Darkness and light exist in equal measure, despite the instinct to seek happiness, and Asesinos por una Noche revels in the worst that life has to offer, as a matter of honesty perhaps. It belongs in the same category as a Lars Von Trier film… Annie Hollingsworth, Miami New Times. Read more »
...Searching for the meaning of an especially vivid dream can become all-consuming. The way dream states can challenge common-sense certainties was the subject of Bistoury Physical Theatre’s latest multimedia work, “The Commune – Chapter 1: A commune of oranges... BISTOURY PHYSICAL THEATRE & FILM EXPLORES THE POWER OF DREAMS By Sean Erwin
...La obra plantea la necesidad del ser humano de regresar a sus orígenes, cuando la vida era mucho más sencilla que la de ahora y las personas se trataban mirándose a los ojos. Es un sueño de una mujer que luego de intentar explicárselo a su compañero, lo invita a recrear la experiencia con el público como testigo... Si usted no ha viajado por el mundo de los sueños, esta es una oportunidad de hacerlo By Arturo Arias-Polo
...Mr. Taran's "Doble," performed superbly with uninhibited energy by Ms. Rojas and Astrud Angarita, begins with one woman on the floor, another suspended in the air in a chair. A blast of music by Steve Reich gives way to tapes by the Kronos Quartet and Sigismundo D'india. The woman in the chair flails around and sometimes hangs upside down until she is lowered to the ground. The woman below has lain crumpled, only to bounce up in a different convulsive fit. When the two finally make contact, the contrast between them diminishes, and both become marionettes, attaching elastic bands to their bodies... Dance in Review By Anna Kisselgoff
...“Imaginarium Life” is the story of Rueben, a visual artist who lives in his mind to avoid reality, to avoid the pain and pitfalls of his torn and tormented life, which seems to be a common theme among the living. Eschewing material and emotional attachments, Ruben constructs a mirage for negotiating life. He attempts to disconnect from the things he perceives are holding him back, pulling him under, filling his jacket with pockets full of stones, and retreats into the imaginary world where he lives (imaginarily) safe and sound from the free-floating chaos of living and loving in the real world... “IMAGINARIUM LIFE” IS FOR REAL By Neil de la Flor
...This play is a terrifying and expansive performance that is visceral and stunningly visual. Imaginarium Life exists in two separate worlds -- the projected world and the physical world. Whatever you might think of their work in the end, Taran and Forte's performances are measureless. Their craft is impeccable. Their future is blinding... ‘Imaginarium Life’: Get Ready For A Most Unimaginable Tale By Neil de la Flor
...Choreographer Alexey Taran’s inspiration for his latest dance/theater work, Tribe, is deeply rooted and very personal. Commissioned and presented by Miami-Dade County Auditorium for April 2 through 5, Tribe is an exploration of homelessness... Dance Explores Nature of Homelessness By Rebekah Lana Lengel
...You could say Bistoury’s 305 & Havana International Improv Fest, which debuts this Saturday at Miami Theater Center, has been in the works for almost 20 years. In 1999, Cuban-born choreographer Alexey Taran created the first improvisation festival in Caracas, Venezuela. Taran had already been working with improvisation techniques for almost a decade. Based in Miami since 2007, Taran and Bistoury co-director Carla Forte have created a two-city festival featuring live performance and several short films in the dance-on-camera genre... The 305 & Havana International Improv Fest Brings Dance Across the Sea By Mia Leonin
...Ella (2015), was made over the course of Maloney’s pregnancy, and we see Maloney’s physical and emotional transformation up close in the space of about fifteen minutes. Ella displays a collaboration between multiple individuals each accomplished in his or her own arena... MOVING IMAGE: SCREENDANCE IN MIAMI By Catherine Annie Hollingsworth
...Taran is originally from Havana; watching his jerky idiosyncratic movement style, it might be hard to guess that he was trained in ballet. Later he linked up with experimental Cuban dance company Danza Abierta, for whom he was both a dancer and ballet teacher. With Danza Abierta, he began to move away from the formalism of his training into something less controlled and more free... CONVERSATIONS IN MOVEMENT: THE 305-HAVANA INTERNATIONAL IMPROV FEST By Catherine Annie Hollingsworth
...Ballet, in our work, is a reference. You won't see a classical ballerina. For example in the ballet you always have a cycle. You have a coda, you have a starting point, and then you finish and start again. We work in a very similar way. We always have a cycle in our works. Speaking about structures of power, ballet has always been a dominant structure within the dance world so it's interesting that you're using it in that way. Yes, we try to use ballet to break the language of ballet and create a new kind of movement. We try to use our bodies and for example, our hands, like we are dancing a big classical ballet play. But we want to use the language in a new way... Asesinos por una Noche Gets Experimental About Cuban Politics By Catherine Annie Hollingsworth
