Misha's New Passion.

Judson Dance, Hard to Get, Captures a Superstar's Heart

Several dancers and choreographers were scattered in the seats of the McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey, watching a dress rehearsal of the White Oak Dance Project's new production, "Past Forward." Steve Paxton, the legendary originator of contact improvisation, had just given directions to thirty-nine volunteers from the community on how to perform Satisfying Lover, a piece he created in 1967. In this dance, people walk across the stage one at a time, some of them pausing after a set number of paces, some of the thirty-nine sitting on chairs that face front, a completely ordinary task. But somehow, a sense of vulnerability and humanity is projected.

Mikhail Baryshnikov, one of those sitting in the house, softly exclaimed, "It's so exciting!" Later he leaned forward to his fellow dancers and whispered, "You see, it's different every time."

In strictly dance terms, what we were watching was anything but exciting. The excitement lies in the fact that this piece is being done at all, and that White Oak is celebrating the brazen and sometimes difficult work of Judson Dance Theater.

At 52, Baryshnikov could simply bask in acclaim as one of the world's greatest-ever ballet dancers. (He'll receive a coveted Kennedy Center Honor on December 3.) But he continues to seek new challenges for his eclectic White Oak Dance Project.

His current tour unites his company with downtown-style gurus Paxton, Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, Deborah Hay, David Gordon and Lucinda Childs. Like Bob Dylan's fabled '70s concerts with his famous poet and singer friends, this is his own "Rolling Thunder" tour. His repertoire includes fourteen dances by these choreographers, two of whom are included in his cast.

Over a carafe of cranberry vodka at the Russian Samovar in Manhattan, Baryshnikov talked about "Past Forward," White Oak in general and the dances that absorb him now. He lights up when talking about the dance artists he has worked with, and is clearly both stimulated and humbled by great choreographers. An independent thinker, he doesn't wait for the press or anyone else to tell him who the great choreographers are. He follows his thirst to the well of artistic invention. At this moment, that well is the art-as-life minimalism that characterized much of the work shown at Judson Memorial Church in the early '60s, the breakthrough period of experimentalism that gave rise to post-modern dance.

Baryshnikov's interest in breaking the roles and defying expectation goes way back. In 1973, while still in St. Petersburg, he chose to dance in a work by Estonian experimental choreographer Mai Murdmaa. The choreography required him to roll on the floor at a time when fans adored his high leaps and sparkling technique. Once in New York, Baryshnikov journeyed through the American modern dance repertoire, becoming ever more daring in his choices. He danced in works by John Butler, Martha Graham, Twyla Tharp, Lar Lubovitch, Paul Taylor, Erick Hawkins, Mark Morris, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown and many more. As artistic director of American Ballet Theatre from 1980 to 1989, he made controversial choices by inviting punk choreographer Karole Armitage and postmodernist David Gordon to create pieces for America's premiere classical ballet company. He certainly has no allegiance to the traditional ballets he grew up with. If he were still in Russia, he says, "I would be dead by now. I was a bit reckless and it would be difficult to predict what I would have done. I definitely wouldn't have stayed for the classical ballet."

Getting to know Gordon is partly what set the superstar on his current path. The two have remained friends since their days at ABT. Gordon is contributing four ballets to "Past Forward"--Chair/two times (1975); The Overture to "The Matter" (1979); For the Love of Rehearsal, which is a new work to portions of Bach's cello suites, and a brief chair solo for Baryshnikov to Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever." In addition, Baryshnikov asked Gordon to direct the production. Gordon wrote a witty introduction that Baryshnikov narrates (on tape) with the help of projected images: "In the sixties, Russia put the first man in space; Trisha Brown walked on walls .... Kennedy said `No' to Russian missiles; Yvonne Rainer said `No' to American dance conventions."

