Seeing Things: November 2006 Archives

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on November 28, 2006.

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Like moths to the flame, choreographers are drawn to Stravinsky's ``Les Noces.'' Created between 1914 and 1923, the vibrant score, evoking peasant wedding rituals, was first choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska (and not equaled since).

Angelin Preljocaj's 1989 version -- called simply ``Noces'' by his Aix-en-Provence, France-based company -- recasts the action as a postmodern mating dance that is a communal battle of the sexes. It begins performances tonight at Manhattan's Joyce Theater.

Five women, in those chic little nothing dresses that are a staple of the European woman's wardrobe, face off with an equal number of men costumed for corporate culture. The supporting cast includes a handful of life-size rag dolls dressed as veiled brides and some stark long benches wielded as props.

The women are feisty, to be sure, as today's liberated women are expected to be. Still, the men are the aggressors, their sexual advances essentially rapes.

If occasionally the women appear to control the men, it's because the men are like automatons, devoid of feeling, equally satisfied coupling with the floppy dolls in tattered gauze as with their human partners.

The piece builds to a violent climax. Then, unexpectedly -- perhaps recalling the result of the arranged marriage in the original -- it resolves into the happy ending awaiting couples who can reach a mutual understanding.

John Cage

Preljocaj's 2004 ``Empty Moves (Part 1)'' is set to John Cage's ``Empty Words,'' which uses aleatory tactics to deconstruct language into pure sound, shorn of intellectual meaning: Cage is heard reciting his text in 1977 to an audience in Milan that offered spontaneous unfriendly backtalk.

To this accompaniment, which provides misunderstood-artist associations, Preljocaj has two men and two women perform long strings of more or less abstract movement. His choreography, however, is far more conventionally coherent than the Cage. It is strictly arranged and deeply rooted in classical ballet technique, one of the most law-and-order modes in Western dance.

Preljocaj studied for a while with Merce Cunningham, who frequently joined forces with Cage. Here Preljocaj may be after the miracles of randomness that Cunningham achieves with such regularity and aplomb. But Cunningham's intelligence and imagination are not easily duplicated, and his methods are not a gimmick for a single piece but the work of a lifetime.

Ballet Preljocaj is at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave. at 19th Street, through Dec. 3. Information: +1-212-242-0800 or http://www.joyce.org.

Johannes Wieland

``I feel violent about TV,'' Johannes Wieland declares, in the softest voice imaginable. At a rehearsal of his new ``Progressive Coma,'' which riffs on the theme of souls ``stolen'' by the media, the choreographer tells a visitor, ``TV worms its way into our lives. It presents these unreal, perfect images and makes us want to look -- to be -- like that. And it seduces us into experiencing feelings secondhand.''

Dance is usually a poor conduit for argument. This piece, a chunk of which was unveiled last season, will make its mark by virtue of the elements that have gotten Wieland noticed on the postmodern dance circuit in the past several years: Swift, strong dancers who are expert at the slithery movement he devises for them. Sexual encounters rendered as picturesque wrestling matches. Barely mobile bodies being dressed and undressed for both visual and erotic effect. An eerie element expressed in the props -- here, ice cubes (used singly or in glacial quantities), surgical instruments and an ax.

The completed dance will have a strong video component, Wieland adds, an anthology of beautiful and violent images drawn from TV and projected onto the backdrop. He makes no mention of the irony involved.

Johannes Wieland is at the Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 W. 55th St., at Ninth Avenue, Nov. 30 through Dec. 3. Information: +1-212-868-4444 or http://www.johanneswieland.org.

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

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on November 27, 2006.

Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The New York City Ballet has been performing George Balanchine's ``Nutcracker'' for over half a century. Balletomanes and tourists alike return to it year after year as a part of their holiday rituals. It serves the company as well as the audience, being at once an infallible money-maker and an occasion for dancers to test their mettle.