Tribe, their latest project, translates the world of the homeless into a new language through body gestures and includes participation by the Miami homeless community… Shelly Davidov, Miami New Times. Read more »
This is a workshop of improvisation and choreographic composition based on experience 'Tribe' which had excellent results, both in the staging, and audience reaction… Andreina Bandera, El Pilon. Read more »
The result is a powerful and impressive performances… Hrvoje Ivanovic, Slobodna Dalmacija. Read more »
TRIBE. Bistoury Physical Theater Company. Nagari Magazine, Eduard Reboll. Read more »
Local Fellowship Gives Dancers a Bar To Lean On... Juan Carlos Pérez-Duthie. Read more »
Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, MARATHON OF THE UNEXPECTED... Read more »
Taran crafted a precise movement vocabulary with Tribe that was both intense and specific… Artburst Miami, Rebekah Lanae Lengel. Read more »
This play is a terrifying and expansive performance that is visceral and stunningly visual… WLRN, Neil de la Flor. Read more »
Bolo Planeta Maquinal Vs Acción Intro-Guetho... Heyevent. Read more »
Alexey Taran, Fellow: Awarded 2007, Field of Study: Choreography, Competition: US & Canada. Read more »
Taran’s Asesinos Por Una Noche is enigmatic… Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice. Read more »
Shared Movement… José Roversi. Read more »
Program 16. Tjedna suvremenog plesa… Read more »
...“Your feelings and knowledge, you always have it with you whether you live in Venezuela or New York,” says Alexey. “It’s very hard to live in another country as an immigrant. We are always trying to survive and adapt as an artist to these different systems and ways of living. It’s a constant metamorphosis.”
Separately and together, they’ve received numerous grants and awards, presenting performances, films, and improvisational events in Miami, New York, and Europe. Building community and events, wherever they are, to enable people to learn and create is central to them. Alexey reconnected with the Cuban dance community for the Improv Festival in 2017, finding a home for the event at Havana’s famed Fábrica de Arte Cubano to create bridges between the island and Miami.
“Artists are communicators,” says Alexey. “I don’t believe in frontiers. Borders are lines that go against the freedom of art.”... By Jordan Levin
Separately and together, they’ve received numerous grants and awards, presenting performances, films, and improvisational events in Miami, New York, and Europe. Building community and events, wherever they are, to enable people to learn and create is central to them. Alexey reconnected with the Cuban dance community for the Improv Festival in 2017, finding a home for the event at Havana’s famed Fábrica de Arte Cubano to create bridges between the island and Miami.
“Artists are communicators,” says Alexey. “I don’t believe in frontiers. Borders are lines that go against the freedom of art.”... By Jordan Levin
La danse et ses paysages articules et changeants… Read more »
"18 minutos" shows the fundamental dependence of man on (abstract) powers and (concrete) objects. The 60-minute long piece that was created with the help of German co-producers such as the Mousonturm and the Kampnagelfabrik in Hamburg, developed both a psychological and a political dimension that constantly rouses associations with arrests, imprisonment and torture in the Latin and South American dictatorships while watching , In pale neon light dipped, the stage is an inhospitable place. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Gerald Siegmund. Read more »
IMAGINARIUM Life results from the necessity to create; it is the exploration of a work with meaning, a questioning challenge to our preconceived notions of how dance must be and look. Read more »
The overtones are dark, even surrealistic, more reminiscent, however, of Goya than of Salvador Dali in their protests against mental and real prisons… Anna Kisselgof, The New York Times. Read more »
EXPLORING THREE-DIMENSIONAL SPACES. A PRESENTATION BY CARLA FORTE, ALEXEY TARAN, AND RONALD BAEZ. Read more »
Miami Beach Premiere Performance! IMAGINARIUM LIFE. A Dance Theatre and Film Fusion. Performed Live! Read more »
On Thursday, the Neodanza group, founded in Caracas in 1987, performs its fusion of dance and theater. His choreography, `` 18 Minutes for 2 1/2 Tiempos'Bolo ", authored by Alexey Taran, explores the power of images. Read more »
"Neodanza, uma companhia experimental de Caracas, mescla o poder dramático do teatro-dança politico com uma surpreendente expressividade que deriva de movimento físico puro. As imagens são som brisa, até surrealistas, lembrando mais Goya que Salvador Dali, em seus protestos contra prisões mentais e reais". Read more »
The stage, an inhospitable place.
