Ballet Hispanico debuts at IU

Ballet Hispanico sashayed across IU Auditorium’s stage Saturday night.

The troupe, a New York City-based company, is the nation’s leading Latino Dance Organization that travels, performing ballets with Latin flair.

At the Bloomington performance, the show was divided into four acts with different themes and choreographers.

The first act, “Umbral,” was choreographed by Edgar Zendejas. It featured the full cast of dancers in minimal black costuming and was inspired by the Mexican celebration Dia de los Muertos.

Claire Ellis was in the audience Saturday night and said she was caught off guard by some of the more modern elements, which included nudity and a scene where a phone rang out in the audience during a solo set to no music.

The soloist paused in the middle of his dance, came to the front of the stage and angrily shushed the audience.

“I had no idea it was part of the show,” Ellis said. “It was funny, bold and brave.”

The second act, “Sombrerisimo,” choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, featured six male dancers in corporate-looking costumes exchanging hats with one another.
 
Through music cues and extreme lighting changes, “Sombrerisimo” incorporated humor into the performance.

Audience member Claire Turner said she liked the way “Sombrerisimo” incorporated aspects of everyday life to make the ballet feel more “alive.”

“I love how they used aspects of mundane normal life like the hats or the cell phone in the first one,” Turner said. “It made it feel so much more alive and real. With the boys, it sometimes felt like they were on the way to somewhere in a train station. I really liked that.”

The third dance, “Sortijas,” was choreographed by Cayetano Soto. It was a short duet, and, according to the program, Soto “ponders the unavoidable pull of fate in our lives” through dance.

The final set, “Mad’moiselle,” featured the entire cast again.

It was also choreographed by Ochoa and featured more props than any previous set.

The females in the cast donned matching short red wigs, red feather boas, red opera-length gloves, white fans and a pair of red lace up heels.

The dance was set to music that faded in and out of a speech in Spanish about a woman named Maria.

In a shocking conclusion, the men also wore the red wigs, and the women wore matching skin-toned bras, making it difficult to decipher sex among the group.

“It was incredible,” Turner said. “Just so full of life.”

Follow reporter Janica Kaneshiro on Twitter @JanicaKaneshiro.