Unfurling its vision of civilized social behavior and the fear-tinged delight of a child's dreams, ``The Nutcracker'' provides over a dozen featured roles, and all of them are multiply cast. Opening night on Nov. 24th featured senior ballerina Wendy Whelan, delicate and playful as the Sugar Plum Fairy who rules over the Land of the Sweets. In the pas de deux that climaxes the second act, she was gloriously partnered by another veteran, Nikolaj Hubbe.

Other standouts were Sofiane Sylve, as the Dewdrop who adds sparkle and flash to the pink prettiness of the Waltz of the Flowers, and Teresa Reichlen as the soloist representing Coffee. Reichlen is duly sinuous and sultry as the bare-legged, bare- midriffed harem girl. But she adds an element of pathos, even despair, to the familiar interpretation, making the exotic stock character deeply human.

Chance to Shine

As usual, in the course of the five-week run, the ballet will also become a try-out zone for promising dancers who are plucked out of the corps and given a chance to shine as individuals.

Continuing Balanchine's tradition of discouraging star turns, the company announces casting only about a week in advance. ``Nutcracker'' being a hot ticket, most spectators reserve their seats well before then, so witnessing a noteworthy debut is sheer serendipity. It's a fairly sure bet that Kathryn Morgan, merely an apprentice but already a megawatt performer, will move into a role that's a step or two up from her opening night assignment to the Hot Chocolate ensemble.

A major attraction of Balanchine's ``Nutcracker'' is its cast of 41 youngsters from the School of American Ballet, the company's celebrated academy. These children are undeniably adorable -- for their physical beauty, their extraordinary accomplishment, and their evident joy in performing.

Classical-Dance Tradition

Balanchine didn't use children just for their cuteness factor, though. To him, they were a symbol of the classical-dance tradition in which very young aspirants embark upon a rigorous course of training from which a chosen few will emerge as artists. The vivid pantomime monologue that the pre-pubescent prince delivers in the City Ballet's ``Nutcracker'' is rendered verbatim as Balanchine himself performed it at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg almost a century ago.

The New York City Ballet performs ``The Nutcracker'' at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, through Dec. 30. Information +1-212-721-6500 or http://www.nycballet.com.

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

New York City Ballet: George Balanchine's The Nutcracker / New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / November 24 - December 30

Part of the charm of the New York City Ballet's production of George Balanchine's The Nutcracker, now in its 52nd year, is the bevy of exquisitely proportioned, preternaturally accomplished children in the cast. Most of these youngsters start their Nutcracker careers at eight or nine, in their second year at the company's highly selective academy, the School of American Ballet.

In the course of four winter seasons, they work their way up through the roles of diminutive well-bred guests at the nineteenth-century Christmas Eve party that opens the ballet, toy soldiers and marauding mice in the thrilling dream sequence, and the inhabitants of the Sugar Plum Fairy's kingdom -- from miniature gliding angels to the just-pubescent Candy Canes who are soon to outgrow the ballet's children's roles entirely.

Rachel Piskin, however, a petite brunette of 19 who is now a very promising member of the company's corps de ballet, started at the top. At 8 ½ she was chosen to dance the role of Marie, the little girl -- all wonder and spunk -- who is the heroine of the story.

Looking back, Piskin thinks she was chosen for her size - "I was so tiny," she recalls -- and her expressiveness. "I guess they could see how much I loved dancing," she says. "And performing. I loved to express myself. I was a child with a huge fantasy life."

After two years, Piskin explains, "I got too tall and too old for Marie. But I didn't mind, because I went on to the roles for bigger girls that call for more actual dancing. Marie is really mostly acting."

When the NYCB accepted Piskin as an apprentice in 2004, she began her progress through The Nutcracker's adult assignments, among them the obligatory stint for newcomers: dancing one of 16 snowflakes in the human snowstorm that climaxes the ballet's first act.

