Deborah colker and her double challenge.

In the same week Deborah Colker premiered the show “Ovo”, in Montreal, for Cirque du Soleil, her Brazilian dance group got to Porto Alegre with her dance piece Cruel.

Divided in three movements and two acts, Cruel, in a certain manner, synthesizes what has been the effort and worries of the creator: develop new choreographic movements, considered many times regarded as impossible for the human bodies, by means of a technology that, used on behalf of the show, valorises even better it’s visualization.

Cruel, therefore, explores the first aspect in the first act (two movements) and in the second, dedicates itself to technology. Right at the beginning, we get astonished when noticing that the ballerinas get into the act in high hills, and they still get to dance! Furthermore, some of them appear in long evening dresses, once the scene is called O Baile (The Ball ), and the scene we have is exactly that, a ball dance of contrasts, where the outfits, characters, and music/choreography seem to construct/deconstruct insoluble tensions. The soundtrack derives from the collage of different music pieces, from the popular to the erudite, whilst the choreography seems to get delight from the act of paraphrasing movements that, for any other choreographer would have been taken “seriously”, but for Deborah Colker, they have been rescued right there on the stage simply to be deconstructed and, naturally given a new meaning to.

The group of dancers is perfect. Although there are, by the structure presented, two or three characters that stand out at the development of the choreography, we cannot truly say that there are soloists. That is so because they permanently take turns at their roles, and all of them act with absolute perfection and rhythmic accuracy.

In the second act, technology gets into the scene. Just like in a giant kaleidoscope, four huge glass screens, with open circles right in the middle, allow a continuous and fragmented multiplication of the images, a kind of scenic “trompe l’oeil” (fool the eye), which is both fascinating and challenging at the same time. There are moments actually that we just fail to distinguish if what we see are the dancers or their reflexes. Post-modernism and contemporary metaphoric fragmentation produces stupendous effects, so much variable, because they are seen in different ways by the public, according to where they sit. That is, one who is sitting at the front, in the middle, won’t have exactly the same perspective of someone who’s sitting at the back, at one of the sides of the theatre. It brings to life a kind of calligraphy that is no longer written on the bodies of the dancers, but right in the space, as if they literally floated for our delight, light yes, but still absolutely synchronized (as they get in and out of scene and their way through the kaleidoscope boxes, for instance, where a millimetric delay can jeopardize completely the projected movement and desired effect).

For all it’s worth, the public reaction was rapturous applauses. Gringo Cardia, who has followed Deborah for so many years, and has also been with her at Cirque de Soleil, made the art direction and set design. Bernas Ceppas is in charge of the musical direction and great part of the music tracks. He even composes and arranges some of the music pieces, especially in the second act. Theatrical direction is by Gilberto Gawronski, which becomes more and more important at Deborah Colker’s dance pieces, for the reason that it provides them with naturality and breaks the plain mechanics I have criticized in her previous works. Jacqueline Motta is the choreography assistant which is growing in importance all the time, in order to guarantee the continuity of their work, especially when Colker is absent. The lighting by Jorginho de Carvalho achieves real pretty effects, as it creates virtual spaces that may deepen or make shallower these same spaces.

At the end, what is really understandable is that, Deborah Colker’s team is getting more and more mature enough to act as a real group, a collective, a kind of art that requires, in fact, total collectivity.

Pretty, cruel, futuristic

All in love and in war is fair, that’s what they say. And although all sorts of dramatic situations have already been shown - from Greek tragedies to modern TV plots - there’s still room for original and artistic creation for this sort of narrative: the bonds between man and woman.

That’s because human relationships keep sometimes being cruel, therefore fascinating. At least that’s what Cruel seems to convey, the contemporary dance choreography presented by Brazilian Deborah Colker last weekend before a touched audience at a sold out Solís theater.

“What we see is not soap opera, is not theater. It’s dance”. Says Colker. And there was actually dance, with excellent technique and great precision, a synthetic, metaphoric and abstract script which versed basically about the life/death binomial, Eros/Thanatos: a creation and study polarity, recurrent in the arts and analysis of speeches of all kinds.