"Neodanza" from Venezuela shows "18 minutos por 2 1/2 tiempos'bolo" at Mousonturm
Where once there was only free expression, should be shaped. Where only is still form, the effect is missing. In the intricate connection between the two, it seems, is for the dance at the time the particular challenge. The Slovenian Iztoc Kovac, in its scenic arrangements and body images reflected the experiences of an entire industry landscape, or the New York-based Israeli Amiel Malalé, who with his play of differences elicits the postmodern minimalism the traumatically-compulsive memory of the Holocaust - the echo social experience penetrates again amplified from the resonant cavity of the dance in the public laboratories.
The Venezuelan company Neodanza can belong to this group of artists who have indeed learned the lessons of dance abstraction, where the pure form as a means of expression but is no longer anything. Economical and limited in the language of movement, which per se does not get beyond a replaceable, always same sequence of tension and relaxation, traps and upright, the movements gain only in the friction with the stage objects their autonomy and fascination. Where the constantly quickly and cheaply produced by wild shake of the head and flying hair effect of aggressiveness fizzles soon, the actual weight of the piece lies in the formulation of a collective experience that goes far beyond the horizons subjective feelings.
For the Cuban choreographer and dancer Alexey Taran, the early nineties, Cuba and the Cuban National Ballet left in order to join the company Neodanza headed by Ines Rojas in 1992 in Venezuela, the combination of anonymous violence and pleasure is central to the work. Inspired by the writings of Georges Bataille's designs Taran in "18 minutos por 2 1/2 tiempos'bolo", with whom he won the choreographer competition in Bagnolet and that was now to be seen in Mousonturm, an oppressive nightmare scenario, in which the three dancers and the a dancer (Taran himself) has taken all forms of individuality. If you do not cover up the hair the face, clears a white stocking similar mask of their physiognomy.
At the beginning they sit with their backs to the audience on a row of chairs on the ramp. Their heads fall down limply, as if they were about to fall asleep. Alarmed by hammering Industrial music, to which later joined by a few swelling violins, they begin in a four-ship formation chorea with iron chairs, their arms and back can be folded out. Sandwiched as an instrument of torture, their bodies lay around the metal, as by flashes of electric shocks to an electric chair, stretch out all fours. Taran leads the group mostly in formation and interrupts this rigor sometimes only by a solo or duo that enjoys himself in a water-filled bathtub. Trapped in variable light rectangles that migrate during the evening on the stage and restrict the activities of the dancers again, they rely on sticks, the slip again and bring them down. Hooked into each other, the sticks are then into a kind of bondage that makes their own motion of a comparison depend. A ballerina shirtless tried to stand on top. But it breaks again and again and finally moving with bent legs like a spider on the floor. The nature of the subject matter is so the movement in each case the form. Energy is produced by friction, the lust of the dancers breaks track on the objects.
"18 minutos" shows the fundamental dependence of man on (abstract) powers and (concrete) objects. The 60-minute long piece that was created with the help of German co-producers such as the Mousonturm and the Kampnagelfabrik in Hamburg, developed both a psychological and a political dimension that constantly rouses associations with arrests, imprisonment and torture in the Latin and South American dictatorships while watching , In pale neon light dipped, the stage is an inhospitable place. Cold the wind whistles through the ghostly scenario. Plastic hoses, the unmotivated hanging from the ceiling, water runs down to the exhausted dancers.