This season she's the very first Snowflake out -- slicing the air with her leap. She has also accumulated a cache of small solo roles, appearing as a wind-up doll, a Spanish senorita, and an utterly un-pc Chinese girl. She's learning the Dresden-figurine role of the main Marzipan Shepherdess as well.

Given her precocious start and her rapid advancement, Piskin might be destined for the ballet's chief women's roles: the dulcet Sugar Plum Fairy or the sparkling Dewdrop, who darts and spins through the Waltz of the Flowers. She refuses to discriminate between them, saying modestly, "I think getting to dance either part would be an amazing accomplishment."

For all her reticence on the subject of her future, Piskin is quick to reply when asked what advice she might offer a little girl playing Marie today. "Enjoy it as much as you can, and remember everything," she says. "No matter if you become a dancer or do something else when you grow up, it's a moment you'll never forget."

Photo: Paul Kolnik: Rachel Piskin as Marie in the New York City Ballet's production of George Balanchine's The Nutcracker (TM)

© 2006 Tobi Tobias

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on November 15, 2006.

Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Last night's opening of the Limon Dance Company -- at the Joyce Theater through Nov. 26 -- unwittingly emphasized the influence on its founder of two women, both far more gifted than he.

As a dancer, Jose Limon (1908-72) was a figure of commanding power and dignity. His talents as a choreographer were more modest. He was undeniably theatrical, but fatally given to melodrama, even bombast.

For this season, though, the Limon company revived a masterwork, ``Day on Earth,'' created in 1947 by Limon's mentor, modern-dance pioneer Doris Humphrey. Set to Aaron Copland's Piano Sonata, it tells a story of life and death, love and loss, and the making of America. All this with only four characters: a farming man, his first love (frivolous perhaps but never forgotten), the strong wife he succeeds to, and their child, a little girl who dies.

Architectural in structure, stern and spare, the choreography hasn't got one false move. It has the quiet power of Shaker furniture.

Isadora Duncan's connection to Limon was more metaphoric. Known as the mother of modern dance, Duncan left behind an autobiography that, Limon claimed, brought about his birth as a dancer. ``When I read it,'' he declared, ``I became incandescent with the desire to dance. She was my dance mother, the Dionysian, the drunken spirit of the soul.''

`Dances for Isadora'

In the year before his death, Limon choreographed ``Dances for Isadora'' to Chopin piano studies. The piece is not a major or even particularly inventive work. Its usefulness today lies in how simply and beautifully it presents the company's female dancers.

Five linked solos -- some referring to aspects of Duncan's dancing and choreography, others to her personal life -- evoke successively a young woman in her spring burgeoning, the iconoclast who brought vehement passions to dance, the mourning mother whose two little children were drowned in an accident, the political crusader, and the aging wreck of a woman born for glory and disaster.

All of the opening-night soloists, from the seniors -- Carla Maxwell, who directs the company, and the incomparable Roxane D'Orleans Juste -- to the lyrical Kristen Foote, the lush Ryoko Kudo, and Kathryn Alter, who seems more spirit than flesh, offered dancing that was full of subtle modulations.

Lubovitch Premiere

The news of the season was the New York premiere of Lar Lubovitch's ``Recordare'' (Remember), commissioned to celebrate the company's 60th anniversary. Set to vivid music by Elliot Goldenthal, ``Recordare'' was meant to pay homage to Limon's Mexican origins and his visit to the country of his birth in the 1950s, where he collaborated with native artists and musicians.

What Lubovitch ended up producing was a kind of Day of the Dead revue, in which a rakish, skeletal Death figure haunts the living and taunts them with his antics. Somehow he got the tone all wrong.

Amorphous faux-folkloric group dances alternate with crude skits more related to rowdy American comic books than to the ironic and touching Dia de los Muertos customs that unite the quick with the dead, serving deliciously self-contradictory refreshments like sugar skulls.

The Limon Dance Company is at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., at 19th Street, through Nov. 26. 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 November 14, 2006.

