Seeing Things: October 2006 Archives

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 31, 2006.

Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) -- ``The Times They Are A-Changin''' is Twyla Tharp's second attempt to revolutionize the Broadway musical. She has merely succeeded in turning some two dozen Bob Dylan songs into a gaudily illustrated songbook.

Tharp, undeniably one of the great choreographers of our era, was somewhat more successful with her animation of Billy Joel hits, the 2002 ``Movin' Out.'' But even there her concept and staging skills were inferior to her dance-making prowess.

For ``Times'' she's imposed a tale to make the often- hallucinatory Dylan numbers cohere as a narrative based on the age-old themes of generational conflict and the triumph of good over evil.

Songs like ``Blowin' in the Wind,'' ``Desolation Row'' and ``Mr. Tambourine Man'' are bent, often to the point of distortion, to fit the contrived scenario, and a program note is still required to clarify it.

The setting is a broken-down traveling circus. The main characters are its ringmaster, Captain Ahrab (Thom Sesma), a grotesque power freak whose chief means of communication is physical abuse; Coyote (Michael Arden), his son, equal parts generic goodness and post-adolescent rebellion; and Cleo (Lisa Brescia), who serves as animal tamer, all-purpose showgirl and dad and son's lust/love interest.

A Swell Quintet

Their singing, abetted by a swell quintet suspended high in the air, ranges from all right (Brescia) to fine (Arden). But Santo Loquasto, a frequent Tharp collaborator, is as much a star of the piece as anyone in the cast. He has provided a set and costumes that glamorize the tawdry, ramshackle world of the down- and-out carnival denizens.

The show doesn't dance much, but it certainly moves -- relentlessly. Operating with manic energy, a posse of seven clowns (six male dancers, one gauche female) engage in high-end acrobatics and gymnastics, mediocre stilt-walking, juggling and unicycle pedaling and all manner of adroit stuff with ropes.

The last category peaks with one fellow blithely skipping rope like a schoolgirl while simultaneously jumping in the whirling helixes of Double Dutch.

The whole business is amped up by a trampoline-studded floor that sends the feats flying.

Tharp's choreographic gift is expressed more subtly in a few spates of dancing for Coyote and Cleo -- agile movers, but not pros. Their burgeoning romance is expressed through touch dancing expanded just a little into Fred and Gingerish charm and wit.

Colloquial Roots

This kind of dancing, rooted in the colloquial, is what Tharp mixed with ballet and jazz in the '70s, creating on her own company such wickedly intelligent and engaging works as ``Eight Jelly Rolls'' and ``Sue's Leg.''

Tharp abandoned this mode -- in which her genius flourished best -- long ago. Even some of her later works for the presumably tamer world of concert dancing resemble her Broadway manner: dangerous athletic feats in dazzling light, enabled by music that won't let you go, wrapped in striking costumes and dry-ice fogs.

What is the 1986 ``In the Upper Room,'' which has American Ballet Theater's audiences cheering themselves hoarse this season, if not the prequel to ``The Times They Are A-Changin'''?

``The Times They Are A-Changin''' is at the Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 W. 47th St. Information: +1-212-307-4100 or http://www.timestheyareachangin.com.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 30, 2006.

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- A dozen Ballet Hispanico dancers, rehearsing in their studio for their new season at the Joyce, tomorrow through Nov. 12, disguise bodies trained for svelteness and power in the motley rags common to the practice room. Hair is left any which way. Makeup is minimal to absent. Faces turn into blank masks as the dancers concentrate on balance, stretch, speed and seamless lyricism.

But a striking, fanciful series of color portraits by photographer Richard Corman, shot for Ballet Hispanico's season brochure, portrays these same dancers as sensuous and exotic -- like wild dreams of their everyday selves.

They become strange, beautiful people in costumes evoking religious rites, seduction and mysterious transformations. Bizarre, alluring makeup glamorizes their faces. They sport audacious hairdos straight out of the fashion glossies. Their gaze meets yours with attitude.

The Spanish choreographer Ramon Oller's new ``Corazon Al- Andaluz'' (Heart of Andalusia), featured in the engagement, promises to reveal both aspects of these performers. It uses them as the able technicians they are, trained in classical ballet, modern dance and Hispanic idioms, as well as purveyors of irresistible fantasy.

The dance was inspired by Washington Irving's ``Tales of the Alhambra'' and hopes, according to the company, to capture the book's ``intrigue, romance, and grandeur.''

This looks likely. Tina Ramirez, founder and leader of the 36-year-old troupe, explains that a key quality she looks for in selecting her performers is ``dramatic intensity.''

Ballet Hispanico is at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., at 19th Street, Oct. 31 through Nov. 12. Information: +1-212-242-0800 or http://www.joyce.org. To request the free brochure: +1-212-362-6710 or coliveras@ballethispanico.org.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 25, 2006.

Oct. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Doug Varone is the first figure you see in his new ``Lux,'' dancing a solo of cushioned footfalls and whirling arms against an inky backdrop with a rising moon.