Colker has created thus a thorough dance piece, symbolic and concrete, a show that touched an audience happy with novices and experts. Mario Sagradini together with ballerinas and choreographers Graciela Figueroa and Andrea Arobba could be seen among other personalities of the cultural scenario.

If at the beginning it looked as though all we were to see was nothing else rather than mere classic ballet technique or the worn-out neoclassic expression enhanced by stunning, cheerful, lively clothing full of high hills, it didn’t take much waiting for Deborah to make a complete change of atmosphere and start an overwhelming change of setting, which included the usage of mobile structures and elements with reminiscences of kinetic art.

A large, low, mobile and rectangular table, and several mobile square mirrored walls, with central circles resembling “owl eyes” – from which bodies of dancers came out – changed the scene into a living installation of art in movement with cubist and futuristic adornment.

The mirrors repeated the multiple and simultaneous scenes, showing the frontage of the movements as well as the reverse, proving a wide range of magic and poetic voyeurism; thanks to these mirrors we were able to see what went on at the front as well as the back of the main scene.

Colker, renowned internationally, is today one of Cirque de Soleil’s choreographers. At the present piece show the influence of this aesthetic can be appreciated – which unites the circus environment to the virtuosity of dance with a certain “histrionic contortionism” – but the use of solos performed by a prototyped figure, male or female, that carried on a side act (a habitual resource of Cirque du Soleil) which serves to grab the attention and mobilize the public proving coherence among the proposed narrative fragments.

Cruel is also a collective construction which took almost a year and a half to be created, to which a text was added (a few loose words spoken by the dancers at first) and a story (abstract without a screenplay).

In 1984, the choreographer created her first work for theatre, directing the corporeal movement of “An irresistible adventure”, by Domingos de Oliveira. Now, at Cruel, the verbal argument has disappeared to be replaced by a striking arrangement of movements, intentions and feelings which come together and separate from this one. A unique creation, beautifully cruel, dynamic and surprising.

Melisa Machado

DANCE O AMOR, DANCE A FACA, DANCE A MORTE
Final quente nos Movimentos na Autostadt com a Companhia de Dança brasileira

Vigoroso, de suar e altamente erótico: para o encerramento do Movimentos deste ano a brasileira Companhia de Dança Deborah Colker dançou na Autostadt.

Wolfsburg. O belo e o cruel às vezes se deitam perigosamente perto um do outro. A bailarina é maravilhosa – plenamente em forma e que corpo –, com duas facas brilhantes e reluzentes nas mãos, poderosas facas de trinchar para uma dança bastante impressionante sobre amor e morte perante um palco vermelho-sangue, do qual não é bom se aproximar demais.
Ponto alto de uma coreografia que tanto faz suar (inclusive o espectador) quanto é erótica, e vindo, claro, do Brasil. “Cruel” (cruel) é o nome do espetáculo de uma hora e meia da Companhia de Dança Deborah Colker, que começa com um “Baile”, que serve para apresentar toda a equipe de maneira dançante. Além do afiado ataque de facas, um musculoso pas-de-deux masculino se sobressai. Muitas pequenas histórias de relacionamento dançadas, e que sempre se entrelaçam entre si, nisso Deborah Colker é boa.
Com isto combina bem o mix musical, bastante turbulento, ali sobre a suave serenata de cordas de Dvorak são sobrepostos zangados acordes eletrônicos de baixo, lá se remixa friamente Ennio Morricone e Ryuichi Sakamoto, e se empurra para a platéia sons de refeição em alto volume, enquanto os adereços se movem.
Ao som desta trilha sonora picadinha, a coreógrafa-estrela é bem sucedida em imagens e seqüências de movimentos impressionantes, se bem que do ponto de vista da linguagem de dança ficam comparativamente convencionais – um pouco de neoclássico, uma boa dose de dança jazzística, de musicais. Mas isso não tem de ser necessariamente ruim, quando é tão eficaz como aqui.
Como a segunda parte, onde placas de aço espelhadas e com rodas produzem efeitos extravagantes. Quando os bailarinos, em seus reflexos, parecem estar presos num aquário. Ao final a bailarina caminha para o fundo do palco, espelhada quatro vezes, em direção a uma negra infinidade. Da trilha soam reconciliadores os “Untitled Strings” de Berna Creppa.
Aplauso abundante, e o público do Movimento comemora com ovações de pé não apenas a paixão dançada como o bem sucedido encerramento das semanas do festival.

