Review: Handle with Care by Zatero Dance
by David Glen Robinson

ZATERO Dance is yet another new, young dance company in Austin in what is becoming a distinct post-pandemic explosion of creative performance in the fine arts of theatre and dance. ZATERO Dance, headed by performing co-artistic directors Natasha Small and Liliana Zapatero, takes its place with SMORG (Emily Rushing and Carissa Topham), Alyson Dolan and friends, and the revivified Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company in giving public performances (masks suggested but optional) of innovative movement and flirtations with new forms.

 

These modern/contemporary companies have one major advantage in common: they center around Café Dance in west Austin. Kate Warren’s artistic institution on Hancock Drive is an incubator of dance skills, performances, and career development. In their curtain speech before Handle with Care, Small and Zapatero declared that they met in Café Dance classes when they first started dance.

 

Handle with Care showed the impressive results of their meeting. The show offered seven pieces of contemporary dance by some of the best dancer-choreographers in Austin.

 

“Laundry Day” held the lead position in the show. The piece was the choreography of Anna Bauer, a duet with Jairus Carr, and a work in her series of dances inspired by domestic places. In this case, the place was the laundromat. Impossibly, Bauer made the place exciting, even while addressing the theme of boredom while watching the drier tumble all your clothes, energy, hopes, and aspirations. It was mute and pantomimic, but Bauer and Carr made it all work simply with strong peaks and valleys of energy and highly skilled technique. And then the piece veered from its apparent vector, well away from its schtick. Upstage, Carr took a black garment from a white clothes hanger held by Bauer. Then Bauer “played closet” by holding the white clothes hanger aloft in sculptural stillness for what seemed like 500 years but was 5 minutes in reality. Carr walked downstage and performed a marvelous abstract, athletic dance without pantomime or thematic cuing. The bit was exquisite, like encountering an abstract painting in an exhibit of floral watercolors. “Laundry Day” was beautiful original choreography and performance.

 

The producers structured their show by following strong pieces with strong pieces. “Miserylieu (part one)” was choreographed and performed by Alexa Capareda, and as the title suggested it was a contemporary solo of the outward expression of inner misery. Capareda is a master both of ballet and contemporary technique. Her inner misery and emotionality were expressed on the contemporary side of her skill sets, athletically and with skillful use of all levels, especially on the floor. In her last few solos, Capareda has included a costume piece of a light blue jacket or blazer. One suspects a through-line here. The performers in her “Miserylieu (part two)” wore mixed blazers in that piece.

 

“Freshly Poured” was choreographed by ZATERO Dance and performed by Liliana Zapatero. The key to it was the program note: “Concrete is everywhere. It supports the structures that hold our lives in place.” Zapatero performed several phrases that suggested beginnings and expansiveness. The end was stillness, the concrete starting to set. The piece suggested Zapatero’s commitment to make ZATERO Dance work as something of permanence, with a future, its tender beginning right here, right now—her dance a manifesto in movement.

 

“Miserylieu (part two)” was the high energy group extension of “part one”, choreographed by Alexa Capareda. She illuminated the discontents within us expanded to the everyday causes of such, to include rush-hour traffic, career abuses, and relational conflicts. And she did it with an ensemble of Austin’s most powerful and expressive dancers. They are Celeste Camfield, Katie Hopkins, Clay Moore, Aidan Rodgers, and Melissa Sanderson. Interestingly, the choreography required of the dancers many quick-changing emotional states expressed with the face in addition to energetic movement throughout the body. A small amount of pantomime lubricated the changes of state. Capareda is quickly mastering choreography in both ballet and contemporary domains. She choreographed and produced Maria and the Mouse Deer, an original and highly regarded youth ballet for Ballet Austin, now touring Texas.

 

This reviewer is discovering, excitedly, gems of haiku lodged in the floorboards of the Austin performance vehicle. Capareda offered two for “part two”:

 

Wax doll work facades/oversleep coffee hurry! /fight traffic drama/

 

and

 

Impostor freak out/list tasks do it zoom smile joy/misery repeat/.

 

“Cotton” choreographed by ZATERO Dance and performed by Natasha Small was an evocation of childhood with work contrasted with play in modern cotton fields. Again, the floorwork was the most compelling aspect of the piece. Small, who has performed in many other group pieces, may have performed her first solo piece in the personal “Cotton.”

 

“eat where you” was a piece by Kelsey Oliver so original it may well be unique, but then, originality and uniqueness are Oliver’s stock in trade. The piece is a work of movement-based performance art, which Oliver is investigating in greater and greater depth. Performance art is a waning trend, and Oliver may well be the last performance artist in Austin. Certainly, others who might claim that form cannot match her physical skills, technique, and choreographic sense. She entered the stage in a bulky plastic trash bag dress with a loop behind the neck and open down the back to the coccyx dimple just above the top of her butt crack. That feature highlighted the androgynous qualities of her muscular back and shoulders. She was also wrapped in orange nylon alpinist rope, several feet of which extended off stage whence she came. The performance began with her perfectly lip-syncing her own remixed monster voice off the soundtrack. That was followed by expert technique phrases that seemed to define a rectangular space on the stage. She then revealed the performance art principle of laboring to accomplish tasks. The tasks were pulling onstage a tray on casters surmounted by several metal dinner forks, that work accomplished by dragging with the ropes and not using the hands. More dance ensued, some of it while wearing the forks. And the dance built to an Oliverian climax of thrashing, well-controlled, and highly athletic movement. On the dance level, the piece was a highly disciplined and trained work of expressive art. On the performance art level, was the delimited rectangular space a symbolic dinner table? Were the forks on the body suggesting that the performer was meat to be eaten? Whatever the answers, Oliver is to be applauded for forming and performing an exceptionally complex work of art with confidence and boldness. Please invite us to the next performance.

 

 

“Blue Collar” was choreographed and performed by ZATERO Dance, i.e., Natasha Small and Liliana Zapatero. The two performed choreographic work all through the duet, showing shapes and balances while the soundtrack gave us a sound effect piece entitled “Excavator Loading Rocks in Truck.” The theme was not difficult to establish. The co-artistic directors seemed to be saying that now that they are here, they are ready to carry out the practical and artistic work that needs to be done. So far, they are making it look easy and giving audiences thoughtful and satisfying dance experiences.

 

ZATERO Dance is heartily welcomed to an apparently resurgent dance community. With Handle with Care, they have paid their dues for entré to the group. There is a lot more work ahead in the post-pandemic world. Some consolidation of companies in the community is to be expected. Working together will offer more support and shared expertise in dealing with the challenges. ZATERO Dance has taken the first step on the long road to esthetic fulfillment in dance.

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Handle with Care
by Zatero Dance
Zatero Dance

July 15, 2023 at 7 p.m.

July 16 at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.