His brief incantation summons up seven members of his company, dressed like him in black tunics and flaring pants as if they were members of a cult that aspires to ecstasy.

Twenty years after founding Doug Varone and Dancers, the 50-year-old choreographer, more or less retired from dancing, is center stage at the Joyce Theater, where the group is performing through Sunday.

Varone is the sorcerer who sets his flock in ever- escalating, space-devouring motion (to Philip Glass's pulsating ``The Light''). Most of the dance takes place in a shallow horizontal plane; it's a vortex configured as a frieze.

All action with little depth, ``Lux'' is not much of a dance, though the audience, predictably, cheered its wild athleticism. But never mind. The balance of the opening night program, which will be repeated several times, comprises two works I would dare to call masterpieces.

Created last summer for the American Dance Festival and new to New York, the profound ``Boats Leaving'' is set to Arvo Part's ``Te Deum.''

Eight figures clad in dull-hued rumpled clothes might be any travelers heading for an unknown destination fraught with peril. Are they victims of the Holocaust being transported to the camps? Or perhaps Old World immigrants arriving at Ellis Island?

Constant Goodbyes

Varone, who keeps these figures generic, says he was exploring the fact that, as we journey through life, we inevitably leave familiar things and dear connections behind us.

The dance is based on brief freeze-frame images of groups of people -- Varone derived them from newspaper clippings -- that dissolve into movement that leads to the next tableau. The motion in between the fixed arrangements slowly acquires tremendous emotional force.

Simple standing postures become eloquent. Prone bodies pushing themselves across the floor take on a tragic dimension. Arms raised skyward seem to cry out.

The participants stalwartly cluster together as a group, evoking hope or at least tenacity, in the face of a threatened bleak outcome. They remain united even when conflict among them spreads like a rampant disease. This makes the end of the piece, when they finally separate, each leaving alone, almost unbearable.

Varone's genius here consists of using tactics that are strictly formal, utterly devoid of sentiment, to arouse the spectators' deepest feelings.

``Castles,'' from 2004, captures the hectic excitement and the quieter, tender feelings of its score, Prokofiev's ``Waltz Suite,'' which includes familiar passages from ``Cinderella.''

His Parents Danced

The choreographer, who retains vivid childhood memories of his parents dancing in their living room, naturally co-opts fragments of ballroom dancing. Mostly, though, he keeps the movement in his own eclectic vocabulary: fluid and fast, yet constantly taking the floor into its confidence, and rooted in everyday gesture.

The full-group passages for the eight dancers are stunning examples of Varone's ability to make many different things happen at once while keeping the stage picture coherent.

Still, the highlights of the work are its two duets. One, a galumphing dance with sly couplings for a pair of beefy guys, John Beasant III and Daniel Charon, says a lot about how men relate to each other, be they brothers, best friends or lovers.

Another, for Natalie Desch and Eddie Taketa, shows an attempted sexual union fraught with physical and psychic dysfunction, yet pursued so devotedly it's as touching as romance.

Not `Dancers'

If ``Castles'' has a theme, it's people trying to forge communities by partnering one-on-one -- essential, if failure- plagued, tasks.

One of the several beauties of the piece is that, apart from their stunning agility, the performers don't look like dancers. They look like real people who happen to dance.

Doug Varone and Dancers is at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., at 19th Street, through Oct. 29. Information: (1) (212) 242-0800 or http://www.joyce.org.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 23, 2006.

Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- George Balanchine's ``Symphonie Concertante'' features a pair of leading women, but when American Ballet Theatre's Veronika Part dances one of the roles, she's the only one you see.

She'll appear in the ballet on Oct. 25, midway through the company's fall season at the City Center. On Oct. 28, she can be seen in the soulful adagio duet from Act II of ``Swan Lake,'' another assignment perfectly matched to her gifts.

The gravity, grandeur and sheer voluptuousness of Part's dancing are compelling. Her build is majestic, and the flowing, weighted quality of her movement suggests classical statuary come to life. Her powerful presence heightens the viewer's sense of the moment.

Looks count, too. Personal beauty isn't essential for a ballerina, but the fact that Part resembles the glamorous leading ladies of 1940s Hollywood hasn't done her any harm.

Some observers complain about Part's weakness in allegro work. (The revered Suzanne Farrell was no whiz at fast dancing either.) Others find Part's performances too studied. Deeply calculated preparation, leaving little to chance, can yield results that are gorgeous but devoid of spontaneity. This, however, is how Russian dancers work. And it's Russian style that must be thanked for Part's beautifully modeled use of her arms and back.

Part trained in St. Petersburg, at the prestigious academy of the Kirov Ballet, graduating into the company's corps de ballet in 1996. Two years later, she was made a soloist.

Key Roles

Even during Part's time in Russia, American dance was not foreign to her. The Kirov's belated introduction of Balanchine's choreography to its repertory gave her key roles, among them leads in both the romantic Emeralds and classical Diamonds sections of the master's ``Jewels'' and the sublime slow movement of ``Symphony in C.''