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) -- ``Now,'' urges a bunch of impassioned people, first whispering, then yelling as they go through the motions of hurling hand grenades. These feisty figures in raggle- taggle outfits are not young political activists about to blow up buildings but performers rehearsing David Dorfman's ``underground.''

The piece tackles the dicey subject of the Weather Underground, the radical group that made headlines from 1969 through the late '70s using violent tactics in an effort to stop the war in Vietnam.

The subject is pertinent right now, Dorfman feels. Yes, the group's activities bear an unnerving resemblance to terrorism as we experience it today. But, he contends, the group provided a powerful contrast to the kind of pervasive apathy that lets bad guys win.

Dorfman credits as an inspiration Sam Green and Bill Siegel's 2003 documentary film, ``The Weather Underground.'' His choreography tells no specific story, though. Instead, it explores the psychology of the rebels. Through a series of vivid vignettes, Dorfman shows the youthful energy of the protesters, their easy rage, and the communal bonding they found in their common cause. Inadvertently, perhaps, he reveals the naivete of a political stance that permits no compromise.

In a bit of postmodern irony, 20-30 minutes of dancing occur before the official curtain time. As soon as the house opens for seating the audience, Dorfman himself takes the stage alone.

World Aflame

Again and again, before a backdrop evoking a world in flames, he moves out toward the center of the space to launch an invisible weapon. Each advance ends in a retreat in which he hunkers down, torso curved sideways, and thrusts one arm high, fist clenched.

Then he runs, crashes to the ground, rolls away, rights himself and starts over. From time to time, he pauses, as if to reconsider his moves, like a choreographer figuring out the first stage of a work with his own body.

The ``character'' he's playing may be a middle-aged guy dressed geezer-casual style in nondescript slacks and a shapeless cardigan, but his spine is as supple as a snake's and his resilience is remarkable.

David Dorfman Dance is at the BAM Harvey Theater in Brooklyn, Nov. 14 and 16 through 18. Information: +1-718-636-4100 or http://www.bam.org.

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

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

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Call it choreography if you wish. I think it's Outsider Art.

Roseanne Spradlin's new 60-minute ``Survive Cycle'' opens with six long minutes of head shots on an oversized high- definition video screen. One by one, four people -- two men, two women -- stare at the camera, almost unblinking, as in the video portraits of Thomas Struth. The piece concludes with 20 minutes in which the four, live, methodically arrange a huge wardrobe of clothing item by item until the entire stage is covered with an intricate, vivid mosaic. (Spradlin trained as a visual artist before she turned to performance.)

Creating this design, the human figures are as unobtrusive and matter-of-fact as stagehands. Meanwhile, their video images (created by Glen Fogel) reappear behind them, talking now. Their disclosures, made with the difficulty that accompanies accounts of deep personal pain, seem to be autobiographical.

These ``true confessions'' register as raw material that Spradlin has ruthlessly appropriated to feed her imagination. In between the two non-dance events, the four performers move, obsessively. Positioned on the four corners of an imaginary square, they twitch and flail spasmodically, clawing at their bodies with grotesquely articulated fingers. Eventually they couple up, bodies stuttering as if wires were horribly crossed in their brains.

Their interaction looks like a violent, deranged parody of copulation. The speed and fury of the movement escalate, the dancers' sheer virtuosity ironically co-opted to evoke extremes of physical and emotional impairment.

``Survive Cycle'' can't be categorized as dance, psychodrama or fabric art. The piece is arresting on its own peculiar terms. Spradlin might take as her motto the painter Pierre Bonnard's declaration, ``I do not belong to any school.... I am only trying to do something personal.''

Roseanne Spradlin Dance is at Dance Theater Workshop's Bessie Schonberg Theater, 219 W. 19th St., Nov. 7 through 11. Information: +1-212-924-0077 or http://www.dtw.org.

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