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Contemporary Dance in Puerto Rico, or How to Speak of These Times
- University Press of Florida
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Contemporary Dance in Puerto Rico, or How to Speak of These Times Susan Homar Countries with a dance tradition and history allow, even invite, the isolation of periods or genres when one is writing about them. But countries with a recent development of professional dance and a history of theatrical dance that does not date back very far, such as Puerto Rico, demand a consideration of its beginnings. Everything is still very much interrelated. So, in order to reflect upon contemporary dance in Puerto Rico, a form that reacts to the established dance styles and institutions, one must briefly look at how it all started and the context against which it reacts and within which it flourishes. Until the mid-twentieth century, Puerto Ricans training in theatrical dance were starting out with local teachers, some of whom had trained abroad, and performing in self-produced events or single dance performances sponsored by groups dedicated to classical music that were also promoting the development of academic and classical dance. Meanwhile, dancers like Anna Pavlova and Tamara Toumanova, and companies such as Ballets Russes and Spanish dance groups, classical and flamenco, visited the island periodically from the nineteenth century on, inspiring young dancers . Professional dance began to develop in the middle of the twentieth century under the aegis of Ana García and Gilda Navarra, sisters who initially trained in San Juan and later in New York and Spain, respectively, and performed professionally: García with Balanchine’s Ballet Society and Ballet de Alicia Alonso, Navarra with the Pilar López and José Greco companies. In 1951, García and Navarra returned to Puerto Rico to open a school, and in 1954 they started Ballets de San Juan (BSJ), a company that still exists. Its 212 Susan Homar original repertory had classical and neoclassical ballets; classical Spanish, flamenco, and Spanish-inspired pieces; and a genre based on Puerto Rican stories, legends, and topics that usually brought together young Puerto Rican choreographers, composers, set and costume designers, and sometimes librettists (surely inspired by the Eugene Loring and Agnes de Mille Americana pieces García and Navarra came to know in New York). While Spanish dances disappeared from BSJ’s repertory when Navarra left in 1960 and interest in them waned in Puerto Rico in the ’60s, ballet has continued to reign on the island while modern dance has not taken hold, although a couple of teachers and choreographers cultivated its different techniques over the years. The only one that has been somewhat more accepted and practiced has been a derivative of the Horton technique, but always as part of a more diverse vocabulary. However, what did strike a chord in San Juan at the end of the ’70s was postmodern or “experimental” dance, as its Puerto Rican practitioners prefer to call it, and, more recently, contemporary dance (the latter based on ballet training). So how did dance in Puerto Rico evolve from ballet to experimental, without the modern dance transition? Is it, in any case, an obligatory stepping stone? Actually, a transition of sorts occurred, although it was not through modern dance itself. When Navarra left BSJ, she retrained in pantomime under Etienne Decroux and Jacques Lecoq, in New York and Paris, a professional decision she has always attributed to Mexican American modern dance master José Limón, in whom she saw another way to use the body. Once she returned, Navarra created a pantomime curriculum at the University of Puerto Rico’s (UPR) Drama Department. In 1971, she founded Taller de Histriones (Concepción 2002b), whose fourteen pieces (most choreographed by Navarra after developing lengthy improvisations with the company in a workshop setting) could be characterized as expressionist dance-theater and were an important evolutionary stage in Puerto Rico’s dance scene. Taller de Histriones closed in 1985. In the late ’70s, a crop of Puerto Ricans studying dance and art in New York returned to the island and, with three local experimental artists, started Pisotón, a dance and theater group grounded in postmodern aesthetics (Banes 1987). These artists were Viveca Vázquez, Awilda Sterling-Duprey, Petra Bravo, Gloria Llompart, Jorge Arce, and Maritza Pérez. San Juan was a city shaped by modernist tastes and values; Pisotón stomped in true to its name (which suggests that it was, indeed, stepping on the establishment’s [44.204.34.64] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:16 GMT) Contemporary Dance in Puerto Rico 213 toes) and took the audience to new...