“La Era del Cuero” is an ideal work for these times of deconstruction: defined as an investigation on the malambo, Pablo Rotemberg’s speech is caricatural, but dictated from the knowledge of this dance of men. For this reason, the choice of dancers trained and consecrated in the art of malambo is not accidental, and gives the choreographer an irreproachable technical strength from which to launch his controversial point of view. Rotemberg leaves no puppet with a head: his insolent aesthetic runs through the entire piece parodying machismo, feminism, cross-dressing, heroes, the use of English and even religion. Everything is subvertible in the postmodern conception of the choreographer, in a functional parallelism with the reality that surrounds us: a reality that increasingly normalizes the crazy speech, the deafening scream and the delirium.
With the efficient collaboration of the images of Lucio Bazzalo, the ‘Overture’ begins with a seemingly devastating explosion. A man survives by tapping barefoot and with unusual violence, the first exhibition of a component that will be a constant feature of the work, both physically and in sound. The electronic music of Axel Krygier alternates with pages of Alberto Ginastera throughout the three brief acts (“The day after”, “Luz mala” and “No future”), while the intermissions are illustrated by characters with bass drums and heads of horse. There are crosses with the contemporary – an interesting solo by Carla Di Grazia in the middle of acid rain – and with the popular – a hilarious Brazilian dance of Tito alfajores, in a biased allusion to a famous brand of that sweet.
The cast of excellent interpreters folds to the proposal with plenty of resources in all styles. Within so much vertigo, a quartet of sharp dancers in the third act makes available to the viewer the strength of the beauty of the purest malambo. The one that from Ginastera’s score for “Estancia” reminds us that the gaucho as such is today an extinct species.
