New World Teaches Old World Some Diverse Latin Dance Steps

LYON, France--Europeans first blundered into Latin America in 1492, but 510 years later, genuine cultural discoveries have been taking place night after night in this city of nearly 1.1 million. A festival of Latin American dance, on a scale never before seen here, has enabled the Old World to reappraise the New and even discover what’s missing in its own dance culture.

Mostly devoted to contemporary choreography, Lyon’s 10th Biennale de la Danse opened Sept. 10 with companies from Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico. By the end of the week, it added Chileans, Argentines, Bolivians and Colombians. And by the festival’s end Sunday, five additional countries came on board.

On the first Sunday, the daily schedule of half a dozen performances was suspended in favor of an event that allowed French choreographers and community groups to respond to the Latin American theme: a grand defile along the banks of the Rhone River.

Traditionally, a defile is a throwback to ballet’s aristocratic origins, presenting a classical company in a formal march. First the lowly apprentices and the corps take their places onstage, then the soloists, principals and finally the stars.

However, the Lyon defile celebrated creativity instead of hierarchy, enlisting 29 companies and about 4,500 performers--all expressing their feelings about Latin culture down a mile-long route for an audience estimated at more than 200,000.

Besides devotees of the mambo, the samba, the rumba and Latin rock, you could find feathered serpents galore, giant puppets and what seemed like every stilt dancer alive, even some on wheels. Some of the presentations proved simple and startling: more than 100 tango dancers, for instance, moving stylishly down the street--nearly all of them blind.

Other segments aimed for a more political effect. Depicting the shantytowns of Rio and other South American cities, one giant float looked like a contemporary cityscape from the front, but when it passed by, the back of it showed poor people living, and dancing, in trash boxes. A drug dealer counted his profits while overdressed women pushed shopping carts loaded with chunks of the Amazon rain forest. Imagine seeing that on New Year’s Day in Pasadena.

In addition to the French participants, four of the Latin American performing companies also took to the streets--Bolivian and Colombian folkloric dancers who earlier had presented a glorious “Latino Carnivals” program.

Among them was a guest Carnival dancer: the Biennale’s artistic director, Guy Darmet, high-stepping along the route, hand in hand with two masked devils.

A day earlier, Darmet, 55, had described the defile as the jewel in the crown of his festival. “I think this is the first time that we have succeeded in being totally a part of the life of the city,” he said of the latest Biennale. “At the beginning [in 1984], we were trying to reach the highest artistic level, but now we know what that level is and we can work on the audience, to be a meeting point.”

Each Biennale has had a different theme or geographical focus, and Darmet said that the choice of Latin America for 2002 sprang from his view of the region as a neglected but important sphere of creativity. “In this Biennale, I tried to fight against cliches,” he explained. “I’m trying to give an impression of what dance really is in Latin America today.

“We have a lot of young companies because they are the reality of what’s happening, even if in their own country it’s only 20 people or 40 people in the hall.” In all of them, Darmet finds a connection to the popular culture of their homelands--what he calls “something very strong from their roots, their histories, their cultures.”

“I don’t say it’s the same thing in every country,” he continued, “But they all have a lot of energy, commitment, and when they are dancing, they are fighting--against the politicians of their countries, against the absence of interest of the audience, but fighting.

“In contemporary dance in Europe, companies don’t have to fight, and they are maybe a little bit spoiled. These days, you can take between five and 10 groups and do all the dance festivals in a year and the full seasons at most of the theaters. But for me, dance is not only five or 10 groups.”

For Darmet, then, “globalization” is not a dirty word but an invitation “to be open to the world,” and to bring it to Lyon. “We speak of world music but not as often about world dance,” he commented, “and I don’t mean only the ethnic things. We find important quality choreographers everywhere and we try to open doors for them through the Biennale.”

One Biennale tradition is a daily multilingual press conference. Held every morning at Lyon’s Museum of Decorative Art, the sessions tried to mediate between the artistic priorities of the Latin American performers and the expectations of critics and reporters. Insights from the choreographers encouraged everyone to see their creations through the eyes of their cultures. And it helped.

For instance, knowing that Chile’s Paulina Mellado S. wanted to work with actors, rather than dancers, helped account for the raw physicality and emotionalism of her dance drama “Place of Desire,” which had its European premiere late in the first week. When she had a man kick a woman, it didn’t look like a dance step or a motif but an ugly and dangerous expression of machismo brutality.

The tone of the press conferences remained convivial even when disputes arose. At the Biennale’s official public forums, however, the gloves came off. At the first one, for example, Costa Rican choreographer Alejandro Tosatti called the term “Latin America” bogus--”a French notion.” In his view, each country’s social and political identity and its effect on dance were unique.

However, Tosatti also emphasized that the publicity generated by the Biennale and similar events “gives us visibility in our own countries.” Similarly, Brazilian choreographer Lia Rodrigues told the forum participants that companies involved in the 1996 Biennale, which was devoted to her nation, “found more space and opportunities to work as a result of their participation. So we need the perspective of outsiders.”

To this outsider, three contemporary companies in the first week of the Biennale were as impressive as anything programmed this year at UCLA or the Irvine Barclay Theatre, the Southland’s primary sites for modernist expression.

Venezuela’s Danzahoy physicalized a tragic worldview with great power. The same country’s Dramo Dramaturgia del Movimiento made an alternately touching and scary dance ritual from the unlikely subject of child abuse. And Brazil’s Quasar unleashed a hybrid style as sophisticated and distinctive as any danced anywhere. In addition, the recontextualized hip-hop of Brazil’s Bale de Rua and the “Latino Carnivals” groups offered high excitement.

Darmet promised us revelations from an undiscovered dance world and proved his point with dazzling certainty. So, anyone searching for the next Big Thing in an art that definitely needs new blood could do far worse than spend time in a city mad for Latino modernism and creative adventure. Los Angeles should be so lucky.