Brute Force

On our penultimate day in Avellaneda, Francesca and I headed into Abasto to pick up our tickets for a show in Recolleta. Francesca had seen this show half a dozen times before when she was in New York, and wanted me to see it with her in it’s native home of Buenos Aires. We picked up our tickets from a company called Ticketek which we found on the first floor of the Abasto mall. This is where we came on our first walking tour almost 6 weeks before; and again when we came to watch Star Trek on the big screen. We again stopped in the food court for some nice Chinese lunch (rice and noodles), and then jumped back on the Subte underground train and a bus to get to Recolleta.

It was 4.40pm and the show started at 5 so we decided to wander around the famous Recolleta cemetery where we also did a walking tour weeks before – we realized then that we really had seen all of the things that we wanted to see in Buenos Aires and now were seeing it twice! We both agreed that it would be good to leave the city and get back on the road, and that is what we planned to do the next day by going to Rosario.

We saw lots of the cemetery’s cats and lots of the cool, gothic-looking mausoleums, of course, and then made our way a few doors down to the cultural center where the show was based.

We handed over our tickets and entered what looked like a makeshift bar area that reminded me of the Roadmender nightclub in Northampton. Indeed this place doubled a s nightclub on various weeknights. There was a huge crowd of people there, and no sooner had we handed in our coats at the guardaropa, or cloakroom, they had all vanished; ushered into the main room where the show takes place.

We followed, me a little nervously as I did not know what to expect at all! A few days before I had made a cash flow trip to Uruguay on the passenger ferry between Buenos Aires and another place where we had already been: Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. I spent a few days there, primarily to obtain US dollars from the ATMs up to our daily limit over a three day period, and also to let Francesca finish her blog posts in peace. In the hotel I stayed at I saw an advert for the show we were now going to – lots of drums, music, energetic performances and crowd participation. Welcome to Fuerza Bruta, or Brute Force.

The room was dark as we were ushered into our standing positions inside the main nightclub area, facing a stage. A few minutes later, and after they had crammed everyone into the room, the stage was lit in red and 4 performers were revealed there and immediately started playing the drums they carried and singing. A pulsing African beat, it reminded me a little of Candombe in Uruguay and wondered if that was an influence. The crowd started gyrating to the music, people swaying with drinks in hand, children bopping up and down on parent’s shoulders.

The energy that the performers had was carried throughout the whole one hour long performance. When the music finished, we were immediately made aware of a blue light behind the crowd. Everyone turned and we saw a man in a harness walking on a treadmill in a blue light. His treadmill was slowly turned by the fantastic technical staff they had working there, and he was now facing the stage, still walking steadily. Suddenly the music kicked in and became frenetic and fast-paced. Somewhere a wind machine picked up and started blowing all over the crowd and the treadmill guy. A tickertape of white paper was blown down covering everything and blowing around the guy whose treadmill was now and suddenly cranked up to full throttle forcing him to seemingly run for his life! Bang! A violent loud noise that made the whole crowd jump rang out and the guy on the treadmill went down as though he had been shot. When he got up, there was a bloodstain on his crisp white shirt, and he started walking again, the music calming and reflecting his movements.

On the treadmill a garden chair appears and flies past our man who is still walking. Then another. And another. Then other performers appear walking towards our man, bumping into him. This whole performance was very moody and tense. It escalated until the performers seemed to all be stuck on an endless cycle on the treadmill, walking round and round, getting in each other’s way. Finally the others fall of the back of the treadmill leaving our man alone again, until the music once again kicks in and almost forces the man into another run for his life. This time the garden chairs and tables are thrust onto the treadmill and the guy is trying desperately to save them from flying off the back of the treadmill, all the while trying himself to keep going forward.

It is at this point that you could easily read into the show some artsy Kafkaesque meaning or philosophical existentialist metaphors about the performance. Francesca and I just really enjoyed it as a visceral experience that tests and probes the senses with it’s vitality and energy. Even the Argentine creator, Diqui James, expressed his wish that people just enjoy the show and not read too much into it. I did think that, as a performance, it sat exactly at the other end of the same scale that Club Silencio is on. You can also watch videos of Fuerza Bruta on their website.

The audience were now shuffled and herded all in together as a huge semi-transparent sheet was pulled all around, and over us. By now the man on the treadmill had a bed on there on which he was lying down. I was reminded of the stories about the holocaust, and people being sent to the gas chambers! Eerie.

