Asesinos por una Noche Gets Experimental About Cuban Politics

Local choreographer Alexey Taran, filmmaker Carla Forte, and the Bistoury Physical Theater Company want us to confront our demons. Their new and extravagantly multimedia project Asesinos por una Noche (Assassins for One Night), performed on Friday, revolves around a simple principle: "as above, so below."

More specifically, brutal government regimes are simply scaled-up versions of violent relationships between individuals, and freedom is only possible if we are willing to look honestly at our own relationships. Not necessarily a comfortable exercise, but Asesinos por una Noche offers an opportunity for catharsis. Recently, we spoke with Taran about Asesinos por una Noche and the ideas behind it.

New Times: Tell us about the play that inspired this project.

Alexey Taran: Our work is based on a play, also called Asesinos por una

Noche, by Cuban playwright José Triana. He lives in France now but the

play was written in the '60s, when he was living in Cuba.

It was written at a politically charged moment.

Correct. But 20 years later, it's still very important because it's

universal. You can apply it to any place, and any time, because it's

based on the human being. It's based on the monsters that we have within

us, and the censure that we have inside ourselves. There was an

interview recently with Jose Triana, and he was saying that now he has

started to understand the characters of his play. He realized that the

problem isn't only society, the problem is also between brothers.

Does the play directly shape your performance or does it serve as more of an inspiration?

It's an inspiration. We are trying to make a new interpretation of this

work, with a new language of movement and text. We have a live musician

too, who is always responding to our sounds, our texts, and our music.

So it's a multimedia play.

What do you gain by using multiple media?

It's a reflection of life, because we're living in a multimedia world.

When you are walking on the street you always have some kind of noise,

you have people talking, you have music, you have some video on a

television in a store. It's the reality we are living as human beings in

this society.

I know that you have an extensive background in ballet. I'm curious if there is still some trace of ballet in this piece.

Ballet, in our work, is a reference. You won't see a classical

ballerina. For example in the ballet you always have a cycle. You have a

coda, you have a starting point, and then you finish and start again.

We work in a very similar way. We always have a cycle in our works.

it in that way.

Yes, we try to use ballet to break the language of ballet and create a

new kind of movement. We try to use our bodies and for example, our

hands, like we are dancing a big classical ballet play. But we want to

use the language in a new way.

years. How has your experience been, within Miami's dance community?

The community of dance and art in Miami is very fresh and it's growing

each day. It's growing very fast but it's not so big. I think that in

less than five years, Miami's dance scene will be very strong.

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-- Annie Hollingsworth of artburstmiami.com