New York.

Once Again, the Sound of
Dancing Feet
92 on 42: 92nd Street Y Harkness
Dance Project
The Duke on 42nd Street
New York, New York
February 13-March 17, 2002
Reviewed by Chris Dohse

The fifteen dances shown during 92 on 42 confirmed a few things: New York's dance worlds are many and various, the 92nd Street Y remains an important nexus of those worlds, and Harkness Director Joan Finkelstein, who curated the series, has an unfailing nose for talent. Housing at the Duke for the second year in a row was noteworthy as well: As Finkelstein pointed out when introducing each evening's program, nonprofit modern dance is now a visible presence on the city's "most commercial and arguably most exciting of blocks."

Nicholas Leichter combined signature moves from hip-hop, capoeira, and disco to celebrate romantic love in an explosive, post-MTV valentine called Bliss. Indistinguishable in terms of composition or vocabulary from Free the Angels, Bliss displayed energy and style but was somewhat limited by the music that inspired it. In Angels, partnering that might have been intimate was cheated into relentless pop rhythms. In the freer flow of Bliss, the dancers reached the deeper level of abandonment called for by Tom Browne's monster groove "Funkin' for Jamaica." Will Rawls was particularly loose, letting his long, long limbs really fly. In both works, however, though the beat suggested ecstasy, the dancers usually wore an oddly haughty veneer. They just didn't seem to be having much fun.

Neither of Leichter's large pieces quite matched the power of his simpler quartet, Undertow. Here, four men in black leather floor-length skirts made oblique references to Swan Lake's cygnets. Interlinked, they struggled against each other like inmates in a chain gang, then showed off with club cool, simultaneously violent, arrogant, narcissistic, virile, slinky, and isolated.

Keely Garfield, Rachel Lynch-John, and Lisa Townsend performed Garfield's crisp, character-driven phrases to deadpan perfection in Free Drinks for Ladies With Nuts. In wedding dresses and veils, they alternated between ladylike pretense and surrender to the urges of secret commotion under their skirts. For a moment, they would compose themselves into Taglioni et al. in Pas de Quatre, then grin ferociously to dance an awkward jig or play air ukulele. A sense of a child's game kept them from becoming too dire, as they shed their gowns to reveal burned-out, bedraggled honky-tonk gals. Lynch-John seemed to be all joints during a beautifully danced solo.

The actions in Garfield's dances follow an elusive, Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole illogic. It seemed perfectly natural, then, that she should swoon innocently when Lawrence Goldhuber lifted her in Good Girl Daddy--Part 1, before knowingly patting his rump. In the duet My Sister Was a Refugee, Garfield and Lynch-John were identical, diminutive Frozen Charlottes, down to pigtails and cheekbones.

The Houdini-like mystery of Chamecki/ Lerner's 1996 Antonio Caido suggested the surreal fictions of Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges. Luridly lit, fragmentary vignettes occurred amidst a visually compelling set featuring a large, suspended block of ice melting into an aquarium. Vivian Trimble's cheapo-horror-film score added to the sideshow atmosphere. Two moments, both performed atop a table-high, wheeled platform, stood out for their audacious movement invention. In one, a trio of dancers slapped arms and torsos onto the platform's surface without altering their inscrutable affects. In the other, Rosane Chamecki was suspended under the platform, tossed back and forth by the arms of others, who supported her through a remarkable series of unfolding, dangling embraces.

Hidden Form, another Chamecki/Lerner collaboration, evolved elliptically out of simple, indirect walking patterns. A trio with suddenly sexual overtones took shape as two male dancers, as blank as dolls, manipulated a female dancer's head, pushing her chin, commanding her gaze.

Sean Curran's From the Ether, With Instinct might do for the 1980s what Paul Taylor's Company B did for the 1940s. Issey Miyake's costumes certainly captured the gauche chic of the era, and Curran's vocabulary picked up its vernacular movement. What didn't match were the dancers' pert expressions, juxtaposed against the aloof, sarcastic songs of minimalist Welsh band Young Marble Giants.

In Sonata (We Are What We Were), a New York premiere, Curran allowed the dancing to carry its own narrative. A ring of chairs set around the perimeter of the space and a projection of clouds in a blue sky suggested an al fresco wedding scene. The dance's phrasing wasn't as free as in From the Ether, but the mise en scene was more successful, suggesting emptiness, geographical expanse, and absence, letting the mind play.

A silent, hallucinatory film of Wil Swanson dancing alone preceded the two distinct sections of his Naked Singularities. Manipulations of the video image elongated and shuddered his apparently improvised material, fragments of which were emphasized and reordered later by a company of eight. Bodies were caught in Swanson's tai chi-like movement streams like flotsam, to fling and slash through space before pausing for unexpected, subtle, and satisfying moments of calm. Swanson's dancers didn't seem to be performing so much as allowing the audience to observe their inexplicable behavior, which was variously shaded by changes in cadential emphasis, echo, or solo embellishment of patterns previously laid down.

