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Cambuyon
by R. Pikser An hour’s worth of energy can be enough to keep us going for a week, at least. Spain´s Canary Islands lie off the coast of Morocco. During the period of the Spanish Empire, the Canaries were the main stopover for Spanish galleons on their way to the Americas and subsequently they continued to be a point of contact for all of the Atlantic shipping trade. The sailors who worked on the ships brought their cultures with them. The resulting cultural cross-currents, including the British Isles and possibly farther down the coast of Africa, engendered a rich, mixed culture. Perhaps because of the African influence of the Canaries, or the influence of those from the lower African continent, including the slaves, Cambuyón’s presentation has more of a Caribbean/African feeling to its rhythms, rather than an Arab feeling.
The music of Cambuyón is that of poor people: sailors and slaves. All the instruments are derived from objects that would be lying around a port: boxes, wooden palettes, bottles, buckets, sand, and the body and all its parts. There is clapping of hands, the backs of hands, tapping on arms, slapping on chests and legs, like playing hambone. There is wordless singing, like scat. There is singing that sounds like a trombone, and singing in falsetto and at a regular pitch. There are bottles filled to varying amounts to create different pitches that are tapped. There are boxes of all sizes played with hands and mallets. There is clog dancing and sand dancing and tap dancing with proper tap shoes, tapping on boards, on boxes; all of it showing how much music can be made with just our selves. It is a lesson in imagination and the will of everyone to create beauty from their surroundings, no matter how impoverished. If there is a theme to the performance, it is competition that turns into synthesis, another good lesson. At the top of the show, a man with makeshift clogs starts to dance on one of the pallets of the supposed port we see on stage. He is joined by another man, on another pallet, but the second man has proper tap shoes, so he can do fancier footwork. They vie, they challenge each other, they top one another, and finally they go off together as friends. This opening idea of the show is carried throughout. Everyone in the group does everything, but different people have their specialties. There is one main singer, there are two main percussionists, and two main tappers. Hip-hop, another African derived dance form, is mainly performed by the two women in the seven person group. Their movements are alternately fluid and boisterously acrobatic; in fact, they are the dancers who perform most of the acrobatics. Like tap, hip-hop has a limited vocabulary, but Cambuyón takes care of this problem by framing each element of the performance, whether dance or music, as a relationship, giving a dramatic shape to the sections of the performance. Carlos Belda, the artistic director of the troupe, who also directed this show, has thought through every element of it. The pacing of the show is assured by the changes in dynamics form one segment to another, underscored by Dimas Cedrès’ sensitive lighting design. The few projections on the scrim may suggest a tone from time to time, but are not an end in themselves. But the essence of the show is the dynamism of the performers and the body and the playful creativity that people can find within themselves. The performers play with each other and their pleasure in doing so endears them to us. Their energy, especially trapped and bouncing around in the small house of the New Victory, has everyone, adults and children alike, dancing out of the theater. Cambuyón 
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