Review: Jumping for Joy — White Bird Presents Compagnie Käfig at The Arlene Schnitzer Auditorium
18 Friday May 2012
Tags
Aguinaldo De Oliveira Lopes (Anjo), Aldair Junior Machado Nogueira (Al Franciss), Alexsandro Soares Campanha Da Silva (Pitt), Angèle Mignot, arlene schnitzer concert hall portland, Artistic Director and Choreographer Mourad Merzouki, Benjamin Lebreton, Charles Carcopino, Cleiton Luiz Caetano De Oliveira, Compagnie Käfig, Compagnie Käfig CCN Créteil et Val de Marne, Cristian Faxola Franco (Faxola), Delphine Capossela, Diego Alves Do Santos (Dieguinho), Diego Gonçalves Do Nascimento Leitão (White), Geovane Fidelis Da Conceição, Jose Amilton Rodrigues Junior (Ze), Leonardo Alves Moreira (Leo), Mourad Merzouki, paul king, pcpa, walter jaffe, Wanderlino Martins Neves (Sorriso), white bird, white bird dance, Yoann Tivoli
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‘I came to get down!
I came to get down!
So get out your seats and jump around!
Jump around!’
— House of Pain
White Bird, our local purveyor & sponsor of all things awe-inspiring in dance world-wide, made no exception to the high-expectations we have for their productions last Thursday, May 10th, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, with their final offering of this season, the French/Brazilian “hip-hop” dance troupe, Compagnie Käfig. In fact, it would seem that White Bird saved one of its best and most exuberant for last — a performance to leave you awe-struck at the dancing skill and also put a very happy smile on your face.
Compagnie Käfig, led by artistic director and choreographer, Mourad Merzouki, consists of eleven male dancers — and part of the sheer exuberance here is a celebration of the utter machismo in the dance. But far from aggression, these dancers express a performance of sheer joy, in everything from hip-hop head spins to hand over foot flips.
Their first act piece, Correria (English: Run), uses this group of young males energy and bodies as well tuned machines superbly, employing much of that seemingly aggressive interplay between males, as if gearing for a fight, like the type of interplay animals do in play, test & train each other, back and forth. The opening comes up on a row of young men lying on their backs bicycle pedaling in the air, to the sound of an old, clacking film projector. Two more enter, running around group on the floor. Eventually the entire group gathers midstage, with occasional dancers running across stage as if it were a street scene. The very male interplay culminates with pairings, dancers catching others on stage and moving them around while maintaining a fight hold on them, twirling and flipping them around, even upside down in front of them. One gets the feeling of a group street fight, but in a definitively sparring, playful, exuberant fashion. This fight-sparring, in pairs and in the group, eventually morphs and culminates into one dancer running in place mimicking slow-motion, with four more in front of him mirroring his movement. The sound of the clacking film projector returns and we see projected behind the same dancer running in slow-motion, only with artifact trails of his legs on film, a very unique and mesmerizing effective of minimalist movement. As the music and running movement speeds up and the projection lifts out of sight, the music changes to a combination of intoxicating latin rhythms and opera arias. The group takes on a very prideful rooster demeanor here, alternating ballet moves with beat-box hip-hop. Hockey sticks are even employed by the group in a walking motion between their own legs, at times in dance, other times in a crab-walk. This builds to a tango rhythm in music and dance to a musical stop, until all leave save one left on stage his hands in a bird in flight position. Correria is a spirited movement piece of masculine energy and rascally fun.
