Toque - Choreography by Denise Locilento

I do not have the vocabulary to properly discuss the work in today's featured video but find it unusual enough and interesting enough to include it in this blog.

It is a work of modern dance titled Toque (which I believe translates roughly to the English noun, touch), choreographed by Brazilian, Denise Locilento, to the music of Piazzolla's Adios Nonino. In comparison to other modern dance performances done to Piazzolla's music, I am struck in this dance by the refreshing lack of hackneyed pseudo tango moves and by the detailed coordination of movement with the music. Even the movement of the fingers is coordinated. Those periods where the dancers form into clumps of writhing arms capture, for me, exactly the spirit of the music at that point as does the halting forward-backward movement found ca. 4' 15" into the video. I simply do not have words to describe what goes on in the video but I watched it all with anticipation, fascination and a smile. I only regret that the video ends abruptly before the music and, presumably the dance, reaches a climax.

This blog recently featured Paul Taylor's famous Caldera which is danced to Piazzolla's Escualo. While Ms. Locilento's work does, admittedly, not have the elegance of Tayor's work, I find it much more intellectually challenging and a much better transmitter of the emotion contained in the music. I can find almost literally no information on the web about Ms. Locilento or this dance troupe but to my very amateur eye, the dance, Toque, and these dancers deserve to be famous.

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