When asked what attracts him to the Judson artists, Baryshnikov answers, "Bravery! They were all truly experimental." Impressed with stories Steve Paxton told him about Flat (1964), a solo Baryshnikov performs in this program, he tells of the first time Paxton showed it in Dunn's workshop. Nobody said anything, Baryshnikov relates, but the feeling was, "What the hell was that?" He concludes, "He knew that there's something there that's never been done before. A long time before, Kafka, Beckett, Ionesco and Sartre were a slice of existentialism of the highest order." The brand of existentialism favored by some of the Judson choreographers meant stripping the dancing of drama, embellishment, theatricality.... In other words, it meant unadorned plainness, which can be hard for audiences to take.

Baryshnikov anticipates being challenged for his new direction: "Some people will say, `Why's he doing this?' It's not decisions I make rationally. I listen to my heart and mind. This is the most interesting thing I can do right now, and I'm doing it." Although his decision is intuitive, it is supported by his knowledge of its historical value, Baryshnikov says. "Nobody seriously understood the influence of the Judson people on the present generation of choreographers. Mark Morris says, `I'm telling my dancers Judson this, Judson that, and they haven't seen anything.' Now they can." Meg Stuart said, `Without Trisha and the others, I wouldn't even exist.' John Jasperse, Neil Greenberg, Tere O'Connor, Dana Reitz, Sara Rudner--they all got that extra chutzpah from knowing about Judson. It gave them hope, stamina, inspiration. That's why it's so important for people who are choreographing now to see this kind of work."

He speaks about Single Duet, a new duet created by Deborah Hay, with respect and affection. "Deborah is the queen of this kind of internal commitment in improvisation. Her approach is really far-out. You're warming yourself up, just dancing together like children would do when they put the music on, for a substantial amount of time, to get yourself into the blood-flowing and mind-calming state. The word `rehearsal' doesn't exist. She comes in with a very strong structure, because she knows exactly what she wants. It's very intense and exhausting."

Hay tells me, during the dress rehearsal, of Baryshnikov's progress in improvisation. "At first he wanted something to hold on to, but then he learned to let go. I have so much faith in his intelligence and his ability to observe. He sees everything. It's jaw-dropping, the amount of stuff he lets go of. He's sailing now."

In performance, the two portray a strange and fascinating pair. Hay, whose face is a cross between Martha Graham's and that of a timeless butoh dancer, exudes an internal authenticity--serenity through turmoil, one might call it. Baryshnikov, boyish and buoyant, strives to be her partner in oddness. As he moves, he seems to shape-shift from an old ballet master to a flamenco star, to a self-caressing exhibitionist, to a squirrel. Occasionally, they share a far-away look together.

He finds Paxton's solo Flat particularly challenging. It consists of walking around in a suit, striking four or five non-virtuosic positions, removing garments and hanging them onto hooks taped to his skin, and then interrupting the daily task of dressing with frozen moments. Paxton says that by the end, the viewer "knows something very intimate about the person that doesn't show through the clothes. He's covered up again, so it's like a secret has been revealed and concealed." The performer must make spontaneous decisions about what pose to strike and where to freeze the action. Baryshnikov says, "You buy children's toys that say, `Some assembly required,' but one thing they forgot to tell you is what order to do it in. You have to make a dance out of it. Steve cannot teach you what makes sense. You have to make it happen while you're actually doing it. The audience can see if it's premeditated. There is logic and there's absurdity. That's Steve. He's the most elusive person I ever met."

Paxton, like Hay, gives kudos to his student. At first, he says, "Misha would start doing something like unbuttoning the shirt or unlacing the shoe and forget that he was supposed to arrest the motion. I think he discovered a habit that he is learning to address, which is getting through something as quickly as possible and getting on to the next thing."

