Airborne beauty from GravityWorks
By Lulu Torbet March 28, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Dance
“Animas”
GravityWorks
Fri–Sat, Apr 4–5, 8pm
Teatro Ángela Peralta
Mesones 82
150/100/50 pesos

The goal of the collaborative aerial dance troupe GravityWorks is to leave the audience with the feeling that they have seen something beautiful and memorable. They amply succeed with their current offering, “Animas,” which will have its final performances on Friday, April 4 and Saturday, April 5.

The troupe works with trapeze and double trapeze, lira (spinning hoop) and silks—long swaths of shimmering fabric that hang from the top of their free-standing triangular rig. The performers climb and contort and wind themselves through the silks in complex patterns, often setting up sudden falls that plunge them twisting to the ground, only to be caught at the last minute.

The complex double-trapeze act also has its heart-stopping moments, with the performers catching each other just as disaster seems inevitable. All of this, bathed in ever-changing light and curling smoke, accompanied by dramatic music, sustains the air of mystery and the unexpected.

In “Animas,” the journey from Paradise to Hell and back unfolds in a lavish mix of the graceful, sinuous movements and fanciful costumes of GravityWorks’ elegant dancers, framed by carefully choreographed light and color. The result is an evocative and immersive experience. With two new performers, Christian Baumgartner and Mariana Alatorre, who are also trained actors, “Animas” is the first GravityWorks piece to have a story line. 

Though GravityWorks is certainly more Cirque du Soleil than Barnum & Bailey, the dramatic otherworldly mood of the main story is intermittently injected with entertaining doses of levity from their juggling clown Bombolini and his long-suffering assistant, Bagelito. While the rigging is changed between acts, the performers dance on stage, creating their magic with complex patterns of colorful scarves, batons, and even fire.

GravityWorks has performed in San Miguel since 2001, at music festivals, private parties, in theaters and at open-air forums. On Saturday nights, they often can be found flying through the air at Z Club, the new nightclub behind the Immigration offices.




The troupe was founded in Canada by Nisha Ferguson, but troupe members have come from all over the world. In addition to founder Ferguson, the current mixed Mexican and Canadian troupe includes Eva Álvarez, Amanda Velazquez, Cecilia Corona, Mariana Alatorre and the one male member of the troupe, Christian Baumgartner. Héctor Juárez is the clown, Bombonini, and Ferguson’s son Joshua plays his assistant Bagelito. As with most small artistic collaborations, hard work is a requirement for participation—not only the two to four hours of practice, four days a week, but doing one’s share of all the behind-the-scenes requirements, from choreography and selection of music, to making their own costumes and doing their own makeup.

Tickets are available at the Peralta box office.

Photographer and painter Lulu Torbet had a graphic design studio in New York before being lured into the writing game. She is the author or ghostwriter of over 30 books, mostly in the areas of crafts, psychology and memoir.