The New York Times-20080128-Seeking Raw Beauty in Fluid Movement- -Review-

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Seeking Raw Beauty in Fluid Movement; [Review]

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Eduardo Vilaro was born in Cuba and grew up in the Bronx before he landed on his feet as a principal dancer with Ballet Hispanico in Manhattan. Now he's conquered another city, but this time it's not as a dancer. After receiving his master's degree from Columbia College Chicago, Mr. Vilaro stayed put and formed a company, Luna Negra Dance Theater, which is dedicated to fostering the work of Latino choreographers.

Judging from the company's New York debut at the New Victory Theater on Friday night, Mr. Vilaro is certainly good at one thing; his well-trained dancers are naturally theatrical and able to flesh out their technique with a sweet, unalloyed enthusiasm. His choreographic choices are slightly uneven, though the program's opening work, Pedro Ruiz's Sonetos de Amor (Love Sonnets), is the most coherent.

Mr. Ruiz sets his dance to a soundtrack of several artists, including the Argentine tango composer Astor Piazzolla and the Cuban pianist and composer Jose Maria Vitier. In Sonetos Mr. Ruiz experiments with different rhythms, whether restless or sensual, incorporating a gliding, romantic sensibility that sends dancers spinning and soaring through pirouettes, exuberant jumps and intricate partnering. On the surface it seems like a flurry of playful bodies, but a closer look reveals Mr. Ruiz's fluid and tender understanding of movement.

In the second work, Sugar in the Raw, the choreographer Michelle Manzanales, as she states in program notes, is looking to unearth a raw beauty. Dancers standing under tall, hazy spotlights pair up; as one bends backward, the curved body of another cushions the fall and slowly rotates. But there is a feigned solemn quality to Sugar in the Raw. After much writhing on the floor, which culminates in a unison pattern of blandly rendered gestural commotion, the predictable results are never quite raw enough.

Finally Mr. Vilaro's rambling Quinceanera, or Sweet 15, explores the ceremony of passage in which a 15-year-old girl enters womanhood. Here the narrative is confusing; scenes bubble over with a strange mixture of joviality and anguish, but the work is knitted together with little depth. This loss of innocence is felt, in part, like a tiny death. The problem is that you're never quite certain if Mr. Vilaro is in the mood to celebrate or to mourn.

Luna Negra Dance Theater continues through Feb. 3 at the New Victory Theater, 209 West 42nd Street, Manhattan; (646) 223-3010 or newvictory.org.

[Illustration]PHOTO: Members of the Luna Negra Dance Theater in Sonetos de Amor, at the New Victory Theater. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREA MOHIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES)