The Souls of Their Shoes

David Zambrano who has described
himself as a “full-time movement researcher,” was an active presence in this
city’s Downtown dance scene for about 15 years starting in the early 1980s. But
since the mid-’90s, the Venezuelan dancer-choreographer been conducting his
research and pursuing his deep interest in cultural exchange primarily in
Europe, from his base in Amsterdam. This week, he returns to Danspace Project,
where he often showed his new works starting in the mid-’80s, with Soul Project, in which he and six others
offer their decidedly idiosyncratic, unpredictable interpretations of songs by
Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, James Brown and others.

First performed in Amsterdam in
2006, Soul Project features an
excitingly international cast of performers from Mozambique, Slovenia, Greece
and Slovakia. They’re all dancers whom Zambrano encountered in his extensive
travels teaching workshops. A strong believer in improvisation and spontaneity,
Zambrano shaped the piece through intensive rehearsals, but what happens at any
given performance remains quite open and full of surprises. It is essentially a
series of solos, but the order in which they are danced is not set nor is their
location within the performance space, which is left open. Zambrano encourages
the audience to follow the action as it unfolds, to get close to each
performer.

“The piece is made so that
the public will appreciate it more if they come closer to whoever is
performing. They often sit on the floor,” he explains by phone from Amsterdam,
likening the experience of the solos to that of listening to a storyteller. As Soul Project has been performed in
various cities, he has observed that each audience finds its own approach, and
route, into the work. “It’s not like the public always reacts the same way. It
depends on who guides them. Sometimes they really open up the whole room;
sometimes people immediately go and sit next to a performer and sometimes they
walk around.

“I always liked soul music,
since I was very young—especially the way soul singers sing,” he says. One aim
for the work was to discover body language with the same evocative intensity as
this music, that can touch a viewer in the same way those vintage soul singers’
voices touched him. But don’t expect to see dancing that you would find at a
club or a party. Led by Zambrano, these performers dig deep and move with
uninhibited gusto, and the results can be idiosyncratic and unexpected. It’s a
celebration of the music and of the individual responses to it.

Zambrano recalls other
ideas that went into Soul Project.
“One of the reasons that I made this piece is because in the one I made just
before, we were all together all the time onstage. It was a ‘social-centric’
group piece. We were constantly passing through each other, over under and
around, to jazz music. Right after that, I had an idea: why not make, for the
next one, an ‘egocentric’ dance piece, where the ego, or the personal, takes
the center of the situation. And then only that person is the one powerfully
and spontaneously performing. And we are all supporting that. The solos are all
improvisational but we play with five different movement qualities that we
practiced a lot. We rehearsed improvisation, performing for each other, for
eight weeks, every day.

“I had all the dancers put
their feet very well planted on the floor, sometimes for one hour, sometimes
three hours, sometimes the whole day. That was during the rehearsal, and some
of us do it during the piece also. My idea was, from my research: if the soles
of our feet are very well planted on the floor and we feel very well connected
with the earth, then our soul, or spirit, has more playfulness.

Adding to the distinctive
look of Soul Project are the
fantastical costumes, a freeform medley designed by Mat Voorter that allow for
plenty of exposed flesh. Zambrano sports a candy-cane-striped ringmaster’s
suit, in keeping with his role as the work’s emcee of sorts; orienting the
audience before the action gets underway. How that action unfolds, and what
that audience encounters, will be marked by the in-the-moment spontaneity that
Zambrano cherishes and nurtures in all his work.

Soul Project

Jan. 21–23, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, 131 E. 10
St. (at 2nd Ave.), 866- 811-4111 or www danspaceproject.org; 8, $18.