FELIX is a gambler, Salsa teacher and club owner who has twenty-four hours to come up with the half a million he owes DEACON GARCIA or hand over his club as payment.
Instead of paying, FELIX and CASEY set DEACON up to be killed, they fail. DEACON escapes and exacts his revenge.
When one of the three of them is murdered in the club the killer suspected but not confirmed, everyone else left behind is a suspect or a witness.
What follows is a true crime who done it.
"Baila De La Muerte" is about identity; there are no heroes or villains here, only suspects. What influences choice, the story is set in a Salsa club is a microcosm for the broader non-fictional reality of contemporary South Africa, Changing, growing and redefining. The mix of identities and backgrounds, shadowed by individual agendas and histories sets the tone for true crime thriller. The human condition, before you can deal with anyone else, you must first deal with yourself. Otherwise we create our own hell, Welcome to the dance.
The world of the story is set in a Salsa club and played out like those true crime documentary reconstruction series after the fact.
It plays out as a murder mystery, the events take place, while the retrospective interviews with the characters as themselves breaks up the action.
The characters of Felix, Luke and Deacon all see Casey differently, their memory of her in the past and their experience of her in reality are conflicting but always tied to the club, with the question of what's fact and what is selective memory, fiction.
The characters skewed perceptions of their own realities leads to them, missing the things and trapping themselves in a cycle, stuck in a moment. Creating their own hell's, they react to situations, trapped by habit and history.
Felix never really faces his weakness, Deacon never faces his love. Botha denies his past, Rhia wants more but can't bring herself to ask for it. Orin is the only one that seeks the truth, While Solomon and Ingrid play the opposite ends of not my business.
Nothing changes, until we change it.
