Translated from French review by Gérard Charut, Est Républicain, February 9th, 2000.

  TAP DANCE AND SYMPHONIC ORCHESTRA

NANCY, France : Mari Fujibayashi and Olivia Rosenkrantz, both trained in the rigorous New York tap scene, astonished and delighted an audience who, without prejudice, nevertheless thought tap was an activity to kill time along with yoga and needlepoint. Not at all! Like the best modern dancers Olivia and Mari created with their movements and rhythms a full art form that combined three muses and more.

Jeanine Védrenne, a French storyteller whose golden lips let Pablo Neruda's red and black words run, represented the muse of poetry. She paid tribute to Lorca's mourning voice, the deep phrases of Japanese writer Akutagawa Ryûnosuke whose infernal tale meets Orpheus myth, and finally Nicolas Guillen's venomous incantation, a chant to kill a snake that whispers and wraps itself in the convolutions of fear.

 François Legée, the very eclectic conductor of Gradus Ad Musicam (extended with the Arcadia brass ensemble) directed the muse of music. He wanted this evening to be unusual and offered a magnificent gift to the audience: The rediscovery of the great Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, whose dark and violent music is pierced by painful trumpeting that holds all the tragedy of his short existence of alcoholism.

 A GROUNDED DANCE

The last muse of course is the muse of dance. To serve all the themes spoken above and all the poetry of the world, Olivia Rosenkrantz and Mari Fujibayashi put in each one of their dances a supplement of soul. They grab from the bottom an earthy strength then pull it up to offer it in the cup of their hands. The floor is giving them strength. They hit it, fondle it, and voluptuously rub it with the palms of their feet. Their body becomes a percussive instrument that completes the orchestra, never pitting itself against it with this sense of American competition they left without any regrets on Manhattan Island.

 Their hands are birds, their bodies serpents, and their feet with a mind of their own reflect energy dynamically. Their feet dance almost silently a mournful flamenco. With rubber boots on they syncopate a South African miner's chant. While their hands are put together stretching towards the sky in a prayer, their feet are beating hell while it is still hot!

Revueltas (press)