© Tania Perez Salas Compania de Danza Tania Perez-Salas company reviews more Oksana Khadarina reviews

“As a vehicle for metaphors, water is a shifting mirror... Water is deep and shallow, life-giving and murderous... Water remains a chaos until a creative story interprets its seeming equivocation as being the quivering ambiguity of life,” wrote Ivan Illich (1926-2002) in his work “H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness.” This short essay was a source of inspiration and choreographic creativity for Pérez-Salas, 30-year old choreographer, who for her genuine artistry and multiple talents as an actress, dancer, and choreographer, is eloquently called “the muse of Mexico.”

Performed in a 500-gallon shallow pool of water, Waters of Forgetfulness is an ingenious and captivating work. The ritualistic and spiritual nature of the choreography transposes the dance in a series of symbolic pictures of human worship and reverence for water as a primary source of life. The splashes the dancers create moving through the water create beautiful arches of droplets in the darkness. Illuminated from above, they sparkle with brilliance in rays of light, creating mesmerizing effects. Pérez-Salas was able to create maximum expression with choreography that is very human and natural; the dancers walk on the water, they wash themselves, they make love. They experience physical and emotional elation by performing ritualistic cleansing and purification of their bodies and souls, stretching their arms heavenward as if celebrating the glory of the gods, life, and the life-giving water. Extraordinary in its originality and realization, this dance kept the audience awestruck throughout the performance.

“An erotic encounter begins with the sight of the desired body. Whether clothed or naked, the body is a presence: a form that for an instant is every form in the world...Without a soul... there is no love, but neither is there love without a body... Both love and eroticism – the double flame – are fed by the original fire: sexuality,” wrote celebrated Mexican poet, writer and Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz in a set of fascinating essays united under the title, “Double Flame: Love and Eroticism.” Inspired by Paz’s writings and set to the music of Dave Seeman, J.SW. Bach, and Handel, Anabiosis (2002), Pérez-Salas’ vision and interpretation of the mysterious relationship between eroticism, love, and sex, was the opening dance of the program. This work is a manifestation of the beauty of a human body expressed in a series of dreamlike, elusive or revealing erotic images. The choreographer succeeds in direct translation of human feelings (ecstasy, angst, longing, desire) into the language of motion.
 

Created in 2002, Visitor, another work presented in the program, explores essential traits of human relationships and emotions. Full of gripping images, this dance offers a palette of intense and dynamic choreographic movements. Imaginative stage and lighting design that incorporated moving panels mirroring silhouettes of the dancers intensified the powerful effect of this work.

Pérez-Salas translates her love of literature, visual arts, and music into the language of dance. What attracts me in her work is her unique ability to create dances that are poignant and provocative at the same time. She delicately bridges together movements, music, and light in one harmonious whole, expressively voicing her personal experience and emotions in deeply theatrical and visually appealing choreography. The intelligence, the power, and the beauty of her work are self-evident and, most important of all, make a profound, lasting impression.