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Words, words, words
The power of Slanguage
BY LIZA WEISSTUCH

Carl Sandberg wrote, " Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work. " That’s slang, effective and efficient. But then there’s Slanguage (at the Boston Center for the Arts through August 13), which rolls up its sleeves, jumps into a confrontational stance with gymnastic grace, and grabs your attention with such muscle that your whole physical self is at its mercy. And Slanguage, which sits at the junction of poetry, jazz, movement, gospel, hip-hop, and comedy, wears its New Yorker’s you-best-not-mess-with-me attitude like a badge of honor.

The performance piece, which premiered at New York Theater Workshop in 2001 and is presented in Boston by Company One, evolved through the collaboration of five friends who call themselves Universes. They developed the verbal-physical collage after traveling the same NYC open-mike poetry circuit. Slanguage was then refined by Obie-winning director Jo Bonney, who sees to it that a story line runs through the show, which comprises dozens of numbers that rip through the night like linguistic missiles, detonating clichés and political correctness along the way. The players make the humdrum noises of the city — the subway screeches, the battery hawkers — sound like an urban allegro. Like poets throughout the ages, these wordsmiths prostrate themselves at the feet of the Muses, and they relish the company they keep ( " Kipling and Keats, who be kickin’ it with KRS-One and Kool Keith " ). They’re not content just to chart the progression from gospel to blues to soul to rap; they’re interested in language as it relates to beat and rhythm. And they pay as much homage to Miles Davis, Federico García Lorca, and Jack Kerouac as they do to doo-wop groups and the SugarHill Gang. Oh and Dr. Seuss. Although its tales of growing up on the streets can lean toward the dreadful (hearing a nocturnal murder at the neighbors’, say), Universes never shortchanges humor for moralizing or appeals for pity.

Of the five original members, only agile homeboy Gamal Chasten, bluesy-voiced Mildred Ruiz, and bebop-inspired Steven Sapp appear here. They’re joined by salsa-soaked Denise de la Cruz and by Ninja, who brings a hardcore edge to a Nuyorican sensibility. The mishmash of influences reflects the problem the performers confront: how to deal with blended identities in the melting pot that boils on the stove called the New York projects where they grew up. They’re " Caught between two worlds/Like a wedgie in a fat ass. "

Universes pummels out each beat as if it were the turn of a key that unlocks a soul. Witnessing the troupe’s exquisitely timed rhythm pounded out with such passion, you’ll need some time to shake the echoes you hear in the thumping in your own chest.


Issue Date: July 29 - August 4, 2005
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