In 2002 she joined ABT as a soloist. She has yet to be elevated to principal rank, and one could argue that she hasn't yet earned it. She has neither demonstrated proficiency in a wide range of roles nor displayed the focus and fervor today's dancers need to make it to the top.

Part remains something of a sleeping beauty. But in terms of born-with-it talent, in terms of seizing the viewer's attention and firing the imagination, she's well-nigh impossible to beat.

Veronika Part performs with American Ballet Theatre at the New York City Center on Oct. 25 and 28. Information: (1)(212) 581-1212 or http://www.abt.org.

`A Bras le Corps'

The scene is the sanctuary of St. Mark's Church in the East Village, home of the Danspace Project, consecrated for over three decades to the work of independent experimental choreographers.

Corralled into a square marked out by chairs occupied by spectators, two men confront each other and wrestle. Their intense athletic encounter suggests the love and antagonism that exist during a long, close friendship.

The pair, Boris Charmatz and Dimitri Chamblas, both French, first met as 10-year-olds at the ballet barre in the school of the Paris Opera Ballet. As teenagers in 1992, they turned their backs on classicism and co-choreographed pieces that redefined conventional boundaries of dance. This duet, ``A bras le corps,'' first shown in 1993, was one of them.

In recent years, the two have pursued their interests separately. From time to time, though, they rework and perform the duet. It serves as an evolving record of their relationship.

The movement is forceful and daring, comprising brutal contacts and heavy falls. It tests the balance of entwined bodies. At one point it transmogrifies into a contest in dance virtuosity that ends, significantly, in collapse.

The title of the piece, which has been translated as ``Total Embrace,'' may also be a pun on ``A bas le corps!'' (Down with the body!). The French are nothing if not ironic.

Charmatz and Chamblas perform ``A bras le corps'' at Danspace Project from Oct. 26 through 29. Information:(1)(212) 674-8194 or http://www.danspaceproject.org.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 19, 2006.

Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Interviewed just before the premiere of her ambitious new work, ``Dogs,'' Sarah Michelson promised to transform the prestigious site she was using -- BAM's Harvey Theater. She also announced that this piece would be dance-centered, in contrast to her usual mode of conceptual or performance art.

None of this turned out to be true.

Thought by many who patrol the cutting edge of dance to be of first importance in the field, Michelson likes to use her sites in what she thinks of as unconventional ways.

More often than not, they're faint echoes of yesteryear's experiments, such as reversing the position of performers and audience or, here, having a black curtain descend at unpredictable intervals to cut off the view of the stage.

In the case of ``Dogs,'' Michelson hasn't transformed the Harvey. All she's done is decorate it.

She has created a chic, surrealist black-and-white living room, bordered and hung with gigantic theatrical light fixtures. A bold floor-covering borrows its pattern from Middle Eastern art. The furniture is sparse, white and filigreed. A long table holds a platter of tiny roasted fowl.

Three women populate the scene, their wardrobe shifting between black and white floating robes and leotards. Who they are and what they're up to remain steadfastly enigmatic.

Parker Lutz, Michelson's longtime creative partner, seems to be the presiding goddess of the place, while the dark- haired Michelson and the blond Jennifer Howard shadow and mirror each other's moves like inseparable, slightly hostile twins.

Pink Fog

The dramatic lighting is as much a player in the piece as the human figures. The pink-tinted fog that invades the entire theater in the second half of the show, along with a few subsidiary characters, is a touch too much. Both the decor and the scenario of provocative hints owe much to Jean Cocteau.

As for dancing, the characters do dance, after a fashion. To Mike Iverson's and Delibes's music, they reiterate a few basic ballet configurations endlessly, like mantras.

The three principal women also nibble occasionally at the poultry. Eventually they talk their way through an absurdist tea party in which the declaration ``It tastes like dog'' does what little it can to account for the title of the piece.

What Michelson has actually created with ``Dogs'' is not choreography, but an installation -- that darling of the visual arts -- that moves through time. An hour and 25 minutes, to be exact.

Garth Fagan

A tall, lithe man, chest bare and arms glowing like pale amber in the stage light, bounds onto the stage in a leap that recalls the familiar highway sign for ``Deer Crossing.''

He's Norwood Pennewell, the longtime star of Garth Fagan Dance, which is at the Joyce Theater through Oct. 22. His soaring, perfectly coordinated leap introduced the company's opening-night program, which went on to feature Fagan's newest work, ``Senku.''

Fagan says that he created ``Senku'' to show the beauty of different generations dancing together -- the athletic feistiness of the young, the more settled wisdom of the elders. But the dance doesn't come across that way.

Steve Humphrey, its oldest performer and still powerful at 54, has only a supporting role, while Pennewell, at 47, is the image of youth, buoyant and flexible. No matter, ``Senku'' is rewarding on other terms.

