"El Circo's" heart beats again at Liceo

www.buenosairesherald.com
Buenos Aires Herald. Sunday, November 9, 1986

by Edward Shaw

It's not every day a heart patient gets to dance on stage for the doctors who mended him. And the reopening of Alberto Agüero's El Circo was the artist's expression of gratitude to the team of doctors who got him ticking, and dancing again.

El Circo is an underground expression of joy. It ran at off-beat hours several months last year when Enrique Pinti's Salsa Criolla was in recess, and word of mouth filled each of its three weekly performances. Critical acclaim was universal and to the Establishment's surprise the show won a Molière Award. To get the show off the ground China Zorrilla, amazed when she saw Agüero's big top, ran a telephone campaign worthy of a Yankee politician. This time around she barely got a seat for re-opening night in the packed Liceo Theatre.

Halfway through his magical performance, Agüero, a lumpen clown creased by a dashing magician, is done in by a villain. A beautiful acrobat fetches his sill-beating heart and returns it to Agüero's chest, sews in together and the show goes on. Agüero, earlier this year, lost a chance to take his show to the States because of his own heart surgery.

Agüero inhabits a world where fact and fantasy intermingle. He creates a dream-like mirage of the passionate world of the circus where mime, tap dance, ballet and acrobatics blend and balance. The zany scenes approach the brink, but bounce back in time to leave the spectator face-to-face with Agüero's redeeming spirit and talent. Costuming and make-up are superb, surreal and shocking.

Agüero as a kid in Tucumán fell victim of the charms of the circus, succumbed to Jean Louis Barrault's interpretation as a mime 25 years ago -an improbable scenario for a provincial capital a quarter of a century ago- and the added the beat of tap dancing to his repertoire. He came to Buenos Aires and created a tap dancing academy which flourished, though he couldn't find a formal outlet for his own creativity.

Pablo Zunino of Tiempo, asked Agüero, "What is El Circo? Its creator answered, "It's a way of telling the sensations I've felt all my life. The clown, the witch, the acrobats, the angel, the lions, the 'bombistas'- these are the characters. In reality they combine into one, into anyone. There are all the components of a human being." In the final scene of the first act, the full cast, dresses alike, dance Fantasy in Black and White. In this number the multifaceted Agüero reduces the complexity of his vision of man to the duality of black and white. In the Final Salute, a Fellinesque frolic, Agüero's characters reestablish their individuality in harmony, the best tribute to a creator and the best solution for the complex collection of characteristics which can combine in any individual.

El Circo had a three day run at the Coliseo last year. Buddy Day, a generous empresario who keeps the charming Liceo alive with challenging shows, agreed to squeeze the Agüero production into the cracks in his schedule. And now Agüero returns to dance, to play, to dream before an enthusiastic audience delighted to be swept away by the joy of a 'little person', Mirtha Fuentes, whose expressivity and agility put her on a par with the other performers twice her size.

The magician is magnificent with a cape that covers the stage when stretched. The dancers leap, flip and curl, occasionally chased by a quartet of ferociously provocative lions. Agüero himself has a trio of mime acts and weaves himself through the show as the central figure to any circus tale, the tragicomic clown.

Fellini would flip, Gene Kelly would bound with joy to see the troupe do Singin' in the Rain and any porteño with six australs can have the time of his life for a pair of hours on Sundays & Mondays at 9pm, Saturdays at 6pm, Liceo Theatre, Rivadavia & Paraná.

Fellini would flip, Gene Kelly would bound with joy to see the troupe do Singin' in the Rain
-Edward Shaw (Buenos Aires Herald)

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