FLORIDA-BRAZIL FESTIVAL.

FLORIDA-BRAZIL FESTIVAL COLONY TH EATER NOVEMBER 11-14, 1999 MIAMI BEACH, FLORIDA REVIEWED BY GUILLERMO PEREZ

For five years, the Florida-Brazil Festival, whimsically known as FLA-BRA, has sidestepped the facile in trying to create bonds through art.

The same old salsa and samba, this isn't. Spread out over a month at various locations, the event allows South Floridians to shake the creative hand of the South American giant and provides a venue for some of our more innovative locals. Music, theater, installations, and--in prominent presence--dance make for meaningful and often challenging contact.

The most recent edition of FLA-BRA involved natives and foreigners in dance with gritty situations as well as exotically-scented lyricism; muscle and memory helped the artists forge their images. The programming lent itself to gender considerations by spotlighting a solo by Sao Paulo-based Susana Yamauchi, a repeat visitor to the festival, and a collaborative work by local male artists of different backgrounds. These presentations respectively revealed a woman's identity defined by matriarchal legends and a man's by the brotherhood of labor.

In Mother of Dreams Yamauchi explored her Japanese-Brazilian heritage through brief sequences that looked like enigmatic fables. Wearing a layered, stylized kimono, she evoked both a forbidding environment and intimate yearnings with jerky articulations, undulating moves, and measured footwork accompanied by atmospheric sounds: chirps, drumbeats, bells. The tall construction she circled resembled a spine or a tree trunk, perhaps an emblem for both inner and outer dimensions. While fascinating in their curves and accents, Yamauchi's stage elaborations, like a far too personal calligraphy, ultimately remained unfathomable. Even stripped down and donning an Asian mask, at the end she perpetuated the mystery of herself.

Though its references were much more direct, Raw Footage also showed a poetic tendency. Choreographed by Gary Lund and Giovanni Luquini and performed as a trio by them along with Paulo Manso de Sousa, the piece celebrated the efforts of men under exhausting work conditions. The driven, reiterated tasks here gained a heroic dimension. Projected photographs from the WPA period connected this to labor history, yet the spirit of the men emerged as timeless. Haydee Morales designed attires in sober tones and textures to underscore realism while Eric Fliss's lighting---casting shadows in toil, gilding the skin on straining limbs--heightened the lyrical.

Like the metal heart of industry, the score by Fast Forward beat out an unrelenting pace for the series of work shifts. While room was left for individuality--the compact Lund lunging to the fore, Luquini slinking through Brazilian capoeira, and Manso de Sousa taking off with jumps--the emphasis stayed on an obstinate kind of harmony: in wielding equipment, hoisting sacks, rolling barrels. Despite the drudgery, body-on-body interconnectedness, borrowing the dynamics of contact improvisation, exalted a transcendent symbiosis.

Raw Footage began with fire (sparks flying from work equipment) and ended with water (the men soaked in a baptismal splash). From trials to purification, the piece ennobled the part of the male ethos that finds validation by getting the job done.