The first of its four sections is a long riveting solo danced by Khama Phillips. It alternates moments of intense, rooted-to-the-earth stillness with brief, violent moves: martial-arts kicks, whirling arms, thrumming feet, rapid rolls on the floor. If it were performed on its own at a gala, it would bring the house down.

Tender Pair

A duet that explores the relationship between a young woman just beginning to encounter life's big troubles (Annique Roberts) and a succoring female mentor (Nicolette Depass) is eloquent and tender. The group section that follows it has not yet gelled.

Pennewell gets the last word with a solo that intersperses laconic moseying-around with tight, forceful gestures and discouraged collapses. Fagan may have meant him to represent a man dealing with the ravages of age -- or perhaps a choreographer, in the process of birthing a new work.

``Senku'' is accompanied by William Chapman Nyaho on piano, playing vibrant selections from four composers of African descent.

Sarah Michelson's ``Dogs'' is at the BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn, through Oct. 21. Information: (1)(718) 363-4100 or http://www.bam.org.

Garth Fagan Dance is at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., at 19th Street, through Oct. 22. Information: (1)(212) 242-0800 or http://www.joyce.org.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 17, 2006.

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- A visitor to American Ballet Theatre's rehearsal quarters during the company's run-up to its City Center fall season is greeted with a startling sight.

Women spin across the space so fast that the pink satin of their pointe shoes registers as a blur. Men maneuver women through lifts that resemble satellite launchings or catch them as they plunge toward the floor, head first.

Arms and legs lash the air. Fingers twitch as if galvanized. A small dynamo of a guy thrusts his body straight into the air and then, for a microsecond, leans off the vertical like the Tower of Pisa.

All of this is happening simultaneously, at breakneck speed and with energy ratcheted to the highest pitch. Only the dancers' uncanny precision, it seems, prevents sudden death.

``Glow-Stop,'' the ballet in view, set to music by Mozart and Philip Glass, is the latest creation of Jorma Elo, the Finnish resident choreographer at the Boston Ballet who is in demand everywhere.

Audiences are likely to respond to this thrill-a-minute dance with shrieks of delight, just as they did to Elo's ``Slice to Sharp,'' commissioned by the New York City Ballet for its Diamond Project back in June.

Nevertheless, the backbone of ABT's season (which begins tomorrow and ends Nov. 5) remains a bunch of time-proven classics -- dating all the way back to the 1930s -- from the troupe's rich and varied repertory.

Political Dance

Kurt Jooss's 1932 antiwar classic, ``The Green Table,'' fills a perpetual need. It holds diplomats and politicians accountable for the destruction they engender.

In a series of vivid scenes, Jooss shows how war delivers everyone, from soldiers and partisans enflamed by their cause to innocents old and young, into the grasp of an all-devouring Death.

Staged for ABT by the choreographer's daughter, Anna Markard, the ballet is now coached (on the day I saw rehearsals) by Victor Barbee, a memorable dramatic dancer high on ABT's roster of senior artists passing on their wisdom.

In sneakered feet, Barbee stalked the imposing man cast as Death while he closed in on a young woman playing the virgin prostituted as one of the spoils of war. ``Be soft,'' Barbee whispered, ``and then vicious.''

Antony Tudor's 1937 ``Dark Elegies'' illuminates another perennial theme: a community's loss, in one fell swoop, of its children. The ballet tells no specific story. Yet it is devastatingly eloquent in charting the bereaved adults' differing modes of grief and the catharsis of their shared resignation.

Cowgirls, Cowboys

Further repertory treasures come from the 1940s, among them Agnes de Mille's upbeat ``Rodeo'' (1942). The tale it tells is deliciously outdated: A wannabe cowgirl yearns to join the guys, riding and roping on the dusty plains. Proper gals in her prairie town are given to frills and flirtation.

Her happy ending comes when she forsakes tomboy ways, dons a dress and succumbs to romance. Somehow, whatever your feminist convictions, you're rooting for her at every turn.

In the style-shifting that's an ABT specialty, the horse- breakers and their hoedowns are likely to give way, after a brief intermission, to a flock of svelte women in white tutus creating images of sublime classicism.

George Balanchine choreographed this immaculate vision, ``Symphonie Concertante,'' in 1947 for the group that would shortly become the New York City Ballet. The high point of the piece has the lone man in the dance -- an archetypal noble cavalier -- inventively partnering a pair of ballerinas, each ravishing in her own way.

Male Adoration

Finally, turning his back to the audience to gaze at his idols across the full distance of the stage, he kneels in reverence. If you've ever wanted to know how Balanchine felt about women, this is your answer.

Skipping to an equally rich decade, the 1980s, ABT's repertoire this season provides a pair of ballets that originally starred Mikhail Baryshnikov. They were created by Twyla Tharp and Mark Morris, who have remained the most remarkable choreographers of their generation.

In the rehearsal studio, I saw Susan Jones, ABT's invaluable ballet mistress, instructing three of the four couples who will alternate in Tharp's 1983 ``Sinatra Suite.'' Not only was Jones on top of every single step, she was also able to show the dancers the texture of each phrase, which makes all the difference.

