"...moments of great dance..."

Oct. 6, 2006 performance, reviewed by Connell McGrath

Ballet Hispanico performed at MASS MoCA over the weekend to full houses. The group was founded by artistic director Tina Ramirez in 1970 to provide dance training and performance opportunities for underprivileged Latino youth. Since then, the group has become "the nation's ambassadors of Hispanic culture," sponsoring and performing works by Latino choreographers based on Latin dance elements as well as classical and other contemporary forms. They performed two sets of works at MASS MoCA. The first was a sampler of four past works from 1982 to 1994, and the second was a long new work--yet to have its world premier--called Palladium Suite.

All the work was ambitious and consistently disappointing. The choreography consistently relied on pantomime story-telling elements and not enough on the expressive power of Latino dance styles. The stories got in the way of the dance, and obscured its power. Full disclosure--I don't like obvious story-telling in dance and always prefer the dance to express its own story. Despite my dislike of the choreography and general artistic choices made by this company, the dancers were all highly accomplished and there were moments of great dance mixed in with the less satisfying elements.

The assets of Ballet Hispanico are the basic elements they use. The music in all the work are strong, outstanding examples of 20th century Latin music--Astor Piazolla, Tito Puente, Chico O'Farrill. The basics of Latin dance are also vibrant and thrilling to watch--Tango, Salsa, Samba, Marenge. This range of dance styles is ambitiously shown in the company's new, almost evening-length piece Palladium Suite.

The Palladium was an important mid-20th century dance hall in New York City where many of the latin dance styles were developed or refined. Palladium Suite was conceived by Ramirez, choreographed by Willie Rosario and "dramaturged" by Edwin Sanchez. The idea is to show an evening at the Palladium, maybe in the 40s or 50s. The characters are your classic stereotypes--the sailor, the ingenue, the dance pros, the nerd (who can dance really well), the tramp, etc. They each make an entrance to introduce themselves, then participate in a series of dances that serve to display the various Latin dance styles. Most of the music is from the great Afro-Cuban songbook primarily written by Chico O'Farrill. Again, passages of great dance break out from the story shell of Palladium, but the piece is mired in its own story and spends too much of its energy on its characters.

The piece's creators seem to think that the dance isn't enough--that they need to invent something else to hold the audience's attention. I'd give more credit to dance audiences and to the power of Latin dance to hold our attention. Nonetheless, if you spent $100 on tickets to Twyla Tharp's Movin' Out (set to the Billy Joel songbook) and thought it was the best money you ever spent, then you'll enjoy Palladium Suite.