: www.bostonherald.com/entertainment/arts_culture/view.bg?articleid=133802...