The choreography is a kamikaze form of social dance, so the women were in high heels. That makes the daredevil partnering all the more risky, but the dancers appeared to be having a genuine good time.

Morris Revisited

Tina Fehlandt, a striking member of the Mark Morris Dance Group in its formative years, is staging the revival of Morris's 1988 ``Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes.'' Standing in the dancers' hectic midst, she genially supervises a kaleidoscope of motion that teeters on the edge of becoming a traffic accident.

Only crackerjack classical dancers could bring off this choreography. It asks them, and their viewers, to relinquish hidebound notions about how ballet steps can be put together.

It also harbors a little in-joke. The seemingly impossible-for-anyone-else solo created for Baryshnikov is immediately echoed by the choreography assigned to another man who joins him.

In retrospect, that passage in ``Drink'' seems to mark the birth of a cadre of sensational male virtuosi at ABT. Along with the company's formidable cache of ballets, this feature ranks as one of ABT's present-day glories. But that's another story.

American Ballet Theatre performs at New York City Center, West 55th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, Oct. 18 through Nov. 5. Information: (1)(212) 581-1212 or http://www.abt.org.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 16, 2006.

Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Intimate is the word for Slovenia- based Betontanc's ``Wrestling Dostoyevsky,'' at the Danspace Project Thursday through Saturday. The audience is seated just inches from the performers on all four sides, breathing the same few cubic feet of air.

That air fills with tense, raw emotion in the chamber-scaled troupe's ``physical theater'' take on the Russian novelist's ``Crime and Punishment.''

The performers speak, loudly and largely unhappily. They move, making gestures that are sometimes abstract, sometimes abrasively readable. Gradually, they work themselves into a frenzy.

The atmosphere heats up through some deftly choreographed violence, including, in chronological order, attempted murder, epileptic seizure, sadistic training in gymnastics, rough sex, and lurid hallucination.

The performers also interact directly -- and ironically -- with the spectators, begging, hat in hand, and offering plates of cookies.

The troupe, founded in 1990 by the theater director Matjaz Pograjc, is, like most revolutionary art-world enterprises, ``trying to make it real.'' Translated into English, its name means Concrete Dance.

So out go received ideas about performance as well as stagy tactics that try to pull the wool over your eyes. This is nothing new in dance. Consider such radicals as Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham. Betontanc simply assumes the iconoclastic job needs doing again.

Betontanc performs at the Danspace Project, St. Mark's Church, 131 E. 10 St. at Second Avenue, Oct. 19 through 21. Tickets: (1)(212) 674-8194. Information: http://www.danspaceproject.org.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 11, 2006.

Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Merce Cunningham wants you to bring your iPod to his new ``eyeSpace.'' If you happen to be one of the choreographer's admirers who sees no need to own one, you may borrow the gear for free at the Joyce Theater door.

With it, you can access ``International Cloud Atlas,'' Mikel Rouse's score for the dance and shuffle its components as you please. The noise-scape is completed by two musicians at computers, filling the theater with a gentle wash of ambient sound.

As most dance aficionados know, the 87-year-old Cunningham's iconoclastic choreography relates only obliquely to the scores he mates with it.

The two are not interdependent; they are merely the same length. Often the dance and the music created for it meet for the first time just before the premiere.

For much of Cunningham's long, illustrious and controversial career, the enigmatic scores were provided by avant-garde masters like John Cage, the choreographer's partner, who died in 1992.

Come the new millennium, Cunningham began to update his accompaniment. For his 50th-anniversary concert in 2003, he commissioned a pair of rock bands, Radiohead and Sigur Ros, for his new ``Split Sides.''

The choice of musicians, as well as the choreography itself, seemed to be a capitulation to popular taste.

Interactive Dance

Now, with ``eyeSpace'' (through Oct. 15), Cunningham is inviting his audience to be interactive, a tactic that presumably engages the art-resistant. This from an artist who stuck to his esoteric aesthetic for decades, often with glorious results.

The choreography for ``eyeSpace'' is even more discouraging than the sound gimmickry.

A colorful, ebullient painting by Henry Samelson, ``Blues Arrive Not Anticipating What Transpires Even Between Themselves,'' serves as a backdrop to a dozen dancers in blue unitards unfortunately color-keyed to the decor.

The dancers are deployed in the most obvious ways imaginable. A slow, weighty quartet is followed by a trio of petite women doing finicky, quicksilver things. A second trio, all male, joins them, then there's a duet, and that's it.

At no point does Cunningham draw on his great invention: the field of many figures, each equipped with specific actions and purposes, coming together as if at random in time and space. This setup, allowing the viewer to choose what to focus on, is interactivity at its most subtle and intelligent.

``EyeSpace'' shares the program with a ``Minevent'' -- segments of Cunningham's 1997 ``Scenario'' remixed for the occasion -- and the 1960 ``Crises.''

