Eye-Popping Footwork Keeps a Cuban Beat

Anyone who has visited Cuba in recent years has probably fallen under the spell of its rich, overlapping dance traditions: virtuosic classical ballet, intense Afro-Cuban folklore, rhythmic social dances and a nightclub/show-dance scene of delirious sensuality. Many of these traditions meet in Ban Rarra, an attractive, tireless 7-year-old ensemble founded by Isaias Rojas Ramirez that appeared in Bovard Auditorium at USC on Tuesday.

Although a number of Haitian-influenced voudoun pieces were listed in the house program, the actual performance included few of those rarities and emphasized pop dance. Painfully hollow amplification muffled the eight musicians and singers, but even when sound imbalances nullified nearly everything except percussion, lead vocalist Crucelis Iznaga Alvarez kept interest high on personality alone.

Ramirez himself executed spectacular footwork while playing maracas, but his fast-moving and often overedited suite of social dances ricocheted from a vibrant cha-cha to an overly cute mambo lacking any heat whatsoever.

Identically dressed except for different colored accessories, the eight dancers began these segments in unison ballroom-style couple dancing but then spun out into flashier line choreography, executing gymnastic lifts, feats of balance and even ballet turns for added bravura. The core vocabulary, however, remained the same: superb shoulder shaking and hip-rolling accented by bursts of fast, percussive steps.

These values reached their zenith in the men’s showpiece “Papa Guede,” derived from voudoun but most notable here for its full-out torso-rippling and for the galvanic final trance-solo by Luis Ernesto Castillo Duverger.

The USC audience went berserk for the high-velocity maypole maneuvers of “Tajona” and the flag, fire and machete tricks of “Dos Bandos.” But perhaps the most successful large-scale choreography turned up in “Los Guaracheros,” which alternated between celebratory carnival dancing and passages in which the dancers slammed intricate rhythms into the floor with their wooden sandals (chancletas).

It was an exciting program by a company of wide potential appeal. No further local dates are scheduled.