Visions of Torture : Argentine Stages ‘Dangerous Games’

LA JOLLA —  Graciela Daniele still remembers the anger she felt when atrocities in her native Argentina were exposed in the early 1980s.

“I threw up a couple of times,” the Broadway choreographer said after reading about the 25,000 desaparecidos --the men, women and children who were “disappeared” under the military dictatorship and at least 10,000 of whom have been proven dead. “I felt guilty doing nothing but sending a check for $25 to Amnesty International. I was so angry, I said I wish I could get a gun and go down there and fight.”

But how do you fight injustices that occurred years before you learn about them?

“Jim Lewis said you can still do something. You can write about it.”

Lewis, a recent graduate of UC San Diego, met Daniele at Intar in New York, where he became her collaborator on “Tango Apasionado,” an adaptation of Jorge Luis Borges stories that became an off-Broadway sensation two years ago. When Borges’ widow refused to give Daniele and Lewis permission to extend the play, Daniele cried. Then she and Lewis rethought their vision--without Borges.

The result is “Dangerous Games,” opening Sunday at the La Jolla Playhouse. Daniele said it’s even truer to her vision than was “Tango Apasionado.”

The first act portrays two men who fight over a woman in a brothel where sexually charged tango dancing competes with intricate knife fights for the attention of the customers. The second takes the Greek myth of Orpheus, who loses his beloved wife to the Underworld, and makes it the tale of a child who sees her parents whisked away by a military dictatorship.

The slender connection between the two is that, in the second story, the people of a country, like the customers in the brothel, are irresistibly and dangerously attracted to the beautiful but deadly footwork of ruthless conquerors.

The best criticism of “Dangerous Games” that Daniele has heard came from a patron at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia, a co-producer of the show along with the Spoleto Festival, U.S.A., and the La Jolla Playhouse. (The next stop is the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, where it will be presented by Carole Shorenstein Hays and James M. Nederlander Aug. 10-Sept. 3.)

“This woman said, ‘I loved the first piece, I loved the second, but I didn’t like it!’ That’s what I want--for people to love it, but not to like it. I’m talking about torture here.”

Daniele, a choreographer of such breezy fare as “The Pirates of Penzance,” “Most Happy Fella,” “Zorba” and “Alice in Concert” (with Meryl Streep) may not seem like the most likely candidate to tackle such a dark project. But this, to hear Daniele tell it, is the project she has wanted to do all her life.

Still, it is not a direction she foresaw at 15, when she left Argentina for Paris with $200 in her pocket, determined to become a classical ballet dancer. She danced in companies from Europe to Brazil until she saw a production of “West Side Story.” It made her drop everything to pursue a Broadway career. Within two weeks of arriving in New York, she landed a part in “What Makes Sammy Run?” Michael Bennett then hired her for “Promises, Promises.”

Under his guidance and that of Bob Fosse, she developed into a choreographer, winning three Tony nominations (for “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” “The Rink” and “Pirates of Penzance”).

“I had wonderful collaborators, money and recognition, and the projects were interesting. But something inside me was missing. Something was going, ‘It’s not enough.’ Now I’ve never been more fulfilled--or tired,” Daniele said. “Of course, something is still missing. Money!” Already, $30,000 of her savings has gone into the show.

Writing about Argentina brings Daniele back to her childhood, growing up under Juan and Eva Peron. The Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical, “Evita,” she says out with a laugh, may have been “a very good show, but it had nothing to do with reality.”

Reality was a world in which “this is the feeling,” Daniele said, clamping her hand over her mouth and widening her eyes. “Be careful. Don’t (talk) politics out of the house. Don’t talk on the phone more than you should. Don’t tell anybody that you are against the government.”

Part of Daniele’s absorption with the macho element of violence stems from memories of being brought up as an only child by three strong women--her mother, her grandmother and her aunt. She was born in 1939. Her father split when she was only 7, which left her hurt and angry.

One man she had loved since she was a little girl was the great tango composer, Astor Piazzolla. Daniele’s mother used to take her to hear him play his bandoneon --a button accordion--in Buenos Aires. When Lewis asked her with whom she thought she would most like to collaborate on the project, she instinctively chose Piazzolla, although they had never met.

“As young as I was, something in my soul attracted me to him all my life. Forty years later, I get a chance to work (with him). When he adored the show, I was the happiest woman in the world. I have an image of ourselves hugging that I will keep in my mind forever.”

All of Daniele’s mixed feelings about her native land came flooding back on a recent trip to Argentina--her first in 34 years. She had gone to research a film she is choreographing, “Naked Tango in Buenos Aires.”

“I have to confess that when the plane landed and the pilot said, ‘Welcome to Buenos Aires,’ the tears came down.” But the tears of joy were soon dried up by fear.

“I arrived the day that a state of siege had been declared, with the banks being closed for two weeks. I couldn’t exchange dollars for three days. Then they told me that my passport (which was Argentine) was not valid. When I finally got back, I told my husband (designer Jules Fisher) that the first thing I do is get my American citizenship.”

Now as she readies “Dangerous Games” for its La Jolla opening, the childhood wounds feel fresh.

“There was a sense of nonidentity and a loss of freedom,” she said haltingly of her trip. “It was like a psychological torture. The pieces are really violent and really dangerous (in “Games”). But I thought if I could have gone through this before I wrote this play, my vision would have been (even) darker.”