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“When we were putting together a list of artists for this year’s programming, we kept coming back to Omar. He has such an exciting, unique aesthetic that we felt was important to share with our dance patrons as well as our students.”
- Marsha Barsky
Chair of Dance Department at Kennesaw State University
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“When we were putting together a list of artists for this year’s programming, we kept coming back to Omar. He has such an exciting, unique aesthetic that we felt was important to share with our dance patrons as well as our students.”
- Marsha Barsky
Chair of Dance Department at Kennesaw State University
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The company Boca Tuya presented a duet, choreographed by Omar Román De Jesús and danced by De Jesús and Ian Spring. According to the program notes, the duet encourages “all to embrace their uniqueness and challenge the boundaries that confine them” and invites each one of us “to traverse the enigmatic landscapes of desire, identity, and aspiration.” The piece had a perfect name: “Like Those Playground Kids at Midnight.” Indeed, I felt like I was watching two adolescents who were beginning to explore their emerging and formidable physical strength through fierce and complex—but somehow still delicate and tender—partnering, and at the same time were confronting their incipient desire and budding sexuality, and doing it all with a kind of innocence and naïveté that forebode danger and perhaps even heartbreak. The piece was very poignant, often during brief moments of stillness. The original score for the piece, by Jesse Scheinin, countered and complemented the piece thoughtfully.
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"COME... THE SUN DOESN'T WAIT" by Omar Román De Jesús...
A performer snapped their fingers and snow began to fall from the ceiling, eventually lightly covering the stage in a white dust. The muted tone and uncanny dreamscape deepened. This was the careful construction of a dream world: mad and tender, dark and lovely, warm and frightening. It seemed to be a tender view into the crevices of a well-worn mind - a world built of overlapping memories or of imaginary friends half remembered.
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For the ‘If You Could Swallow The Sun’ dance performance, choreographer Omar Román De Jesús devised a flexible scenography made of lightweight paper accordion walls that dancers could play with on stage.
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Omar Román De Jesús’ duet Like Those Playground Kids at Midnight blew me out of the water. His style, particularly in Like Those Playground Kids at Midnight, is slithery and acrobatic. Cat-like. The chemistry between De Jesús and fellow dancer Ian Spring was electric, and the innovative partnering was playful and tender and rubbed up perfectly against Jesse Sheinin’s eerie musical score. The closing image—one man swinging the other in mid-air—brought to mind a figure skating death spiral, then a roundabout at a playground and then deep fear, and finally, the dizziness of young love. When this piece is performed again, I will be there.