Breaking my grim reverie were two women, almost 40 feet above us, suspended from the ceiling by harnesses. They were dressed like inpatients at a mental hospital, and they acted extremely strangely, with jerky, twitchy movements, until they began to run around the huge plastic sheet that had been erected around us. The music was still pulsing, and still on his bed on the raised platform of the treadmill was the man. As he was center stage, it was as if these crazy demon women were running around the sides of his brain as he fitfully slept. They leered and reeled drunkenly, leaping and rolling, all suspended above our heads, very high up in the air.

This crazy scene ended, and we were again plunged into darkness. The set including the treadmill was quickly and quietly moved and was replaced by a huge 5 meter disc, held in place high on top of a metal pole. On the black disc were lots handgrips, and on one side a woman, and the other a man in a suit. Both were dressed stylistically: dark clothes, ragged clothes and worried, anxious expressions. All the while the pulsing breakbeat music was still playing. The disc was moved to the front of the crowd, and the crowd was again pushed back by its own weight. At this point the disc started to lurch and spin; pulled by the technical staff using huge ropes attached to it. The woman and man suspended from the disc by harnesses started climbing all over it, seemingly trying to connect to one another, but always unable as the disc’s speed forced them to fall and spill all over the place in the air, above the crowd’s heads.

After once again being lunged into darkness, we saw a DJ booth behind us. The DJ was dressed and looked like George Washington! He started to crank the music up and set the crowd off pogoing like mad up and down. Lots of confetti blew out at us, and huge wind fans, as powerful as any wind tunnel blew water droplets over everyone.

I hoped I would not get a soaking…

After the DJs little set, a huge canopy began to move out from high above the stage over the crowd. This rig looked like a shallow glass swimming pool. Indeed, inside was water, and the rig moved left and right, sloshing the water around moodily, as it was backlit by a deep blue hue. Scantily clad women appeared in the pool, dancing and frolicking sensuously as the music now changed to be more like ambient trance.

There was some amazing choreography as the women played, jumped, and dived through the water in time to the music track being played. The pool even moved all the way down to just above our heads, so close we could touch it! This scene was ended by the women jumping and belly flopping on top of the thick plastic above us. Crash! It was like they would break through and land on us at any moment!

After the amazing feat of using the rig with water above the crowd – not to mention the performers all performing in the pool backlit with ambient lightning, they then let rip the rain. Water poured down above the crowd and the sound as it landed in the rig sounded like a Thai rainstorm.

Once the rig ascended again and the performers went with it, our focus was again shifted to the stage where the band where now dancing and jerking and twitching all over the place in time to the music. They started by moving furniture around and arguing between themselves (the music drowning them out completely). The scene ended by them smashing the walls of the room they were in down to reveal foam and cardboard inside. They proceeded to throw this stuff out at the crowd. Performers by now wee moving through the crowd and braining anyone and everyone over the head with cardboard boards filled with the foam/confetti mixture.

The guys onstage moved to their instruments and were revealed to be playing the pounding tribal drums that we could now hear. The energy and visual interest was totally maintained, as was the loud pumping music – an adrenalin packed experience.

The final performance was another huge see through sheet pulled by the crowd. On top of the sheet were several performers who were plunged this way and that. The sheet was blown high in the air, and the performers eventually pulled away some holes in the sheet and appeared, only suspended by their harnesses with nothing to separate them now from the crowd. They were lowered down to the grasping hands of the audience who all clamored to shake their hands and get photos taken. After a while a tunnel was raised from the floor up to the plastic sheet above. This tunnel was then filled with air and confetti. A huge swirling vortex of a wind tunnel was created, and it was then that a brave performer dropped into the tunnel and tried several times to reach the bottom. Each time the wind and swirling paper pushed him back.

The last hurrah was the entire cast appearing on stage and playing out with drums. Technical staff and cast alike joined together for the deserved applause. This was an amazing experience with one more surprise in store. The rain that had started before now started again with a vengeance, but this time there was no protective rig above us. Luckily we were a little further back – but others in the crowd got totally saturated by the water coming down in buckets. The voyeurs of the crowd were now the revelers of the party and many threw themselves forward to dance carefree under the torrent of water to the cool, relentless beat of Brute Force.

An experience not to be forgotten, this was an amazing, fun and totally original concept that we would recommend anyone go to. They are doing a world tour in 2013 so, if you can, check them out.