El Gran Circo: The Aztlan Circus

El Gran Circo: The Aztlan Circus

Santa Cruz Center for Culture, through March 4

After the applause has died and the performers have gone backstage, the audience's ears are still ringing. A strange traveling fair just passed through, one that included jaguars, spiders, birds, mermaids, and mannequins, dancing to reggaetón, mambo, and French lounge music. There were no clowns, no peanuts, no tent. But in the same way that Aztlan Dance Company has revolutionized Latin dance, they took the circus and ran with it. In El Gran Circo, you'll hear music that comes straight from a young Latino hipster's iPod. For Latinophiles who can't understand Spanish, watching the simple narratives through dances and the mime movements may be a just fit.

The first act consists of song after song of the latest in reggaetón by Puerto Rican musicians such as Calle 13, Daddy Yankee, and Voltio and Spanish hip-hop artist La Mala Rodriguez. A scalper with jewelry hanging from the inside of his coat roams through the audience and sells tickets to dancers. Ladies in red dresses wave hello with the ruffles on their short skirts, while the men, well, say hello back. Then the dancers find the diary of a ringmaster from 1907, and dances are built around its entries. For instance, the ringmaster dreams about spiders, and the dancers come out in black leotards interpreting Latin rap and rock with modern movement. But there's no real storyline in the ringmaster's sometimes comical musings; he just describes things that happened to him.

Birds fly in the nicest moment of the show, as Roén Salinas and Stephanie Keeton wake to Pedro Luis Ferrer's "La Tarde Se Ha Puesto Triste" ("The Afternoon Has Become Sad"); with hands fluttering like lovebirds in the morning, their performance is an elegant visual poem. We can anticipate the jaguars that come next. A whip-cracking trainer and three dancers in spotted leotards attack the audience seductively. The ringmaster's memories give way to unexpected aquatic fantasies, and the act ends whimsically with Celia Cruz's rendition of the classic "Quizas, Quizas, Quizas" as a school of sirenas, or mermaids, entice us with their leg – or rather, tail-fin – kicks.

Staying with the idea of playtime – or perhaps just the childlike nostalgia of the early 1900s – the second act opens with dolls dancing ballet to the harpsichord staccato of Yann Tiersen (from the Amélie soundtrack). They eventually come to rest mechanically with that fixed, wide-eyed expression. After French lounge music, we're stimulated with some Shakira, some cumbia, and a mambotastic finale.

In the second act, the ringmaster nearly disappears. When he does read from his diary, the trancelike echo makes it difficult to keep up. Salinas, the "choreo-visionary" behind the production, should probably have just focused on the phenomenal dancing rather than forcing a text to bring it all together. The troupe of dancers, dedicated to Aztlan for so many years, ripen with each production. Because we're so close in the intimate Santa Cruz Center, we can see the beads of sweat on the performers' faces, the expressions in the almond eyes, the acrobatic turns and dives between partners who know each other.

The eclectic music and changes in Latin dance fuse recognizable elements like figure-eight movements, modern dance, and ballet together to form an exceedingly foreign amusement park.