``Crises'' is sheer invention and delight, packed with singular illustrations of Cunningham's theories about the endless adventures of the body in space. And it's jazzy and witty, to boot.

Urban Wings

A breakdancer rightly called Cyclone spins on his head with a gyroscope's unflappable aplomb. A percussionist known as Peter Rabbit works his plastic buckets so swiftly that his sticks register as a blur.

This is ``Rennie Harris's New York Legends of Hip-Hop,'' a celebration of the phenomenon born in the 1970s on the mean streets of the Bronx.

Harris's own company, the Philadelphia-based Rennie Harris Puremovement, is a favorite on the concert circuit and devoted to preserving hip-hop culture through dance. ``New York Legends,'' a separate undertaking, lovingly demonstrates the connection between the genre's past and present.

Hip-Hop Veterans

The show -- loud, fast and sassy -- features originators slowed just a little by the passage of time. Pop Master Fabel (Jorge Pabon), a founding member of the Rock Steady Crew, can deliver the essence of what he once did with undiminished charisma.

Representing the rising generation, Tic and Tac (twins Tyheem and Kareem Barnes) seem to have no allegiance to gravity or the dictates of anatomy. One whirls in place, spinning his sibling on his head, then stops short while his human headgear uncannily continues to rotate.

The program gives equal time to the music associated with the dancing. DJs make mischief on their turntables, and ``Beatboxers'' mike sounds they produce with their bodies without resorting to words.

Documentary video footage reflects hip-hop's social and political roots. It shows how the form channeled the exorbitant energy of urban youth and its anger and self- assertion as well. And how women struggled for equal opportunity in the field.

This extravaganza is attractive to audiences young, old and in between -- which is exactly what the New Victory's lively shows aim for. Anyone who's ferried a youngster to dumbed-down, cuted-up kiddie entertainment will be undyingly grateful.

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company is at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., at 19th Street, through Oct. 15. Information: (1)(212) 242-0800; http://www.joyce.org.

``Rennie Harris's New York Legends of Hip-Hop'' is at the New Victory Theater, 209 W. 42nd St., through Oct. 22. Information: (1)(212) 239-6200; http://www.newvictory.org.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 12, 2006.

Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- At first glance, they're an odd couple, classical-dance superstar Sylvie Guillem and the down-to-earth contemporary dancer and choreographer Russell Maliphant.

Though they hardly speak the same dance language, they've teamed up for ``Push,'' a two-person show that won raves in London last year and opened last night at New York's City Center. What they have in common is curiosity and daring.

Guillem is a highly celebrated ballerina, famous as much for her glamour and willfulness as for her beautiful mannequin-style body and dazzling technique.

She rose to the rank of etoile, the highest the Paris Opera Ballet has to offer, at 19. Five years later, asserting her independence, she left for a guest-artist position with England's Royal Ballet and free-lance engagements. Now 41, sunset age for most classical dancers, she's seeking even wider horizons.

Though Maliphant trained in ballet, he moved on to modern dance, and both his dancing and his choreographic style are heavily influenced by contact improvisation and non-European disciplines such as yoga, capoeira and tai chi. Like the iconoclastic dance-makers of early postmodernism, he's self- invented.

The first half of the ``Push'' program, which runs through Oct. 15, consists of three solos choreographed by Maliphant that introduce him and Guillem as individuals.

Lethal Leg

Guillem appears first in ``Solo,'' a striking figure in a diaphanous white odalisque's outfit that leaves her midriff bare. She arches a bare foot into bowstring position and unfurls a fabulously long and shapely leg as if it were a gorgeous, lethal snake.

She undulates her long arms with their infinitely flexible joints. To Carlos Montoya's recorded flamenco guitar music, she moves almost casually around the stage, suggesting Spanish dance forms without actually quoting them.

None of this is remarkable as dancing per se, but Guillem is riveting as a phenomenon.

Maliphant, in his 1996 signature solo, ``Shift,'' appears to be Guillem's physical and temperamental opposite. His movement, in his particular fusion vocabulary, is rounded, weighted, deliberate. The piece is the portrait of a plainspoken man, as seriously allied to gravity as a ballerina is to transformation and flight.

Shadow Dance

Maliphant's unwavering concentration gives the proceedings a spiritual dimension. That is increased by the lighting of Michael Hulls, a longtime associate, who creates three ever-shifting silhouettes of the dancer. They seem to be souls accompanying a seeker after truth.

Guillem's second solo, ``Two,'' choreographed for another performer in 1997, depends almost entirely on Hulls's tour de force of lighting design.

Fixed in a rectangle of light, she jackknifes her malleable body to reveal a nearly nude, exquisitely muscled back. From that center, she extends her arms and legs, rippling them so that, as the intensity of Andy Cowton's percussion score escalates, her hands and feet suggest flickering flames.

The program's second half was given over to an absorbing 30-minute duet, ``Push,'' to music by Cowton. Making the whole undertaking cohere, it allowed you to forget the flimsiness of Guillem's solos.

