New York is hosting a company from Buenos Aires named De La Guarda in a work titled "Villa Villa." It's an acrobatic piece that wants description above all: the audience stands in a big, dark, vacant room (it used to be a bank lobby, actually). Overhead, paper is spread across the entire ceiling, back-lit (or top-lit, if you prefer). We watch shadows of people swinging above it. Then the performers break through the paper, and a couple of showers rain down on us (really). Paper falls on us, confetti, balloons, plastic frogs... The bulk of the performance consists of the cast, singly and in groups, flying from the ceiling, running the room's circumference overhead, or up the papered wall, chasing and then grasping each other, or swinging in a cluster of eight, a whole community lost in the void. They're often followed by hand-held spotlights. And there are more complex images: a man in a suit stands on a platform floating over us; under the platform a man stands upside-down, naked. The company's name refers to a guardian angel, and the show's title implies a village or ghetto. Indeed, we get that sense of guardianship from the show, when the actors scream joyously into the mikes (I usually hate screaming, but not here), playing drums and horns. The audience -- need I say? -- whoops and cheers at all this. We're encouraged to participate even further as the cast -- grounded -- pick people up or jump on their shoulders (really). It's a great idea to involve us physically, but it doesn't work entirely - we've already been set up as observers. And the range of visual metaphor is limited. But this is a stunningly creative show, creating images that make our "performance art" pale. I was enormously satisfied to see a performance presented over our heads, freeing up a heaven of space. If this is an indication of the Argentine stage, we want more of it. Why doesn't our government fund visits?