HOJE? DEMAIS, DEMAIS, DEMAIS!
Campeonato de dança em Wolfsburg: “Cruel” de Deborah Colker no Festival “Movimentos”

(NT: 1° parágrafo: analogias futebolísticas e o comentário do título, emitido pelo jogador Grafite após a vitória do seu time, de Wolfsburg. 2° parágrafo: comentários sobre o festival e o acerto dos prêmios entregues. 3° e 4° parágrafos: crítica negativa sobre o espetáculo da Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak Dance Company de Tel Aviv, uma confusão e indefinição de músicas e estilos. O texto sobre a CDDC começa após o subtítulo “Immer schön am “Ball” bleiben”. Com direito a trocadilho entre bola, Ball, e baile, Ball também.)

Ficar sempre bem no baile
Deborah Colker, em comparação, tem uma idéia eletrizante, um conceito vivaz e uma execução decidida. “Cruel”, apresentada em Wolfsburg em estréia européia, se divide em três partes, que expõem abertamente os espaços de encontro público, privado e íntimo. Sob uma bola de flores em filigrana, que lembra os legendários designs Rosenthal de Björn Winbald (pintor e ceramista dinamarquês, falecido em 2006. Rosenthal é uma fábrica de louça para a qual ele trabalhou), sete homens e oito mulheres se encontram. Também Colker escolhe para este “baile” registros musicais de quatro séculos, mas sua maneira de contar a história cruza o lugar-comum auditivo e visual, porque o passado colide precisamente com o contemporâneo. Assim suas bailarinas se equilibram no salto alto sobre os campos minados da dança padrão com seus movimentos antiquados e poses envernizadas, enquanto sons de Vivaldi evocam uma dança-mania barroca e ao mesmo tempo desmascaram o idioma perfeito da dança de salão de competição como teatro sexual ressequido.
Nuvens se assomam com a velocidade do vento: como cisnezinhos afugentados por Mats Eks (NT: Coreógrafo sueco) as mulheres se juntam todas, assim que o assunto chega às roupas íntimas. Suas pernas nuas se transformam em floretes e atiram de flexões na altura do joelho, as mãos abanam qualquer excitação para longe, e as cabeças se abaixam sob o excesso de testosterona. O que começou pouco maravilhoso no “baile”, continua na mesa superdimensionada da “Família”, que tem de servir tanto de passarela libidinosa como de sala de esgrima para lutas de casais. Os bailarinos de Colker esgrimam aqui com um tempo de precisão absoluta, e traduzem sentimentos altamente inflamados em energia de movimento tão extática quanto destruidora. Na sala de espelhos da “Revelação” os guerreiros das rosas se dispersam de vez e definham como desesperados narcisísticos, que reduzem até o coito a um ato solitário: enquanto os quadris se empurram através de escotilhas nas paredes de espelhos, cada um vê apenas – seu próprio rosto.
O público de Wolfsburg celebrou a companhia d Deborah Colker com ovações. Na usina não chegaram a balançar bandeirinhas brasileiras como na VW-Arena. Mas o nível de decibéis dos fãs de futebol com certeza foi atingido.

