DEPRESSION COLORS TAYLOR'S `TUESDAY'.

DEPRESSION COLORS TAYLOR'S `TUESDAY' AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE OPERA HOUSE, KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS WASHINGTON, D.C. APRIL 10-15, 2001

At the premiere of Paul Taylor's Black Tuesday the audience knew some things before the curtain rose; the rest came from watching American Ballet Theatre dance the work itself. If not everyone got the title's reference--to the day after the big stock market crash of 1929--the scene was set by the music credits: "Songs from the Great Depression." The scenery, designed by Santo Loquasto and lit by Jennifer Tipton, placed the action in New York City, at least until the final number.

The first of four backdrops featured a great arch that made the space in front of it seem cavernous, like a vault beneath a gigantic bridge. There was a street depicted behind the arch that resembled a prison's passage-way, so fenced in was it by elevated rail tracks, their supporting structures, and lampposts. People didn't just dance, prance, and play there, but seemed to belong to this site that, as the first song proclaimed, is "Underneath the Arches." Much of the step material in the dances came from popular culture sources such as ballrooms and vaudeville stages. The overall mood at the start was lighthearted, a bit frantically so. Is this, perhaps, Paul Taylor's take on the old-fashioned character ballet? Not quite, because from underneath the initial good cheer emerged a sense of determination, then desperation.

The second backdrop showed the Wall Street skyline at night. Just about the time it appeared, a subtle lighting shift made the tattered state of the dancers' attire as apparent as the 1920s and '30s period styles. Overall, the poverty of these people seemed as tangible as their vitality. Small gestures--reaching, touching--revealed a meanness as well. Yet, in the second of these three scenes, a pregnant woman (Karin Ellis Wentz) danced defiantly, despite having no man and no other means of support. The third backdrop merged the first two, offering a view of the financial district through the vaulting and the train tracks. This contrast between the campground of the homeless and the skyscrapers set the mood for the second and most potent of the work's three female solos, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams."

Unlike the mother-to-be, this woman (alternately danced by Erica Cornejo and Gillian Murphy) once had dreams, and was in mourning for a life that might have been. While all the other numbers--solos, twosomes, foursomes--involved a mixture of feelings, the second female solo was about a single emotion. Taylor gives the performer who dances this part no chance to temper the tragedy of the situation. Agony is the only option, and no one in the audience can doubt his intent to make an ultimately serious piece. The hysterically triumphant third female solo (alternately danced by Marian Butler and Jennifer Alexander) was about mixed emotions again, and transpired against a chorus of dancers. After it was over, New York disappeared and the last section, set to the song "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" unfolded against a starry sky.

This final number was a solo too, for most of its duration, but the dancer was a man. What he danced was more bravura and balletic and more abstract emotionally than anything else in Black Tuesday. Though he wore a uniform, this nameless character was subsumed by something grander--he seemed to be the classical hero. He wasn't, though, by any means a stereotype. He faced misfortune, contemplated his fate, and accepted his lot--holding out a hand for the dime that might come his way. At the end, the entire cast joined him, and all thirteen dancers held their hands out to the audience.

Taylor 2 Artistic Director Susan McGuire rehearsed two casts to high energy and polish for Black Tuesday, though Taylor participated in the final day of ABT rehearsals, and the ABT dancers had watched him rehearse the piece with his own dancers. Ethan Stiefel's hero and Cornejo's personification of tragedy were particularly outstanding. Generically, this work is related to Company B and could be its prequel (is Taylor building a twentieth-century American epic?); yet there's a difference, too. The solo characters in Black Tuesday emerged less as types, more as individuals. In Washington, ABT danced the new Taylor between Balanchine's Theme and Variations and Act III of the Kenneth MacMillan version of Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty, and both looked like road productions, danced without much style and nuance, next to the premiere.