DanceReviewTheatre Royal, NewcastleFounded in 1959, the year Castro's revolutionaries overthrew Batista, and evolving into an exotic hybrid of contemporary, classical and Caribbean styles, Danza Contemporánea de Cuba are an exquisite physical instrument. They move with an old-fashioned juiciness, reminiscent of the Martha Graham Company, burning up the choreography. But they are also smart, responsive and funny. And for their first UK tour they showcase their versatility in the work of three very different choreographers.
In Demo-N/Crazy, Rafael Bonachela glories in the burnish of the company's physicality. Like most of his work, this is a piece built around duets – men and women inventing ways of accommodating each other, using every part of their bodies for seduction and display, from wide swaggering jumps to the thoughtful nuzzling of a foot. There is a Spanish surrealist cast to some of Bonachela's imagery; he has definite kinship with Buñuel. But his choreography operates through an implacable physical logic: it can be awesome watching these dancers push themselves through the work's linear thrusts, flaring stretches and wrestling partnerwork.
In Folia (Carnival), the Dutch choreographer Jan Linkens addresses the company's heritage more directly. Grazing across a range of Renaissance and modern music, including the famous La Folia theme, he creates a non-time-specific party mood, embracing courtly swaying duets, the delicate sashaying walk of a plantation belle and hip-swivelling salsa. You can sense a long Cuban history here, but at times it's more portentous than fun. Linkens likes to punctuate his choreography with abrupt pauses that are possibly meant to be pregnant with meaning, but actually limit his options for elaborating more interesting phrases of movement.
Resident DCC choreographer George Céspedes also takes Cuban-ness as his subject. But Mamba 3XXI approaches it from a more satirical, knowing slant. The work opens with 21 dancers in strict formation, executing rigid little dance moves as if they were a military drill, and maintaining an obedient comic deafness to the seductive beat of the accompanying Latin music.
Céspedes plays games of minimalist deconstruction and patterning very well, but at a teasing pace he gradually allows his dancers to loosen into ecstatic bursts of salsa and jive. There's a mocking self-referential quality here, kept in play by the rigour of the structure. At moments, Céspedes reminds you of the young Twyla Tharp in the fanatical, joyous precision with which he moves his dancers through a frenzy of kicking legs, shimmying shoulders, clicking fingers and jiving arms. Brilliant. Like 1960s minimalism drunk on mojitos.
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