ESTRELA EXPRESSIVA
A estréia européia de “Cruel”, de Deborah Colker, entusiasma em Movimentos

Wolfsburg. Com a estréia européia do espetáculo de dança “Cruel” as semanas internacionais do festival Movimentos entram em sua última fase. O público reconheceu a brasileira Companhia de Dança Deborah Colker com muitos aplausos e ovações de pé, terça-feira à noite em Wolfsburg. Vigorosamente e com habilidades em parte acrobáticas os bailarinos contaram histórias sobre o amor, paixões e encontrar a si mesmo.
Com Deborah Colker, Movimentos erige uma brilhante luz expressiva. Com elementos de dança de épocas diversas – de danças da corte passando pelo balé clássico até levantamentos de rock’n roll – a Companhia traz histórias cotidianas ao palco. Nisso eles não trouxeram uma expedição através dos tempos ao palco, pelo contrário, Colker desenvolveu a partir de todos os elementos um estilo bem próprio com algumas cenas de dança bem insanas. Na primeira cena os pares se preparam para um baile. As mulheres se perfumam e penteiam, os homens ajustam os fraques. Cálculo e paixão, amor e loucura, casados com o egoísmo, fazem com que os acontecimentos, que inicialmente pareciam fúteis, escalem – pares se separam, casos se iniciam, mais de um fica sozinho, solitário e desesperado, abandonado. “Cruel” traduzido significa duro, desumano, cruel.
Na segunda parte, que começa conscientemente com uma música enervante em volume bem alto, uma mesa de jantar está no centro. A faca, que há pouco foi usada só para trinchar, no ambiente dominado por ciúme e egoísmo se transforma rapidamente em arma.
Na terceira e última parte Colker trabalha então com muitos efeitos óticos. Quatro quadrados espelhados são movidos no palco para cá e para lá pelos bailarinos, ora os bailarinos estão de pé sobre as superfícies espelhadas de cerca de dois metros de altura, ora rastejam para fora através de uma escotilha no meio. Por um lado cada bailarino está sozinho na acelerada apresentação, por outro lado novos pares ainda se formam no jogo rápido no final. Em 2005 Deborah Colker já esteve com seu balé em Wolfsburg. A Companhia, fundada em 1994, é considerada uma das melhores do Brasil e tem fama mundial, com inúmeras apresentações.

BEYOND THE COMMON PLACE

You should not miss VELOX, the show Companhia de Dan?a Deborah Colker is presenting at Carlos Gomes Theatre; the run continues through December 3. The work is a vigorous confirmation of dance beyond the obvious. It is a result of eight month intensive rehearsals sponsored by the city government through culture department. VELOX is co-sponsored by Petrobras - a Brazilian oil company. Theoretically, VELOX can state both the aesthetics, which springs from technique and discipline, and the beauty of human body ordinary movements; it also shows the possibilities of other physical practices such as sports and martial arts. VELOX is a joint word of volcano and velocity, and the show is a visceral tour de force, which bursts onto the stage as a babel of gestures and movements with a surprising and new aesthetic vigor. It is a five-piece show: MECHANICS (basic principles of weight, balance and geometry); QUOTIDIAN (repetitive gestures from ordinary contexts like drama or comedy acts); MOUNTAIN CLIMBING (search of perfect balance, the obsession of every dancer); MARTIAL ARTS (kung-fu movements) and SPORTS (impetuosity, team work and supporters’ cheering). The run continues from Thursday through Sunday.

THE SKY IS THE LIMIT

The aerial Mountain Climbing makes Velox a great show.

Deborah Colker is a phenomenon. First she launched her company when she presented her work with the so prestigious American groups Momix at Teatro Municipal nearly a year ago. Now her second work, Velox is an unforgettable event. The old theatre Carlos Gomes, at the dull Tiradentes square has changed its looks and brought back the good old times of glory - big audiences, sold out tickets and tickets scalpers at the vicinity of the box offices. A great success proving that when there is quality the public knows and shows up.

And quality does not go amiss in Velox. On stage the dancers are athletic, agile and tuned. They perform a vigorous and lively show, which is divided into five choreographies. The highlight is, by no means, Mountain Climbing. This part features a huge climbing wall (twenty-foot-high) where dancers swing, hang and spiral in an unbelievable speed. The daring movements are done with precision and synchronization. The audience gapes, feels tense and scared that something might go wrong. Mountain Climbing is one of the most inventive things that have come up recently - it’s a real show. Maybe that’s why the other parts of the dance seem less engaging, yet interesting. Deborah is extremely inventive. She has accurately studied the movements, however she should also seek a bit more to get a choreographic design. She does it better in sports, when she exploits the kinetic tour the force of athletes, extremely well structured - it’s another good moment of Velox.

