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Dancers say 'Step Right Up' to City Hall Park Circus Romp  
City Hall Parkgoers used to the usual lunch-hour crowd of meandering tourists, lounging civil servants and stroller pushing nannies, got something different last month. Take the cone-headed chorus girls and guy with fake mustache and breasts for starters. “I was lost, but I liked the dancing,” Andre Azcuidiaz, from Brooklyn, said of the performance. Chelsea Rodriguez, who was at one of the chess tables on which a performer was perched, said that, “for the dancers to be sitting on the tables, right in front of us and interact with the audience was an interesting concept.” “It was definitely entertaining,” Queens resident Keith Driscoll added. “Only in New York City.” It’s a mix of trends and cultures,” said Loret de Mola, choreographer of the piece, which was commissioned as part of both the 5th annual citywide Celebrate Mexico Now and Sitelines dance festivals. “I wanted to have a happening of things that don’t really make sense, but somehow they do.”For almost an hour, her troupe of 10 performers carefully navigated their twisted and disjointed parade through the crowded confines of City Hall Park’s upper walkway. Dressed as acrobats, clowns and other circus players, they spent much of the performance acting on the commands of a barking, pirouetting ringleader. The performance, inspired by Mexican street carnivals, left some among the lunch time crowd bewildered, others bemused. Crowds gathered to watch the happening, and many inadvertently found themselves in the middle of it. When the troupe took off running, the audience dutifully followed. According to Celia DeVoe, one of the dancers, the piece is about “rebellion versus following instructions, and rules that were set up in society that we obey without even realizing that we’re following them.” Even serious commentary gets mixed in among the craziness, with dialogue about consumerism, global warming and gay marriage. “It’s a complicated piece with a lot of topics in it,” dancer Rebecca Woods concedes. “If you’re just walking in and out, you might not get all the things that are behind it.” “But,” she adds, “at least it’s eye-catching.”
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