Named for the sun god of the late Roman Empire, Dance Compagnie Hervé Koubi’s production of Sol Invictus was a spinning, swirling, warm ball of energy and light. An ensemble piece featuring “almost as many nationalities as dancers,” according to the company’s executive director and artistic advisor Guillaume Gabriel, who attended the show at the Granada on January 25.
There were 17 performers on stage that night for a UCSB Arts & Lectures presentation that Gabriel described as “my declaration of love to dance,” adding, “Loving and dancing are part of the same invincible whole that is life.”
The lively production included an array of breakdancing moves, combined with acrobatics and hip-hop, as well as tumbling, capoeira, and martial arts. There’s definitely both an urban and yet timeless, otherworldly feeling to the work — the loose paneled “skorts” and mostly bare chests of the dancers feel both contemporary and almost biblical — and there are some parts that echo tribal folk dances, in the few areas where the dancers work in sync.