It was a thrilling sight as a string of dancers in yellow unitards filtered onto the stage of the Ahmanson Theater, in a veritable chorus line. The work, “21,” by veteran choreographer Rodrigo Pederneiras, created in 1992 has become the international calling card of the wonderfully athletic Brazilian dance company, GRUPO CORPO. In a fitting demonstration that at least half of American society melds well with cultures from abroad, the company took its place on the roster of Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center series in the wind down of the 2024-25 season. Up next we have Boston Ballet’s “Swan Lake,” with yet more stage-filling tableaux of many dancers. What’s not to love?
To the honk of an ominous foghorn, the banana people, their undulating backs hiccuping in little syncopated beats as they advanced, inched forward, first, in ungainly crouches then rising to tippy-toe. Always heads dropped, always in profile. At the sound of a chime, their swinging arms evoked a metronome’s ticking stick. On and on this rite continued. As certain dancers faced front (they did it in a syncopated pattern), one arm was raised, while the other still swung from the elbow.
That was the entree. Then came the main course. An onslaught of odd sounds burst from Marco Antônio Guimarães‘s score: a barrage of heavy drumming, the twanging of a string bass like a weighted rubber band, a calliope. So loud was the music that it tugged on the Ahmanson’s speakers and we plugged our ears. The dancers — body-beautifuls to a one in their unforgiving unitards — brought an array of skin tones and hair colors — the famous trademark of the mixed-race Brazilian people. They walked, they dipped, and then they kicked with a huge swinging leg to the front topped by a flexed foot. No longer bananas in space, they became tropical birds.
Because, miraculously, the dance evolved into a totally different look-and feel, with designer Fernanco Velloso ‘s gorgeous quilted backdrop and Freusa Zechmeister’s multicolored costume. At this point, Pederneiras’s choreography quoted from Brazilian folk dance, first, a flat-footed chicken dance on bended knee, hands on hips, torso tipping forward. The folkloric element used stepping and hopping, in an upbeat melange of marvelous color. Hips shimmied like when movie stars strapped themselves into weight-loss machines and switched the “on” button. Whirrr! Who can shake the derriere that fast? A big bass drum sounded. What a work!
A second work, GIRA, evinced a tad too many retreads of the marvelous “21” and lacked its coherence, which did not bode well for the dance maker’s passage of time. More crouching, more undulating spines, even the big kick with flexed foot showed up. The unisex costumes revealed handsome, muscular torsos on both men and women — but GIRA also offered way too much rushing about, too many flailing arms, and awkward transitions between sections — then it settled into a disappointingly boring groove.
But, “21”!!
Dance critic Debra Levine is founder/editor/publisher of arts●meme. Debra celebrated forty years of published dance criticism in 2024.