GERALD Siegmund Caption: The individuality is lost: "Neodanza" for her appearance in Frankfurt Photo Karin Schander
"Neodanza" from Venezuela shows "18 minutos por 2 1/2 tiempos'bolo" at Mousonturm
Where once there was only free expression, should be shaped. Where only is still form, the effect is missing. In the intricate connection between the two, it seems, is for the dance at the time the particular challenge. The Slovenian Iztoc Kovac, in its scenic arrangements and body images reflected the experiences of an entire industry landscape, or the New York-based Israeli Amiel Malalé, who with his play of differences elicits the postmodern minimalism the traumatically-compulsive memory of the Holocaust - the echo social experience penetrates again amplified from the resonant cavity of the dance in the public laboratories.
The Venezuelan company Neodanza can belong to this group of artists who have indeed learned the lessons of dance abstraction, where the pure form as a means of expression but is no longer anything. Economical and limited in the language of movement, which per se does not get beyond a replaceable, always same sequence of tension and relaxation, traps and upright, the movements gain only in the friction with the stage objects their autonomy and fascination. Where the constantly quickly and cheaply produced by wild shake of the head and flying hair effect of aggressiveness fizzles soon, the actual weight of the piece lies in the formulation of a collective experience that goes far beyond the horizons subjective feelings.
For the Cuban choreographer and dancer Alexey Taran, the early nineties, Cuba and the Cuban National Ballet left in order to join the company Neodanza headed by Ines Rojas in 1992 in Venezuela, the combination of anonymous violence and pleasure is central to the work. Inspired by the writings of Georges Bataille's designs Taran in "18 minutos por 2 1/2 tiempos'bolo", with whom he won the choreographer competition in Bagnolet and that was now to be seen in Mousonturm, an oppressive nightmare scenario, in which the three dancers and the a dancer (Taran himself) has taken all forms of individuality. If you do not cover up the hair the face, clears a white stocking similar mask of their physiognomy.
At the beginning they sit with their backs to the audience on a row of chairs on the ramp. Their heads fall down limply, as if they were about to fall asleep. Alarmed by hammering Industrial music, to which later joined by a few swelling violins, they begin in a four-ship formation chorea with iron chairs, their arms and back can be folded out. Sandwiched as an instrument of torture, their bodies lay around the metal, as by flashes of electric shocks to an electric chair, stretch out all fours. Taran leads the group mostly in formation and interrupts this rigor sometimes only by a solo or duo that enjoys himself in a water-filled bathtub. Trapped in variable light rectangles that migrate during the evening on the stage and restrict the activities of the dancers again, they rely on sticks, the slip again and bring them down. Hooked into each other, the sticks are then into a kind of bondage that makes their own motion of a comparison depend. A ballerina shirtless tried to stand on top. But it breaks again and again and finally moving with bent legs like a spider on the floor. The nature of the subject matter is so the movement in each case the form. Energy is produced by friction, the lust of the dancers breaks track on the objects.
"18 minutos" shows the fundamental dependence of man on (abstract) powers and (concrete) objects. The 60-minute long piece that was created with the help of German co-producers such as the Mousonturm and the Kampnagelfabrik in Hamburg, developed both a psychological and a political dimension that constantly rouses associations with arrests, imprisonment and torture in the Latin and South American dictatorships while watching , In pale neon light dipped, the stage is an inhospitable place. Cold the wind whistles through the ghostly scenario. Plastic hoses, the unmotivated hanging from the ceiling, water runs down to the exhausted dancers.
GERALD Siegmund Caption: The individuality is lost: "Neodanza" for her appearance in Frankfurt Photo Karin Schander
Dance in Review. The New York Times
By Anna Kisselgoff
Neodanza La Mama
Neodanza, an experimental dance company founded in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1987, mixes the dramatic power of political dance theater with an astonishing expressiveness that derives from pure physical movement.
The small troupe directed by Ines Rojas made an impressive United States debut on Thursday night with three pieces, two of which were listed as collaborative creations.
