{DANCE} Reviews
SOY DE CUBA Havana spirit alive and kicking ●●●●●
This is not so much a feel-good Fringe show as a feel- sizzling-hot-and-leave-dripping-with-sweat show. Song and dance spectacular Soy de Cuba is so full of perma-grins, saucy winks and jazzily acrobatic moves it could be a cruise ship act. But, minutes into the first Cuban-fusion-fuelled firecracker of a dance routine, we’re smiling like fools too.
By the end – with the swirl of snake-hips, shaking of ruffled booty and pulsating Caribbean drum beats still in the air – the entire audience is shimmying and chanting ‘Ole, Ole, Ole’ in a Cuban conga that refuses to die. It’s like getting drunk and waking up in the best club in Havana. You’re unsure how you got there, but very glad you did. Like the city that spawned it, Soy de Cuba is a little rough
round the edges. The brainchild of musical director/composer Rembert Egües, it harnesses traditional rhythms and folkdance with Havana’s modern steps and sounds to convey the spirit of contemporary Cuba. It’s a rag-tag but ultimately irresistible cocktail of Salsa, Mamba, Cha Cha Cha, Afro- Cuban beats, Western jazz-dance, ballads and Reggaeton. The format is a carousel of original numbers by Egües and choreographer Dieser Serrano. There is narrative thread: rural girl leaves home for thrill of city dance halls. But it’s just a cue for a song – and an array of costumes to match the colour- pop of stylish film backdrop featuring Havana street scenes. Given top billing is Egües’ find, singer Jenny Sotolongo, the girl who caught Castro’s eye and is drum-rolled as a ‘national treasure’.
She belts out tunes well enough. But the real star of the show is the cast as a whole: fellow vocalists, twelve dancers and five-strong band. The company has enough charisma to come with a health warning. If you only do highbrow, don’t do Soy de Cuba. If you have a pulse: this is the only party in town. (Ellie Carr) ■ Assembly Hall, 623 3030, until 29 Aug (not 15), 10.30pm, £15 (£12).
SLENDER THREADS Sensitive portrayal of a woman’s experience of cancer ●●●●● LA PUTYKA Don your beer goggles and soak up the fun of this Czech circus ●●●●●
FORGETTING NATASHA Multimedia memories ●●●●●
L A V I T S E F
Chickenshed is not a company to shy away from difficult or painful subject matters. Previous shows have dealt with knife crime and the true story of a 19-year-old boy who was killed while fleeing a robbery scene. Here they lay bare a woman’s experience of breast cancer in a candid piece combining theatre and dance, which neither patronises its audience nor victimises its protagonist.
Rachel Yates gives a strong and hugely sensitive performance as the woman whose relationships with her husband and daughter fracture and heal as her cancer progresses. A chorus of dancers flows through the domestic scenes, an ever present force hanging over the family, sometimes suffocating, sometimes supporting.
Using recordings from interviews with cancer patients, doctors and nurses, Chickenshed shows the support provided by the medical profession while also documenting its unavoidable horrors. Communicating as much information as it does emotion, this is a piece with true integrity from a company with true compassion. (Lucy Ribchester) ■ Zoo Roxy, 662 6892, until 28 Aug (not 24), 5.15pm, £9–£10 (£7–£8).
52 THE LIST 18–25 Aug 2011
La Putyka is slang for ‘little run down pub’ in Czech. Many citizens of the Czech Republic will probably be familiar with what British people look like in one of their putykas, but for those of us who have never been on a stag or hen night to Prague, cirque nouveau troupe Cirk La Putyka has been dispatched to show us all what Czech people look like when drunk. It’s closing time at the putyka and landlord Rostislav Novák – also the company’s artistic director – a figure who could have stepped straight out of Fellini’s La Strada, all rags and clown-paint, would like to share one more beer with us before he closes up. His sozzled regulars would also like to share some of their talents – clowning, adagio, reckless tumbling, wild tango on a trampoline, all backed by inventive live music and sound effects from the psychedelic dead-eyed band in the corner.
If, as the group claims, beer is the Czech equivalent of wine, then this is beer’s equivalent of bacchanalia. Oh, and there’s free beer afterwards. (Lucy Ribchester) ■ Zoo Southside, 662 6892, until 27 Aug (not 21, 22), 8.35pm, £13.
As a poetic and artistic response to early-onset dementia, Forgetting Natasha is a well-conceived idea with some utterly beautiful moments. The writing, by Anna Mae Selby, is sharply-observed and designed to tug at the heartstrings.
Multimedia artists KMA have created a brilliantly realised projected animation, using shifting blocks of light to represent the central character’s fragmenting memories. The opening sequence, where hands, faces and bodies appear in briefly illuminated windows, is stunning and makes its point smoothly.
However, in hiring dance artists rather than
movement-trained actors to perform a work whose impact relies much more on the beauty of its text than the quality of the physical performance, this stumbles slightly. The choreography works the dancers’ bodies attractively, but on its own is slight and nothing revolutionary. Too much of the impact is trusted to untrained oration, meaning that Selby’s wrenching emotional beats are often rendered shrill rather than intense, meaning it’s the combination of images and words that resonate afterwards, though. (Kirstin Innes) ■ Zoo Southside, 662 6892, until 27 Aug (not 24), 12.30pm, £12 (£10).