Lincoln Center Festival, featuring Dance Theatre of Harlem, Batsheva Dance Company, and Shen Wei Arts.

Various venues

New York City, New York 

July 8-26, 2003

International festivals like New York City's Lincoln Center Festival tantalize dance lovers with promises of offerings that are extremely varied and unique.

The three dance events at the 2003 Lincoln Center Festival in New York City more or less fit that bill. The festival boasted performances by Dance Theatre of Harlem, Batsheva Dance Company, and Shen Wei Dance Arts--three companies representing distinct artistic visions and sectors of the dance world.

It was Shen Wei Dance Arts, the company arriving with the least bit of pre-show fanfare, that proved the most impressive.

Wei's The Rite of Spring and Folding, presented on the same program at the festival, were revelatory, showing an unusually expansive artistic vision that magically melded the many cultural influences of Wei's life: his early work with the Hunan State Xian Opera in his native China; his career with the groundbreaking Guangdong Modern Dance Company, which he helped found; and his studies in New York (where he's now based) with the Nikolais/Louis Dance Lab.

Wei's background as a painter (his work was displayed in the concert hall's lobby) carried over not just to the sets and costumes he designed but to the movement of his dancers, his sculptural sense of shape (especially in Folding), and his use of color, texture, and space. The great sense of theater in The Rite of Spring was enhanced by an exhilarating performance by pianist Fazil Say. Say, who sat in a front corner of the stage and played the store on a digital piano, was accompanied by a recording of himself playing it, making this a performance for four hands.

Batsheva's Anaphaza, a crowd-pleaser with its quirky, performance-art sensibility, made a lot of noise but revealed little beyond choreographer Ohad Naharin's tongue-in-check sense of humor and knack for visual imagery.

There was a decided mix-and-match feel to this ninety-minute, intermission-less work. It's almost as if Naharin, who originally premiered it in 1993 at the Festival of Israel, quickly tossed together a familiar recipe--a little bit of this, a little bit of that. THERE WAS A LITTLE BIT OF THE BLACK-SUITED DANCERS HE HAS FEATURED IN OTHER WORKS--APPEARING IN THE POPULAR OPENING CANON TO A TRADITIONAL PASSOVER SONG, IN WHICH THEY EVENTUALLY STRIP TO THE UNDERWEAR and later, in a crowd-pleasing dance with random members of the audience. There was a smidgen of his "let's go crazy" go-for-broke movement. And there were dollops of performance-art shtick--a passage, for example, in which viewers because the performers and were commanded to sit down for various reasons (if they believed in reincarnation, for example).

Because of Anaphaza's storied history (it was initially banned from a celebration of Israel's fiftieth anniversary because of the opening dance-strip to the Passover song), there was plenty of buzz for these festival performances. But a firsthand view revealed that though entertaining and, at times downright fun, Anaphaza ultimately rings hollow--a rambling mishmash of disjointed imagery.

Dance Theatre of Harlem triumphed in its two mixed bills, which included gloriously vibrant presentations of George Balanchine's The Four Temperaments in one program (punctuated by a magnetic performance by Antonio Douthit in the Phlegmatic section), and Balanchine's Serenade in another program that also included a smartly danced Fancy Free by Jerome Robbins.

The intended highlight of DTH's weeklong run was the world premiere St. Louis Woman: A Blues Ballet, the eagerly awaited ballet version of the ill-fated musical by Countee Cullen and Arna Bontemps, with music by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer. In the DTH rendition of the musical, choreographed by Michael Smuin, style won over substance. Sort of.

St. Louis Woman is a visually gorgeous concoction--beautifully costumed, dramatically lit, vibrantly framed, and full of flashy, eye-catching choreography. The DTH dancers have always excelled in theatrical works; St. Louis Woman show cased the noteworthy talents of a company that takes the "theater" part of its name seriously.

The story, about African American jetsetters who live and work around a racetrack in St. Louis, bears some similarities to Balanchine's Slaughter on Tenth Avenue in its gangster/showgirl motif. The opening night cast for St. Louis Woman was led by Caroline Rocher as Della, a Lena Horne-like showgirl; Donald Williams as a dastardly gangster, Biglow; Jiminez as Lila. Biglow's doormat of a girlfriend; Ikolo Griffin as the good natured champion jockey Little Augie; and Douthit, as a sinister Death.

But despite the spectacular performances, and despite an A-list set of creators (sets by "Tony Walton, costumes by Willa Kim, lighting by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer), it's best not to look too far beneath the surface of St. Louis Woman. This yummy bon-bon of a ballet is filled with lots of beautiful elements that don't quite add up.

The story, originally set in 1898, has been reset by the ballet's creative team to 1946. But the new era rarely matches its trappings (sort of Romare-Bearden-meets-Henri-Matisse costuming, except for the zoot suits) or the choreography. Where, for example, were African Americans cheerfully doing the cake-walk (a major production number in this ballet) in 1946, for example?

Smuin's choreography has its moments, particularly some glorious pas de deux for the main couples to those sumptuous Arlen-Mercer tunes like "Come Rain or Come Shine." Images of Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly in an MGM musical instantly come to mind. And Smuin's dashes of characterization--Della's hip-rolling strut, Biglow's tough guy swagger; Death's creepy, witch-doctor presence--show a sense of humor and fun shared by the dancers.

Though strong out of the gate, St. Louis Woman stumbled toward the finish line. There was a rather mediocre tap sequence by Floyd and Faruma Williams, that screamed filler. Surely it can't take this long for a costume and scene change. And the entire production took a decidedly tacky turn in this section as Death apparently detours through Las Vegas and dances with a corps of women straight out of a lounge act--a sort of Death and the Deathettes revue. The ballet's final scenes--including a gorgeously lit horse race, in which flickers of light across a backdrop make horses appear to leap into action--almost help one forget this lapse.

Yet you can't help but like this ballet. Is it the music? Is it the story of the sultry showgirl versus the good girl? Is it the villain we love to hate? Is it the creepy, high-kicking figure of Death who threatens to literally take our breath away? Of is it these terrific dancer-actors who make cardboard come alive? The answer is all of the above.