We have nothing against explosion of movement through movement, but both in Mechanics as well as in Quotidian, mainly the latter, there should have more occupation of space and fewer interrupted movements (such as dance, sit, stand, dance). The whole piece is correct, clean and inventive like in Martial Arts, with Kung Fu movements. But Velox is more than that - there is the Mountain Climbing and for that, Deborah Colker, her troupe and her show deserve the best praise.

LEAVE YOUR PREJUDICE BEHIND

The present dance communication phenomenon is meant to youth of visual language era.

VELOX is a phenomenon of communication. The show, which was bound to fail, ended up as last season greatest show in Rio. One, who sees it, immediately knows why. Here are some tips to enjoy it.

Tip number one: leave at the foyer all the prejudice that identifies the young ones as intellectually handicapped. Even those who solely watch MTV and spend hours at CD ROMS and collect Spawn, Wildcats and Gen 13, have the right to enjoy themselves with something that only a live show can provide. VELOX offers this - it communicates with those who read through digital images or scenic art means. The acclaimed video games staccato, the kind of sequence after each event (anything effects something) and mainly the way to perform movement as a powerful weapon. VELOX nourishes through this. Those who take classes of physical fitness, enjoy or play any sports and like dancing, will be led into instantaneous empathy. These aspects of contemporary urban melting pot are in a continuous process.

Tip number two: feel the show as a thermometer, identifying its "warmer" parts and finding out where Colker’s capacity as a choreographer is leading to. It’s a gratifying exercise when her talent is revealed, especially in the first sequence (the most perfect part of the work) and in Mountain Climbing. In the first part of Mechanics, there is just one structure grounded on a polished soundtrack (touches of Berna Cerppas, S?rgio Mekler, Kassin and Leandro Leal). The music is a mix and yields to an attempted musical composition, which is neither addition nor synthesis; it is just music.

The choreography tracks the music structure, it tempts to undo the concept as a reference, but it shortly gives place to an extra dimension. This is Colker’s common mistake.

Mountain Climbing brings back life into the show. As the dancers swing and hang vertically from a climbing wall, not on the ground, gravity defying as rhythm action is not possible. This compels the appearance of a new dynamics; the highest point is the lyric flavor, which punctuates, now and then, some of its movements.

Grinco Cardia’s set design provides a perfect space for VELOX; except for the sports court designed in the last part - SPORTS. Moving vertically such as wall climbing, poetically reveals the scene, but the obvious knocks down its symbolic power. Nine finely honed dancers are like precision machinery. They are extremely fit, especially Luciana Brites, Dani Amorin and Tatiana France.

For a newly born company like this is, (to date, there are only two full-length repertory) and based on her first work, the doubtful VOLCANO, we cannot deny. Yes Colker, you have grown up.

SCORING A REAL GOAL

Companhia de Dan?a Deborah Colker redresses emotion and the simplicity of sports in a modern way.

Contemporary dance shows in Brazil are often meetings of nerds around a stage. Those wearing ballet shoes bang their heads and the boot-wearing patrons clap their hands. It is infectious. The more the dancers bang their heads on the stage, the more claps are heard. They are all contemporary, you know how this is. You would think the Rio-based choreographer Deborah Colker would be all set to follow this depression-cult-dance. Surprisingly, she found her inspiration in the vigor and fun of sports, which triggered the movements of Velox, a show of her twelve-dancer troupe, which starts this week at Sergio Cardoso Theatre in S?o Paulo. For a three-week run in Brazil each performance has racked up audiences of nearly 1,000 per show, totaling 50,000 after 51 presentations. Yet Colker has achieved what must be one of the more astonishingly high degrees of popularity last summer in Rio de Janeiro.

