Edgar Cortes pays tribute to his native Portugal

Edgar Cortes

Following a well-respected career with the Martha Graham Dance Ensemble and Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Edgar Cortes set out to develop his own projects in modern dance. Later this month, Edgar Cortes Dance Theater, formed in 2009, will present its latest ensemble production at The Riverside Theatre. SOL-I-DÓ pays tribute to the choreographer's homeland, inspired by remembered imagery, legends and music.

Scenes from SOL-I-DÓ
Cortes with Amelie Benard; and Benard below
(photos by Paul A. Machado)

"The show is not about the history of Portugal but what my country means to me," he says. "Different vignettes that remind me of what's getting a little bit lost--a wonderful, rich variety of traditional folk dances," such as the corridinho, an energetic, rotating circle dance from the Algarve, the southernmost region of Portugal.

Cortes, born in the southern municipality of Santiago do Cacém, resonates with people who live by the sea. He also loves the south's green landscape, its fields of poppies and sunflowers, all reflected in SOL-I-DÓ's design.

"SOL-I-DÓ is a play on words. It's part of a very popular song that everybody in Portugal knows when they're growing up. I'm not even sure if it's a real word or made up. The words go, 'They were both on the corner, playing the accordion and dancing the solido.' Solido is not really a dance but, in Portuguese, it rhymes with the rest of the words. It sounds very playful.

"Well, in America, not a lot of people know the song; it doesn't have the same effect. But what I did was divide the word. The way I'm writing it out--SOL-I-DÓ--gives it other meanings: Sol means sun. I--the "I" in the middle--means and [in Portuguese]. Dó is another word for pity or sorrow.

"That's a perfect way to describe my country: sunny and bright but also a lot of sorrow--which is kind of the way I feel, being away from home."

Without a doubt, Cortes had to include fado, the signature Portuguese music of sorrow and nostalgia.

"You think Portugal, and you have to think fado and sardines and codfish and Port wine. I have a dance about sardines as well! And, there's definitely comedy...a little."
For this former Trock, there must always be a little comedy.

Here's something about Cortes that I remember posting here, in June of last year, from a 2010 episode of Here's the Thing TV.


Edgar Cortes bio

See Edgar Cortes Dance Theater in SOL-I-DÓ, Friday-Saturday, September 27-28, 8pm, at The Riverside Theatre.

Ticket information

The Riverside Theatre
The Riverside Church
91 Claremont Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

I break for whimsy: Edgar Cortes Dance Theater

Ballet Trockadero dancer Edgar Cortes shows off his playful side with a colorful collection of objects from Norwegian trolls and fish pillows to handmade dolls and toilet seat covers. Who knew that rubber duckies came in so many varieties of devil? (Here's the Thing TV, July 29, 2010)


Edgar Cortes Dance Theater
UNICORNIUS is inspired by The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries currently on display at the Cloisters Museum in New York City (Edgar Cortes, January 11, 2012)

See QUATRO, new work by Edgar Cortes, at The Hispanic Society of America--Thursday and Friday, June 21-22, 7pm, free. Information: Click here to email.

The Hispanic Society of America
Audubon Terrace
Broadway between 155th and 156th Streets, Manhattan
Buses: M4 or M5 to Broadway and 155th Street
Subway: 1 to Broadway and 157th Street or C to 155th Street

Motion? Yes. Mavericks? Uh...

By the end of last year's presidential campaign, the perfectly blameless word maverick was left standing around in shredded underwear, a glazed look in its eye, nobody willing to give it the time of day. And I'm thinking that dance fans might do well to be skeptical once again whenever they see that word used to characterize and promote dancemakers. I'm thinking that, particularly, after a respectable, pleasant but not earthshaking hour at La MaMa Moves festival which sampled the work of several choreographers designated as "Mavericks in Motion."

In motion, they certainly were. But there were only a couple of moments that made me sit forward, and they belonged to Bergen Wheeler (dancing in Sydney Skybetter's The Personal and in her own Lone) and Kim Jones (partnered by Edgar Cortes in Cortes's Lagri Mar).

Jones and the Portuguese-born Cortes both hail from Graham backgrounds, and the romantic Lagri Mar gives them plenty of Graham-like archetypal gravitas and glamour to chew on. And Jones gives herself over to glamorous dancing like nobody's business.

Wheeler's the dark-haired, compact, incredibly supple dynamo who regularly takes Skybetter choreography--a striking combination of angularity and flow--to stratospheric levels because she's got not only exacting skill and focus but undeniable star quality. Bringing up the rear in Skybetter's Schubert suite of four solos, she is literally a precise, perfect art song in motion. Then, without much of a pause, Wheeler returns to launch a two-part solo of her own creation. Lone's first segment--set to Verdi's "Chi il Bel Sogno Di Doretta"--actually rocks steadier than her rocking out to Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On" but, at the end, her audience rightly greets her like the rock star she is.

There's still more La MaMa moving to see, from tonight at 8pm through Sunday at 8pm. If you're lucky, you'll catch Bergen Wheeler on Sunday night's program. Also, the "American Hybrids" program, running through Sunday looks fresh, promising, even potentially mavericky, with works by Monstah Black and Nicholas Leichter, Minneapolis's HIJACK/Kristen Van Loon and Arwen Wilder, and Bessie-Award winner Tom Pearson. And generations of Cunningham dance artists will take the stage from May 29-31.

Company and schedule details and ticketing

Box office: 212-475-7710