In Trisha Brown's Homemade (1965), Baryshnikov carries a projector on his back, beaming images of his dancing self around the auditorium. Explaining this solo, he is obviously moved that Brown would transfer such a personal piece to him. Brown says, "I gave him the same instructions I gave myself: to enact and distill a series of memories, the stories you tell when you know someone really well. He went deeply into these memories, like the last time he saw his mother as the train pulled out of the station." (His mother committed suicide when he was still a boy in Latvia.) He gives the dance a dramatic reading, rather different from Brown's own subtle delivery. One can easily see how much these moves mean to him.

Baryshnikov clearly revels in the presence of these seven artists: "They're all beautifully crazy. They're all insane and I salute that." Perhaps they give him the same sense of permissiveness that allowed them to find their unique artistic voices nearly forty years ago. He is delighted that some of them have chosen only to do new work, while others have reconstructed older pieces.

The kind of everyday actions--or, as David Gordon calls it, "behavior"--displayed in "Past Forward" can bring up a dilemma for the White Oak dancers, all of whom have strong ballet and/or modern training. At a rehearsal for Scramble (1970) at LaGuardia High School in New York City, Simone Forti, renowned for her sensuous simplicity, instructs the dancers to "Run across the floor as though to catch a bus." Typically, she brings cosmic principles down to earthiness: "A mass in motion tends to remain in motion. The universe is carrying you. See if you can taste that moment."

When Forti demonstrates Scramble, which is based on the simple action of threading in between any two people, her own pleasure in fulfilling the task is palpable. But some of the dancers are confused. In the talk session afterward, Emily Coates, formerly with New York City Ballet, says, "I thought this was supposed to be pedestrian, but now it seems like you want it to be more dancerly." Discussion. Finally, Raquel Aedo, who has danced with Douglas Dunn and Dancers, comes to her aid by saying, "I feel that doing a task creates a state of mind."

While the professional dancers struggled with aesthetic issues, the community volunteers were enjoying a rich experience. John Tucker, a 66-year-old executive search consultant who lives in Princeton, says, "It made me feel that we were in on some secret stuff. Because of the willingness of the directors and choreographers to share their thoughts and feelings about the work, we began to care about what we were doing. It was great, great fun." Amanda Loulaki, a dancer from Crete who joined in Scramble as well as Paxton's and Gordon's group pieces, says about Baryshnikov, "He is beautiful. He's such an inspiration because he's totally committed to research. He asks the choreographers questions, wanting to understand where the work comes from." Teresa Kliokis, a student at Marymount College, is ecstatic. "I got to meet him! I came in early for rehearsal, and he was eating. I didn't want to disturb him, but he shook my hand and asked me where I'm from. I said to myself, `Oh my God, Oh my God, I can't believe this!'"

Audiences, however, have been ambivalent. About the standing-room-only event, McCarter impresario Bill Lockwood reports, "The audience was respectful but puzzled. They don't recognize the name of the choreographers, with the possible exception of Trisha Brown. Their whole dance experience is totally at odds with what they saw. This was like a bolt out of the blue." A few people walked out, and Lockwood later received a handful of letters claiming that this wasn't dance and that the publicity was misleading. (Still, scores of people flocked to the stage to get Baryshnikov's autograph after the performance.) Although Lockwood finds the project fascinating, he feels that White Oak needs to clarify to its audiences the whats and whys of the project.

That is just what is happening as the company readies itself for its fall tour (see accompanying schedule). Charles Atlas, a brilliant media artist who has worked closely with Merce Cunningham, will assemble a video collage to give the program a historical context. Says Atlas, "This is a new process; I don't know what this will turn into." But it is definite that Baryshnikov will still be the narrator.

In Florida, where White Oak toured last spring with a program that included only one of these pieces, Rainer's After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, audiences had no such help. Baryshnikov describes their reactions to her piece, which is a collage of fragments of older works: "People were mesmerized. They were sitting, listening, watching, laughing, protesting, bravoing, booing. It's so encouraging. It's a theater of life; something is there they can relate to, and they are happy to discover in themselves those elements. Sometimes they do understand; sometimes it's total absurdity. But they are intrigued by it; they want to know more and sometimes it hits them right between the eyes."

