By SUSAN BROILI : The Herald-Sun

sbroili@heraldsun.com

Jul 5, 2007 : 1:42 pm ET

DURHAM – A stab, personal journals, frustration about not being good at sports and cultural factors figure into the dances Argentine choreographers are presenting at the American Dance Festival through Tuesday.

The ADF celebrates dance from the South American country in a six-day Argentine Festival that began Thursday and continues through Tuesday on Duke University's West Campus.

The festival kicks off with Krapp and Compania Contenido Bruto through Saturday and continues with Gabriela Prado and Eugenia Estevez, along with Edgardo Mercado and Susana Tambutti Sunday through Tuesday.

Since the companies did not arrive in time this week for in-person interviews, the choreographers spoke about their work via e-mail before they left Argentina.

The idea for their new dance “Olympia” came from being frustrated in sports, choreographers Luis Biasotto and Luciana Acuna said. The two also co-direct Krapp.

“We were all bad in sports, football, rugby, tennis, etc. In addition to this, we all had physical problems, with real – we mean serious – allergies, operations, one broken leg with a screw in it, etc.,” they said of the 70-minute dance.

The piece shows ex-Olympians “trying to recover the adrenaline (provoked) by the breath of crowds in the moment of glory, trying to feel or live that moment again,” they said.

The dance contains the humor and irony they're known for and especially the physical risk that is an important element of their work, they said.

'Invented place'

Compania Contenido Bruto director Fabian Gandini said that the name of his 2006 dance “Kevental” was a made-up word. “It's an invented place, where another time is possible, like some cities of comics,” the choreographer said of the 50-minute work.

Gandini, who also dances, started by observing the body as a machine with no emotion in order to develop the movement for the dance, he added.

He's happy that his company is making its ADF debut.

“It's great because it is a new audience for us, a new experience,” Gandini said.

The title of the 2004 “Lleuve” by Gabriela Prado and Eugenia Estevez literally means “it rains.” But these dancer-choreographers said for them, it expresses a feeling. “We think that in every language 'it rains' means to contemplate behind windows,” they said.

As research for the 60-minute dance, they read personal journals by Nijinsky, Kafka, Kurt Cobain and others as a way to investigate writing about daily life. “What stands out, what floats in the surface of memories, love, loneliness, those universal and personal subjects … things that are common for everybody and at the same time so personal for each one,” they said.

“We also got inspired by what was going on in 2003 in our country – the way that general emergency state had touched and humanized all of us,” they said.

Edgardo Mercado could not be reached in time for this article. But in press material, he describes his “Piano Difuso” as a multimedia dance that works with the lightness of the body, architectural shapes and “the power of new technologies as regulators of destinies and manipulators of perception.” In it, the dancer, Pablo Castronovo, finds himself lost in an urban labyrinth.

Before turning to dance, Mercado studied physics and taught upper-level mathematics.

He received a scholarship to attend the ADF in 1998. The year before, he had joined Nucleodanza, founded in 1974 by co-directors Margarita Bali and Susana Tambutti, a company that has performed before at the ADF.

Tambutti's “The Stab” was performed at the ADF in 1989, 1992 and 1996. The New York Times chose the work as one of the best premieres of 1989. In it, a woman plays the role of both victim and victimizer.

In an e-mail interview, Tambutti described the creation of this dance as a turning point in her life. For her, the dance has layers of meaning that include social relationships and “how many characters we have inside at each moment of our lives,” she said.

“Underneath, there is always the problem of identity … and the ambiguity of truth and reality. But at the end is a woman's sense of vulnerability and defenselessness,” she said.

The 1985 dance is also culturally significant, influenced as all choreographers were, by the political situation in Argentina in the 1970s, Tambutti said.

A military dictatorship ruled the country at the time and is credited, by human rights groups, with the “disappearance” of some 30,000 people believed to have been executed.

A military character appears in “The Stab.”

The dance is demanding to perform since it requires precision in manipulating props. “You need to control the art of balancing things and learn to juggle,” Tambutti said.

Krapp co-director Luciana Acuna, who will perform the dance this time, spoke of the emotionally demanding work as being like a video game that challenges the dancer to move forward. “You end up exhausted without knowing what happened and if you have succeeded or not,” she said.

Tambutti spoke of why she chose Acuna to do the solo.

“She is an incredible dancer, very gifted and her charisma on stage is unique,” Tambutti said.

For Tambutti, bringing “The Stab” back to the ADF is an emotional experience because of the support she has had from ADF director Charles Reinhart and his late wife, Stephanie, who had served as co-director.

“I remember with emotion talking with Stephanie and the bonds of friendship that I felt I had with her … She liked very much 'The Stab,' and, in a way, what I am feeling deep inside is that I am dedicating this performance to her memory,” Tambutti said.