The piece opens with Guillem mounted on Maliphant's shoulders, swaying and gesticulating in tandem with him, then spilling down his spine to the ground.

Vivified Gods

Repeated with inventive variations, this configuration suggests statuary of Indian gods that have come to life. The images reveal great feats of control, and the result is haunting.

Then, traveling through the space, the dancers repeatedly separate and come together. They conjure up the idea of a couple whose relationship has matured to a point where their individual habits and desires have become perfectly complementary. An extended push-and-pull encounter seems to tell the poignant story of this evolution.

``Push'' is at the New York City Center through Oct. 15. Information: (1)(212) 581-1212; http://www.nycitycenter.org.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 9, 2006.

Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Apart from a favored few, classical dancers die young -- at least their technical prowess does. Following the example of Mikhail Baryshnikov, the 41-year-old, Paris-bred, London-based ballerina Sylvie Guillem is seeking out alternative kinds of dance in which to be riveting.

The superstar has teamed with the contemporary dancer and choreographer Russell Maliphant for a show called ``PUSH.'' The program of three solos and a long duet, a huge hit at Sadler's Wells in London last year, has its first American showings at the New York City Center Wednesday through Sunday.

Guillem's superstar status rests partly on her extravagant body and outsize temperament. She's long and svelte, with endless legs capable of ``ear-whacking'' extensions. She trained as a gymnast before she went to the Paris Opera Ballet, becoming its youngest ``etoile'' (star) at the age of 19.

Her single-mindedness about what she wants to do and how she wants to do it have earned her the moniker ``Mademoiselle Non'' (``Miss No''). Her onstage glamour has a haughty glitter, though offstage, her self-effacement is Garbo-esque.

For ``PUSH,'' Maliphant has tailored his choreography to Guillem's assets. And his Zen-like calm, athletic prowess, and feline sensuousness make him, as her partner, a splendid foil.

``PUSH'' opens Wednesday at the New York City Center and continues Friday through Sunday. Tickets: (1)(212) 581-1212. Information: http://www.nycitycenter.org.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 6, 2006.

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Glimpsed on a DVD sampler from Philadanco: five gorgeous, superbly athletic, pastel-gowned women dance out their complaints about the guys giving them heart trouble.

A minute later, a crew that deserves high-risk pay invades the stage with wild leaps and lifts aiming for, and miraculously achieving, soft, safe landings.

That first clip comes from Carmen de Lavallade's ``Love Songs,'' to Billie Holiday recordings. The other is of Christopher L. Huggins's ``Cottonwool,'' which probes the nature of daring.

These dances will be joined on the New York program by Daniel Ezralow's ``Pulse'' and the spiritually charged ``For Truth,'' by Ronald K. Brown, one of today's most gifted choreographers.

Philadanco -- Philadelphia Dance Company on its birth certificate -- was founded in 1970 and is still run by Joan Meyers Brown, who will receive a Dance magazine award next month. Originally, Brown aimed to provide training and performance opportunities then scarce for African-American dancers. Her company remains predominantly black, as does her roster of choreographers.

As Brown says, after 50 years in the field, ``There's a dearth of opportunity still.''

Philadanco performs through Sunday at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave. at 19th Street. For information, call (1)(212) 242- 0800 or go to http://www.joyce.org .

Salute to a Composer

Just as Tchaikovsky served classical ballet, Steve Reich has nourished postmodern dance. Choreographers are drawn to Reich's work because of its vibrant pulse, its hypnotic power, and its postmodern strategies, which include creating a rich matrix with a radically pared-down vocabulary.

``Steve Reich @ 70,'' a multiconcert birthday homage to the inventive composer, kicks off with a choreographic tribute through Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Belgium's high priestess of iconoclastic movement, and the British, more newly celebrated, Akram Khan are performing in a shared program of dances they created to Reich's music.

De Keersmaeker's contribution is her breakthrough piece, the 1982 ``Fase, four movements to the music of Steve Reich.'' She and another woman, Tale Dolven, execute terse phrases of pedestrian steps with great intensity, slipping in and out of synch. Relentlessly repeated, with only the smallest escalations, the ordinary becomes cataclysmic.

Khan's choreography, for himself and two additional men, was commissioned to accompany Reich's 2006 ``Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings,'' played live by the London Sinfonietta. The dance echoes Reich's tactic of drawing from cultures decidedly different from traditional European forms. Powerful and fluid, the choreography looks like a blend of ritual, martial arts, and sensuous self-display.

``Steve Reich @ 70'' is at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn. For information, call (1)(718) 636- 4100 or go to http://www.bam.org for information.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

I've been busy lately and haven't kept up with my mail. Only this a.m. did I look at the New York City Ballet's brochure for its upcoming season at the New York State Theater, November 24 - February 25. I do not understand what's going on. Or maybe I understand all too well.

Let's start at the top. The first performance, on November 21, is labeled "Opening Night Benefit." But it's not considered an official part of the season (see the dates given above). It's also the only repertory program until January 3.

