‘Terra Latina’ Moves the Earth

To a matinee audience of 600 screaming, stamping school kids, Brazil’s Bale de Rua launched the 10th Biennale de la Danse here, performing home-grown hip-hop of spectacular daring and originality: commercial MTV-style infused with irresistible South American steps, rhythms and social priorities.

Mostly teenagers or just over the hill into their 20s, the Bale de Rua dancers might never have heard of the Biennale de la Danse before being invited to perform in it.

But in the European dance world and, more recently the U.S., the event has come to be recognized as a dazzling and innovative blowout that takes over France’s second city for three weeks of performances, free dance lessons, a film series, exhibits, educational forums, receptions, balls and a dance-parade, or grand defile, that this year is expected to enlist 4,500 participants.

Past Lyon biennials have focused on the dance of the Silk Road, the Mediterranean, Africa and the U.S., with French companies always invited to supplement the guests’ achievements. This year, the $5-million budget goes to an exploration of what everyone normally calls Latin America but which red-and-white polka-dotted posters and banners throughout Lyon label “Terra Latina: From the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego.”

Coming from a dozen countries, 36 companies are performing, most of them in works never before seen in Europe, 10 in pieces commissioned by the Biennale. The performances take place all over Lyon, in big venues and small, and in neighboring communities.

On Tuesday’s opening night, for example, Mexicans danced upstairs in the main theater of the Lyon Opera, while Venezuelans performed in the studio space downstairs. At the same time, the Brazilian hip-hoppers were in a small theater in the nearby town of Decines and a second Venezuelan company performed at Lyon’s 1,200-seat Maison de la Danse. Houses were full even early in the week. With festival ticket prices no higher than $30 and often half that amount, the crowds include families, students and France’s seasoned dance fans.

The buzz would be remarkable anywhere, but is doubly so given that very few recognizable names are scheduled. Indeed, the companies themselves largely represent not only Terra Latina but also terra incognita, according to Biennale artistic director Guy Darmet.

“Europe has never seen these companies,” he said, just before the Bale de Rua debut on Day 1, “and it is very important that this kind of work finds an international audience.”

Helping ensure that possibility, Darmet says, are talent-scouting festival directors from Germany, England, Israel and other countries, though not, so far, the U.S.

Los Angeles has seen a handful of the Biennale troupes: France’s Compagnie Maguy Marin and Conjunto Folklorico Nacional de Cuba, Tangokinesis of Argentina and Grupo Corpo of Brazil, which is returning to the Southland this season.

But Bale de Rua has never danced outside Brazil until now, and it would be hard to overestimate the effect of its triumph on the performers, who were street kids, car-washers and mechanics just a few years earlier. In Marco Antonio Garcia and Jose Marciel Silva’s plotless “And Now, Jose?” these 13 men and one woman not only kicked international butt, they also embodied the conflict between traditional rural values and contemporary urban life, often managing to fuse the two through sheer force of will.

This need to sustain a sense of identity while still integrating influences from all over the world also dominated a Biennale press conference that featured the leaders of Danzahoy, pioneers in searching for a truly Venezuelan form of modern dance. “In Latin America, we’re always looking at what’s going on outside and saying, ‘We’re not like that,’ ” explained company artistic director Adriana Urdaneta.

Echoing Darmet, Urdaneta spoke of Latin American dance as being unaccountably invisible to the rest of the dance world, even to other Latin Americans. “We know what Germany is doing, what the U.S. is doing, but we don’t know what’s happening next door in Colombia,” she said.

The Biennale attempts to help shatter this status quo, and certainly “Exodus,” by Urdaneta’s sister Luz, deserved the attention Wednesday in a Danzahoy performance boldly juxtaposing postmodern style and the volcanic intensity of tango.

Using hyperventilation as a motif leading to collapse and the act of blowing a kiss as a cry of need torn from the mouth, this suite took the passivity out of loneliness and despair, energizing them with engulfing power.

Throughout, flickering light patterns and sudden shifts in brightness seemed to victimize the 14-member cast, threatening to obliterate them. But they fought back, and their valiant stand made them heroes, none more than the alternately fierce and sensitive Jacques Broquet, arguably the first star discovery of this Biennale.

No choreography in the event’s initial-week lineup proved riskier and more original, however, than Leyson Ponce’s “Song for Dead Children,” performed by Venezuela’s Dramo Dramaturgia del Movimiento with chilling innocence. Set to Mahler’s “Kindertotenlieder” as well as native folk and popular music, it began with projections of children’s toys and deadly household objects that can look like toys: matches, power tools, guns, etc. It then used its seven-member cast to dramatize the dangers of childhood, including dressing up like an adult to seek love and acceptance only to find the same fate as JonBenet Ramsey.

It ended with a sweet little ritual: a child’s playtime funeral, not for a doll or a pet but for a whole race of doomed playmates.

Alas, it would be misleading to suggest that everything seen so far at the Biennale offered the satisfactions of the Brazilian and two Venezuelan productions. For instance, on Tuesday, Compania Nacional de Danza de Mexico tired the eye and deadened the mind with “A Trip to the Moon,” Raul Parrao’s overextended tribute to the 100th anniversary of the film of the same name by Lyon’s own Georges Melies.

The audience wore red and green glasses to enable 3-D projections to make their effect, but the antic, gesture-dominated dancing looked flat even in the cancan finale.

However, nobody has ever put more Latino dance on European stages at any one time than this Biennale, and “Terra Latina” continues through Sept. 29 with its tour of a largely unexplored realm of artistry. Thirty-two companies to go.

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10th Biennale de la Danse/Lyon, France

“Terra Latina: From the Rio Grande to Tiera del Fuego” features contemporary dance, folkloric and traditional social dance through Sept. 29. Upcoming highlights include:

From Colombia

* La Sabrosa, carnival dance

From Peru

* Danzantes de Tijeras de Ayacucho, folkloric dance

From Bolivia

* La Diablada, carnival dance

From Brazil

* Staccato Danca Contemporanea, contemporary dance

* Mimulus, social dance (mambo, cha-cha, etc.)

From France

* Ballet de Lorraine, contemporary dance

* Teatri del Vento, contemporary dance