"The formula is simple", she says. "Basketball games on TV have always fascinated me. The players when they play volleyball, soccer or basketball produce a fantastic choreography. It is arresting to the eyes". As dancers are like athletes, they train to meet perfection, to exceed themselves, to break their own records, Deborah decided to transform sports into dance and vice-versa. She choreographs teams to win - vibrantly mixing tension, attention, alternating fun and sadness and different kinds of sports in a frantic sequence of rhythms. The effect is perfect. The 20-foot-high wall climbing has a fantastic precision when her gravity defying troupe swing and hang on it. A fall seems imminent, the audience doesn’t breathe.

World Cup - it is so perfectly done that many times, part of the audience burst into patriotic cheer after the show as if it were a victory of our Brazilian soccer team. "Now I’m really proud to be Brazilian. You have the responsibility to show around the world what we are capable of", said Beatriz Segall, a well-known TV actress after the performance of VELOX in Rio de Janeiro. Companhia de Dan?a Deborah Colker will present VELOX at the French Dance Festival in Lyon in September. The event comprises apart from dance, theatre, literature, music and paintings having Brazil in the spotlight. The touring to France will lead to other performances in Europe such as Hamburg and Berlin.

To reach perfection, Colker trained exhaustively her dancers for eight months. "I was cruel. To play the athletes we had to have a multi-disciplinary physical daring which dancers are not so much used to", says Colker. The chiropractor Jos? Roberto Prado Junior had a full-time job to help the ones who got hurt. The dancers had daily six-hour rehearsal including classes of Kung fu, classic ballet and wall climbing on a 33-foot-high wall. "My justification was that I was able to do all I had demanded from the dancers, and it paid off." The company’s evolution from the first work Volcano and VELOX debut last October can be compared to the progress of our Brazilian soccer team at different World Cups - Italy and USA.

Colker achieved another success. She trespassed the wall of pointy-heads who mistrusted her. She created a daring and fun show pleasing even the ones who are not so fond of dance. "The people who saw our show throughout Brazil are from all walks of life. They are sports lovers who wanted to see something different", says the 35-year old choreographer. "They call me modern but I don’t mind. I am in fact a contemporary person". After returning from Lyon, France, Colker will start working on her new show grounded in quotidian concerns. She will have an amusement park on stage. "I want to demonstrate a Ferris wheel, climb it up, walk on stage wings." She is on the right way.

RUNNING ON VERVE AND STYLE

Deborah Colker is one of dance’s great characters. A hyperactive former volleyball star, musician, psychology graduate and scion of Russian Jews living in Brazil, she fell in love with contemporary dance aged 18. Now she leads a group of beautiful people from diverse dance backgrounds whom she has moulded into an impassioned and energetic troupe of what ballet’s Derek Deane calls aesthetic athletes, for that is exactly what they are.

They made their London debut a year ago with a hit show called Rota, which contained a giant wheel as its centrepiece. This time, as part of the Barbican’s Brazil festival, the company from Rio de Janeiro brings Mix, which comprises excerpts from Colker’s first two works. Vulc?o, the first, is slight and could be viewed as her route map into her art. The parody of the catwalk falls flat, despite its wit, because fashion is so good at parodying itself. We feel we’ve seen it all before. The medley of duets is diverting as couples connect in leaps, vaults, dives and dizzying lifts, but their kinetic jinks are one-dimensional.

The second half is awesome. Colker gets into her stride with Velox, inspired by Leni Riefenstahl’s film Olympia. Indeed, there are hints of the 1936 Berlin Olympics with dancers in ritualised moves and militaristic formations. She draws a connection between sport and dance by creating a style that glorifies muscle control and then she presses these hyper-controlled bodies into flowing phrases. Colker is the queen of the fluent phrase. She examines the biomechanics of movement in a slow piece, set to a sonic boom, in which four dancers swim in space.

The ending is spectacular - and must be seen to be believed. Dancers climb the back wall with only rows of little grips for support. They turn mountaineering into art and art into mountaineering. They are as elegant as butterflies and as comfortable as chimps swinging on branches. They flip, balance and skitter with dash. Perhaps it is their nonchalant defiance of gravity that is so astounding.