Although these works did not always cohere as a whole, the intensity of each episode was never in doubt. Like Spain's new contemporary dancers, Osmany Tellez and Alexey Taran, Neodanza's Cuban-born choreographers have a penchant for images that speak of the ecstatic and the irrational. The overtones are dark, even surrealistic, more reminiscent, however, of Goya than of Salvador Dali in their protests against mental and real prisons.
Mr. Taran's "Doble," performed superbly with uninhibited energy by Ms. Rojas and Astrud Angarita, begins with one woman on the floor, another suspended in the air in a chair. A blast of music by Steve Reich gives way to tapes by the Kronos Quartet and Sigismundo D'india. The woman in the chair flails around and sometimes hangs upside down until she is lowered to the ground. The woman below has lain crumpled, only to bounce up in a different convulsive fit. When the two finally make contact, the contrast between them diminishes, and both become marionettes, attaching elastic bands to their bodies.
A stronger work with the same streak of ambiguity used Mr. Reich's music for a picture of the revolution devouring its own. In "Madre Numero Dos," Mr. Tellez, in a stylized military coat, towered over Mr. Taran and Edwin Vasquez, two soldiers or prisoners. The music accompanied a series of vignettes in which the two victims stripped the authority figure of his authority and his clothes before moving on to perform a remarkable bouncing duet on a brass bed that was used as a trampoline.
The movement style is athletic but banks on sheer strength rather than the mutual support of contact improvisation, a partnering technique popular in American experimental dance. In one extraordinary moment, Mr. Taran wheeled his body 360 degrees around Mr. Tellez's raised knee. In the plotless quartet, "Atemplo Degesto," to Arvo Part's music, the angst-ridden dancers were virtually faceless. The women swung their hair around, the men faced the rear. Still finding its way, Neodanza is a company very much worth following.
ANNA KISSELGOFF
Dance in Review. The New York Times
Feb. 21, 1994
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/21/arts/dance-in-review-256730.html
By Anna Kisselgoff
Neodanza La Mama
Neodanza, an experimental dance company founded in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1987, mixes the dramatic power of political dance theater with an astonishing expressiveness that derives from pure physical movement.
The small troupe directed by Ines Rojas made an impressive United States debut on Thursday night with three pieces, two of which were listed as collaborative creations.
Although these works did not always cohere as a whole, the intensity of each episode was never in doubt. Like Spain's new contemporary dancers, Osmany Tellez and Alexey Taran, Neodanza's Cuban-born choreographers have a penchant for images that speak of the ecstatic and the irrational. The overtones are dark, even surrealistic, more reminiscent, however, of Goya than of Salvador Dali in their protests against mental and real prisons.
Mr. Taran's "Doble," performed superbly with uninhibited energy by Ms. Rojas and Astrud Angarita, begins with one woman on the floor, another suspended in the air in a chair. A blast of music by Steve Reich gives way to tapes by the Kronos Quartet and Sigismundo D'india. The woman in the chair flails around and sometimes hangs upside down until she is lowered to the ground. The woman below has lain crumpled, only to bounce up in a different convulsive fit. When the two finally make contact, the contrast between them diminishes, and both become marionettes, attaching elastic bands to their bodies.
A stronger work with the same streak of ambiguity used Mr. Reich's music for a picture of the revolution devouring its own. In "Madre Numero Dos," Mr. Tellez, in a stylized military coat, towered over Mr. Taran and Edwin Vasquez, two soldiers or prisoners. The music accompanied a series of vignettes in which the two victims stripped the authority figure of his authority and his clothes before moving on to perform a remarkable bouncing duet on a brass bed that was used as a trampoline.
The movement style is athletic but banks on sheer strength rather than the mutual support of contact improvisation, a partnering technique popular in American experimental dance. In one extraordinary moment, Mr. Taran wheeled his body 360 degrees around Mr. Tellez's raised knee. In the plotless quartet, "Atemplo Degesto," to Arvo Part's music, the angst-ridden dancers were virtually faceless. The women swung their hair around, the men faced the rear. Still finding its way, Neodanza is a company very much worth following.
ANNA KISSELGOFF
Dance in Review. The New York Times
Feb. 21, 1994
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/21/arts/dance-in-review-256730.html