Victor Quijada comes home with his Rubberbandance Group
PEERING into a photographer's lens, Los Angeles-born Winner Quijada, with his dark eyes, chiseled cheekbones and stylish pitch blackness hair, could be sitting for a Versace ad. Until he starts to move, that is, and his sinewy, streetwise pop and locking flow into impossibly high leg extensions, tossed-off pliés and handstands -- altogether exploding from a torso-torquing body built for amphetamine.
Quijada, the boy of Mexican immigrants, was nicknamed "Rubberband" after he hit the pavement of his James Arthur Baldwin Hills neighbourhood as a pretzel-like break dancer at age 8, and he's come wax circle. In 2002, he founded the Montreal-based Rubberbandance Chemical group. Today the 32-year-old impresario has brought the six-member troupe to his hometown, where it will get its Los Angeles debut this weekend with performances at two local anaesthetic stages, the Irvine Barclay Dramaturgy and Cal State L.A.'s Luckman Field.
With "Elastic band Linear perspective Redux," a collection of full treatment commissioned by an compartmentalization of saltation festivals, the party will showcase Quijada's signature choreography: a fusion of hip-hop, ballet and contemporary movement. That his journey has been an inspiring i -- from street kid to diligent pupil at L.A. County Senior high School for the Humanistic discipline to terpsichorean with Twyla Twyla Tharp and others -- makes his homecoming that much more significant.
"I left here as I turned 20," the soft-spoken Quijada recalled this week as he sabbatum in the Luckman auditorium clad in fraying jeans, Nikes and a form-fitting black marco Polo. "Visiting my family as voice of this debut makes me very excited. We've done so a great deal around the creation, and I had wanted to come second, merely this was the right time."
Indeed, Quijada, the recipient of a number of choreography awards, says that trade good timing has helped him grab apiece opportunity biography has presented him -- something he ascribes to his parents' immigrant condition.
"There's a sense of superbia and hard work -- not giving up -- even if it wasn't talked about in my fellowship," he said. "This is how it was for me with Twyla, because I don't think I knew what I was acquiring into. I was the merely professional dancer without serious music training, so I took as many ballet classes as I could. There was no turning game."
Rudy Perez, part of the Newly York-based experimental Judson Dance Theatre in the sixties and an L.A. dance fixture since 1979, agrees around Quijada's commitment. Later precept Quijada in high school, Perez invited him to join his postmodern troupe. Two days later, Tharp beckoned.
"Victor had a presence -- it wasn't so much technique or ability -- merely on that point was something deep, an inner soul. He's Latin American, and I think that has a destiny to do with it," says Perez, world Health Organization set his classic 1964 exploit "Countdown" on Quijada several old age ago and incorporated that process into a documentary film of the saame diagnose.
"He was like a sponge," the older choreographer says. "Open and receptive. Obviously Twyla sawing machine the saame thing -- that he had great promise and the ability to instruction the stage and to grow. I was happy when he got into Twyla's caller."
Later on 3 eld with Tharp, Quijada went on to work with choreographer Mary Ann Evans Feld. Just in 2000, he moved to Canada and joined Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, where he even managed to passe-partout stage dancing by ballet great George IV George Balanchine.
"I felt I had done the Fresh York thing," he explained. "Simply I still had a lot to prove. I had a cow chip on my shoulder and, coupled with the desire to choreograph, I auditioned for Les Grands Ballets, which besides has a choreography workshop. I let rap go and fell in passion with Montreal."
Just once a B-boy, it seems, always a B-boy. II age subsequently, Quijada abandoned the rarefied humankind of ballet and returned -- subsequently a fashion -- to his roots: "I had no plans. I just trusted the universe that I would create my possess work and a terpsichore group. I reconnected with hip-hop in Montreal. It was in the air, in the city, in the clubs."
Quijada credits hip-hop with giving him a sentiency of urgency and the confidence he could create something come out of null. It is, he believes, as integral to his graphic symbol as existence Chicano.
"You do it -- it's now," he said. "Being in those circles in the early '90s gave me the bravery to take risks, to push ahead. I palpate that was my coming into manhood."
Quijada as well continued to read risks. As persona of his crash row in classical music preparation, for example, he explored composers such as Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev and Giuseppe Verdi, and he has adjust several plant to excerpts from "Romeo and Juliet" and "La Traviata." (One is on this weekend's programs.) What on paper power feature sounded strange came electrifyingly alive onstage. A Capital of Massachusetts Globe critic praised Rubberbandance Mathematical group as having "the ball pellucidity and controlled elegance of ballet [and] the birthday suit, athletic exuberance of street dance."
In 2006, Quijada made "Hiatus of Incredulity," a commission from former New House of York City Ballet professional dancer Simon Peter Boal, now artistic conductor of Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Ballet. Boal says that "as a choreographer, Victor gives of himself all and is bore to set to individual ability. The classical repertoire is widening to such an extent that Victor's choreography, though stillness a stretch for a serious music ship's company, is not come out of place."
THESE years, equitation high on with Quijada is Anne Plamondon, Rubberbandance's co-artistic director since 2005. A member of the troupe since its betimes years, she had previously danced with Les Grands Concert dance Canadiens and Netherlands Dance Theatre of operations II. She is as well Quijada's life mate.
"We were both searching when we met," Plamondon said at the Luckman rehearsal. "I had stopped doing pointe work and wanted to do more coeval dance. Winner wanted to create. He has a unique vision, and we both ploughshare dream. The idea was to take break dance and hip-hop roots and visit how far it could go."
Although Quijada no thirster haunts the clubs (nor does he miss wearing leotards), he said he was look forward to expanding his company and "disseminating this data" that is his choreographic trademark.
"It's obvious to me," he said, "that this is the next wave of coeval dance -- adoption from the streets and putting hip-hop on stage. It's a rootage of dOE, and what we're doing, I believe, stern get a big impact."