The initial, stately, hesitant movements of Terse (2000) built to complement Corelli's textures and range of tempi (the Concerti Grossi for Two Violins, Viola, and Continuo, Op. 6). Some of Swanson's most arresting images arrived when nothing much was happening, as when Joshua Zimmermann came downstage and stood at the edge of the light, placing a tentative hand on his shoulder like Michelangelo's David.

Ore (1999) stripped Swanson to essentials. Stasis and inactivity were treated as partners in the stage picture, just as they were in Devin Carey's spare aural environment. Shrugging phrases into initiation, the three women often separated from the men, who tended to be floorbound or could be found dreamily repeating specific quirks of hand gesture. Each group often approached but only touched the energy fields of the other.

The Mighty Have Fallen
Grigorovich Ballet
Brooklyn Center for the
Performing Arts
Brooklyn, New York
March 31, 2002
Reviewed by Lynn Garafola

Spartacus: Once this was a ballet to conjure with. With its epic theme and larger-than-life heroes, it was a symbol of the Bolshoi Ballet itself. It was a man's ballet, even though there were plenty of women, a morality tale that pitted the noble gladiator Spartacus, leader of a Roman slave rebellion, against the brutal, lustful Crassus, whose legions put it down. And, despite choreographic longueurs, it was danced with passion, explosive physicality, and the imaginative power of true believers.

Yuri Grigorovich choreographed Spartacus in 1968, four years after his appointment as the Bolshoi's artistic director. Dismissed from the company in 1994, he now tours the work with his own company, the Grigorovich Ballet, described in the program as "the leading institution for his masterworks." A pickup troupe of almost ninety youngsters from a half-dozen Russian schools, the new ensemble is a far cry from the old Bolshoi.

The weakness of the company only emphasized the emptiness of the choreography--the drills, kick-lines, and endlessly repeated blocks of movement (turn, kick, swivel, plie, in second) that made wooden cartoons of the legionnaires. Not much was left to the imagination. In the orgy scene satyrs yanked baby-faced courtesans back and forth between the legs. Later Crassus hoisted a splayed Aegina (she's his concubine) in a one-arm, overhead lift. No one was ever still.

The costumes for the principals have been tarted up. We saw Aegina's nipples, and even Phrygia's (she's the hero's loving sweetheart). In Act I Spartacus wore a belted, off-the-shoulder, raspberry leotard; in Act II a low-cut peekaboo top--hardly the costuming for a hero.

As Spartacus, Denis Vladimirov jumped and turned with skill, and his flying scissor leaps were impressive. He is not a natural actor (when he whacks the air with a whip, he seems to be swatting a fly), and his duets with Tatiana Liabina, a soulful Phrygia, conveyed little ardor. Emotionally diffident, he lacks the physical and dramatic force to invest the role with heroism.

One wonders what Grigorovich hoped to accomplish by this tour and by the third-class company intended to keep his work before the public. In a sense it hardly matters, as the tour has steered clear of major dance venues and sophisticated audiences. At 75, Grigorovich should know better than to put his name on this embarrassing spectacle.

`From Far Away' Up Close
Ballet Florida
The Joyce Theater
New York, New York
March 7, 2002
Reviewed by Doris Hering

Marie Hale founded Ballet Florida of Palm Beach in 1986. Her biography in the Joyce Theater playbill for this, the company's first New York season, began with a statement that resounded like a call to arms. It read: "She believes in the rights of dancers to be challenged and encouraged, the rights of choreographers to have their visions fulfilled with integrity and artistry, and the rights of audiences to be stimulated and inspired, to experience compassion and joy."

To make this happen, she has assembled twenty-three dancers, none of whom seem to have come through her school but all of whom share a remarkably unified style. In addition, ballet mistress Claudia Cravey and ballet master Steven Hoff appear to give her the kind of stylistic support every director dreams of.

The company regaled New York with examples of its contemporary repertoire: Mauricio Wainrot's From Far Away, William Forsythe's Steptext, and Daniel Ezralow's Read My Hips. There was a touch of monotony in the pacing of the program and in the workaday look of the costume designs, and yet there was substance.

Occasionally posed as a family portrait, occasionally released into sun-drenched abandon, the dancers in From Far Away seemed to be recalling a time of growing up. Wainrot's style is gesture-based and as such is reminiscent of Doris Humphrey or Jose Limon. But, as in the duet for Janine Harris and Andrew Allagree, both choreographer and dancers were able to break free. The sunbeams were suddenly at play.

By starting with the house lights on, Steptext invited the audience into the heart of its passionate coolness. For sound, there were blasts of Bach; for the dancers, there were bold, stretching gestures.

Sometimes the four participants (Wendy Laraghy, Jerry Opdenaker, Stephen Dori, and Markus Schaffer) wove around one another in a Balanchine-like landscape, occasionally abandoned for a surprising lift or an insightful change of pace; how intelligently it was danced.

Although Steptext was the program's most sophisticated journey, moments of fiercely playful dancing were required of the participants in Read My Hips. Like a Pollock painting, its surface was spattered with mincing, gliding, head-shaking, wrestling, clowning--all joined by a subliminal touch of anger. Here, as in much of the program, the emphasis was on fiercely polished energy rather than aesthetic depth, and the Ballet Florida dancers often came close to superseding their subject matter.