Exóticos ou simplesmente dramáticos?

O New York Times publica hoje uma crítica ao espectáculo Amaramália, que a Companhia Portuguesa de Bailado Contemporâneo, dirigida por Vasco Wellenkamp, apresentou na passada sexta feira, 11 Novembro, no Center for the Performing Arts do Brooklyn College. A apresentação inclui-se num conjunto de espectáculos genericamente intitulados World of Dance. A crítica de Claudia La Rocco, Shall We Fado? On a Cloud of Fatalism, Shall We Fly?, pode ser consultada aqui. Eis um resumo:

Attempting to translate a nation through dance is a strange thing. Companhia Portuguesa de Bailado Contemporâneo [...] promised, in program notes, to deliver the "innate Portuguese sentiment" expressed in the country's emotive folksongs, called fado. [...] The mood was both fatalistic and vibrant, a party for mortals sentenced to an unspecified but certain doom. Ms. Rodrigues sang, "People who wash in the river/ Who with their axes hew/ The boards of my coffin/ There are those who value you." [...] Mr. Wellenkamp gave us over an hour of hair flipping as choreography, along with legs sweeping through taut extensions, men whipping women around and everybody melodramatically lunging to the floor. If life in Portugal is dramatic, it is also, as seen in Mr. Wellenkamp's choreography, unvaried.