Time was, a full week of repertory preceded the company's seemingly interminable run of The Nutcracker, but let that pass for the moment. The benefit program, as the brochure advertises it, will feature a "one-time-only Premiere Ballet." Is this intended to draw an audience, which will pay premium prices for the better seats, via snobbish exclusivity? Will this mysterious item, choreographer and music unannounced in the brochure, never be seen again? Never this season, apparently. Never ever? This doesn't sound likely. A new ballet costs a company serious money and is, presumably, an attempt at bringing into being a work of art. (Am I being hopelessly naïve?) A ballet worth doing once should be worth doing again.

After playing Nancy Drew on the Net, combing the NYCB website and myriad other sources, I found out that the item in question is a ten-minute affair called Middle Duet and that it was choreographed for the Kirov Ballet back in 1998 by Alexei Ratmansky to music by Yury Khanon. Beginning with the minor fact that the premiere is merely "American," not "world," the handsome, well-organized brochure is being less than forthcoming.

Anyway, barring this little piece, there will be no new ballets this season. Given the quality of six of the seven new ballets in last season's Diamond Project (only Ratmansky's contribution, Russian Seasons, was a hit) detractors will point out that this may be just as well. But isn't it a truth universally acknowledged that new choreography is essential to the stimulation of both audience and dancers? What's up?

The sole novelty will be a "major revival" of Jerome Robbins's Dybbuk. What makes it major? The choreographer is no longer with us to rethink the piece. What would a minor revival be like?

About those weeks of Nutcracker, which have, over the years, escalated to five plus. No one would argue with the fact that The Nutcracker is essential to the NYCB, as well as to many another company. It pays the bills, drawing spectators in winter solstice celebratory mood who wouldn't otherwise go to the ballet, some of whom make their attendance an annual tradition. So this warhorse is essential economically even when not so artistically, though the NYCB's Nutcracker--devised by Balanchine--is a wonderful thing of its kind. Still, a dedicated ballet fan cannot live on sugarplums alone. Over five weeks of them, unalloyed by alternatives, with only shifts in the casting of the solo roles for diversion, might make one turn against sweetmeats for life.

Apart from the era in which my daughter worked her way up, height-wise, through the kiddie roles of Angel, Soldier (of ascending grades), Polichinelle, and Candy Cane, a single performance of Nuts annually pretty much satisfied my own Xmastide cravings. Come the new year, repertory programs would resume, and I, like many avid followers of the company, was eager for them.

This year, the Nutcracker marathon will be followed by two unbroken weeks of Peter Martins's speeded-up version of The Sleeping Beauty. Whether or not you care for this take on the Petipa/Tchaikovsky classic--I don't, as it happens--is almost irrelevant. The issue at hand is that, with this scheduling tactic, the NYCB suggests that repertory programs, its mainstay for over half a century, have taken another step toward becoming an endangered species.

This move has got to be entirely about money. Program-length story ballets with an emphasis on elaborate costumes and scenery sell tickets. They are what the general audience wants to see. The specialist audience is too small to support a big classical company's season in any meaningful way. Which accounts for American Ballet Theatre's programming of its yearly spring run at the Metropolitan Opera House: a week of back-to-back swans followed by a week of star-crossed lovers, and so on. This modus operandi gives the ballerinas, their cavaliers, and a handful of soloists a chance to rotate in the featured parts. It makes the corps de ballet feel suicidal. It makes the specialist audience stay home.

I'm not done with the NYCB programming yet. When the company finally gets around to doing repertory--three or four ballets per performance, usually by an assortment of choreographers--it will now confine said repertory to set "packages." In other words, if you want to see Balanchine's Serenade, you're going to get his Stravinsky Violin Concerto on the same combination plate even though you're more interested, at the moment, in his Agon--and you've got to buy into the Robbins Dybbuk as well.

Each of the ten repertory programs has been given a title, and most of these titles are both vague and fatuous: "A Banquet of Dance," "Visionary Voices," "For the Fun of It." Apparently the idea behind the strategy is that it will make the occasional ticket buyer feel more secure. Marketing stays up nights devising these ploys. They may well encourage commerce, but they don't do a helluva lot to advance the (lost?) cause of art.

The NYCB will perform its rigid repertory programs from January 16 through the end of the season on February 25. In other words, for six weeks--merely a few days over the length of the Nutcracker run, about two weeks less than the siege of Nuts and Beauty combined.

None of this is specifically Peter Martins's fault. The NYCB's present methods of recruiting and maintaining an audience are employed everywhere. They are both a symptom of (and a causal factor in) a malaise prevalent in today's culture. ABT, for example, had a ludicrously tasteless advertising campaign a couple of years back that I railed against in the Village Voice. I bring up the policies evident in the City Ballet's brochure because I was genuinely shocked by how far the commercialization had progressed on that turf. And because this company was the first great classical troupe that I saw, because it shaped my aesthetic, and because I used to love it so much.

© 2006 Tobi Tobias