But one may wonder: Can works from long ago--even groundbreaking works--that were made for studios, churches and galleries, have an impact on a proscenium stage? Obviously, a piece that was vital at a particular time is not necessarily vital many years later. And yet Forti says, "There is still much nourishment that audiences can get from these pieces."

About being artistic director and etoile of the White Oak Dance Project, which he founded with the help of Mark Morris, Baryshnikov says, "My life started ten years ago with White Oak. All my creative thoughts are related to White Oak and nothing else." He enjoys the communality of the dancing. "From the beginning of White Oak, I wanted to dance as part of the group. I never had a chance to, in all my years as a classical dancer. Dancing together ... I like the shoulders of other dancers, I like that touch, I like that look, the communication, the dynamics. There's nothing sweeter than this. I always love doing it. Maybe from my childhood, because we danced a lot of character dances, international dances with sixteen other kids." He now finds himself wishing for a slightly larger group. "If I could afford it, it would be fun to have ten or twelve people. But we are really cozy right now with six people. I cherish that tightness and family feeling."

Another family is thriving because of the project. The Judson family, remembered by a few and influential to many, but long forgotten--or never known--by most, is being legitimized by a mainstream star. Jennifer Tipton, lighting designer extraordinaire, started her career by dancing in a piece of Paxton's at Judson. Now, designing lights for "Past Forward" she says, "In a way I feel like it's my family; that's where it began."

Reviewing "Past Forward" for the Asbury Park Press of New Jersey, Karyn Collins (also a Dance Magazine writer) notes that she saw a member of the audience tear up his ticket and throw it toward the stage in disgust. But after observing the ups and downs of this program, she concludes, "The painstakingly detailed and carefully casual performances add up to a truly extraordinary experience." Perhaps Baryshnikov will find that, in presenting the Judson choreographers, he too bears the burden of bravery.

PastForward:

WHERE TO SEE IT AND WHAT TO READ

THE WHITE OAK DANCE PROJECT already has brought its "Past Forward" program to Anchorage, Alaska; Lawrence, Kansas, and Tempe, Arizona. Here is the tour schedule for the rest of the tall.

October 19-21: The Castle Theatre, Maul Arts & Culture, Hawaii

October 25-28: Royce Hall, UCLA Performing Arts, Los Angeles, CA

November 1-4: Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances, Berkeley, CA

November 7-8: The Bynum Theatre, Pittsburgh Dance Council, Pittsburgh, PA

November 10-11: Lisner Auditorium, Washington Performing Arts Society, Washington, D.C.

November 15-19: The Dance Center at Columbia College, Chicago, IL

December 6-10: MC93 Bobigny, Festival d'Automne, Paris, France

Guest performer Deborah Hay joins in Maul, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and D.C. Simone Forti will be a guest in Chicago and Los Angeles. The Chicago engagement features a Postmodern Marathon, on November 18. The day-long event features a panel discussion with Judson artists including Forti and David Gordon; a lecture by chair of the Dance Center, Bonnie Brooks, and both "Past Forward" programs. (See www.dancecenter.org for details.)

For those interested in learning about Judson Dance Theater before attending "Past Forward," an excellent account is Sally Banes's book Democracy's Body: Judson Dance Theater 1962-1964 (Duke University Press, 1995). Two other relevant books by Banes are Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post. Modern Dance (Wesleyan paperback, 1987) and Greenwich Village 1963: Avant-Garde Performance and the Effervescent Body (Duke University Press, 1993). The chapter called "Everyday Bodies" in Deborah Jowitt's book Time and the Dancing Image (University of California Press, 1989) is a wonderful description of the aesthetic of the period. Jill Johnston's inspired reviews of the period are collected in Marmalade Me, reprinted by Wesleyan University Press in 1998.

Wendy Perron is the New York editor of Dance Magazine.