EXCELLENCE LIGHT AND DARK.EXCELLENCE LIGHT AND DARK MARY ANTHONY DANCE THEATRE THEATRE OF THE RIVERSIDE CHURCH NEW YORK New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , NEW YORK DECEMBER 1-3, 2000 The Mary Anthony Dance Theatre is something of a fixture in New York and, at 44, is one of America's oldest companies. Yet it remains a vital creative instrument, both for Mary Anthony, its founder and still-active artistic director, and for Kun-Yang Lin, its Taiwanese-born associate artistic director. And it is one of the few companies that continues to perform the dance-theater repertoire of the 1950s and 1960s, and do it well. Revived this season, Anna Sokolow's Dreams was a classic of that repertoire. Choreographed in 1961, this homage to the Jews exterminated in Nazi camps was set by Sokolow on MADT MADT Multiple APIC Description Table MADT Monthly Average Daily Traffic MADT Mean Accumulated Down Time MADT Microalloy Diffused-Base Transistor MADT Mean Administrative Delay Time MADT Maximum Allowable Down Time in 1975. Nearly forty years after its premiere, Dreams retains moments of power, even if the eight parts no longer seem to gel. Who, I kept asking myself, are these men and women? What glue holds them together? What horror do they see? Why the silence, the sirens, the jazz riffs, the drumming? Is this Auschwitz or The Connection? Like other Sokolow works, Dreams turns pedestrian movement into actors' material. There are hoarse, percussive per·cus·sive adj. Of, relating to, or characterized by percussion. per·cus  sive·ly adv. breaths that sound like death rattles, desperate falls, defiant stares, splayed fingers, slapping, crawling, bending, huddling and keening in silent anguish. A man drums frantically--a stool, his legs, the air--then collapses as a companion looks on impassively im·pas·sive adj. 1. Devoid of or not subject to emotion. 2. Revealing no emotion; expressionless. 3. Archaic Incapable of physical sensation. 4. Motionless; still. . The scene is powerful, even if unrelated to anything else. By contrast, Anthony's 1957 Songs, to Debussy, seems as fresh as a daisy. I loved the clear patterns, the long, strong backs of the women, the openness in their upper bodies, the rushing crosses, the extensions that seemed to probe the horizon, the uplift of the contractions, the harmonious lines and musicality. Very different was Anthony's new Soliloquy soliloquy, the speech by a character in a literary composition, usually a play, delivered while the speaker is either alone addressing the audience directly or the other actors are silent. , a dark, consciously literary work in which Hamlet spars in his mind with the ghost of his father. Kun-Yang Lin's From the Land of Lost Content, the season's other new work, is deeply spiritual, the pilgrimage of the soul in search of faith. There are two remarkable sections--"Compassion," a duet with pools of stillness, much parallel dancing, lifts and a languorous lan·guor n. 1. Lack of physical or mental energy; listlessness. See Synonyms at lethargy. 2. A dreamy, lazy mood or quality: "It was hot, yet with a sweet languor about it" eroticism Eroticism Aphrodite novel of Alexandrian manners by Pierre Louys. [Fr. Lit.: Benét, 783] Ars Amatoria Ovid’s treatise on lovemaking. [Rom. Lit. ; and "Hope," a solo for Leslie Wuebben, a bent, emaciated e·ma·ci·ate tr. & intr.v. e·ma·ci·at·ed, e·ma·ci·at·ing, e·ma·ci·ates To make or become extremely thin, especially as a result of starvation. figure in a Buddhist's saffron robe who seems to embody the ills depicted in Harry Beach's slides of Tibet. The dancing and production values were excellent. |
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