Seeing Things: December 2006 Archives

New Dances at Juilliard, Edition 2006 / Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / December 14 - 17

What the Juilliard School is to music, it is to modern dance as well: an academy that attracts some of the most gifted and proficient pre-professionals in the rising generation and hones them for their careers. As part of their training, the school's artists-in-the-making give concerts that offer high-caliber performance along with the irresistible opportunity to spot tomorrow's stars.

This week, Juilliard's Dance Division offers its New Dances at Juilliard, which has become an annual event. Here's how it works: Four experienced choreographers are commissioned to create new pieces. Each of them is assigned one of the four classes in the undergraduate program and must use all of its roughly 25 members--a sizeable challenge in itself.

Lawrence Rhodes, who heads the Dance Division, says, "In the spring we have our yearly repertory concert. It gives our dancers the experience of stepping into someone else's shoes. New Dances involves them in the actual creation of the piece they're performing."

This is most evident in Doug Varone's The Constant Shift of Pulse, choreographed for the Third Year students. The dance is not simply for them, but at the same time about them. Surging energy, sensuousness, vulnerability, peer bonding, optimism operating hand in hand with doubt--Varone, a subtle and emotionally eloquent postmodernist, captures these aspects of youth without a trace of sentimentality.

Azure Barton, a Canadian choreographer whose work has snagged Mikhail Baryshnikov's interest, engages the Fourth Years in a dreamy, mysterious dance, full of eerie, disconcerting gestures. Its performers might be a sub-species of humanity whose anatomical parts aren't joined in the usual ways or a crowd of emotional cripples. Like much contemporary work, Still declines to reveal its intentions, putting its faith in the power of suggestion.

The most frankly balletic of the four pieces is Matthew Neenan's Otono, for the Second Years. The dancers move with facility, grace, and a playful air, as if recalling their not-so-long-ago childhood when life was simpler. Being a well-made dance--Juilliard dances are inevitably well-made; the academy is not the place to look for the cutting edge--the idyll is balanced by hints of impending darkness.

David Parker's About 15 Minutes has the First Years blithely mapping out rapid, complex rhythms that suggest playground games. It's clever, light, occasionally amusing--an antidote to high art. The choreography provides its own body-percussion score, the dancers clapping their hands and slapping their thighs as they move.

The other three pieces enjoy live accompaniment of the highest caliber. That, along with the use of the most enviable small theater in town, is one of the perks of being part of the Juilliard community.

Photo credit: Rosalie O'Connor: Doug Varone, working with Juilliard dancers on The Constant Shift of Pulse

© 2006 Tobi Tobias

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

Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- What could be prettier? Women who look like flowers in floor-skimming dresses of sun-kissed hues, tossing their long, unbound hair. Their manner is flirtatious and welcoming to the men -- some stalwart, some poignant, some endearing clowns - who, apart from some duly allotted solo turns, serve as their admirers and cavaliers.

These charming, often amusing, people populate Pina Bausch's ``Nefes'' (Turkish for breath). Created in 2003 as a result of a residency in Istanbul for the choreographer's Tanztheater Wuppertal, it's at the Brooklyn Academy of Music through Dec. 16.

Pretty? Charming? A travelogue extolling romance? Pina Bausch? Beginning in the late 1970s, the German choreographer made her reputation by venturing deep into the wounded psyches inhabiting our postmodern world. Her dances presented eccentric, often hallucinatory acts of cruelty and absurdity, carried out in a prevailing weather of anomie. Animated (indeed, rescued) by singular personalities, her shows nevertheless were too long, too disjunctive, depressing without offering catharsis and only rarely witty.

Maybe Bausch got tired of being down so long. Maybe time mellowed her. Whatever the reason, by the end of the 1990s her dances began to feature large measures of sweetness and light. Somehow they don't seem as honest as the earlier work; they certainly don't pack its wallop.

Mutual Seduction

Like most of Bausch's extravaganzas, ``Nefes'' proceeds as a series of events -- often very brief ones -- lacking narrative, set characters (except those implied by the temperament of each dancer) and a clear message. Presumably the connective tissue is a large, elastic theme: how men and women engage in mutual seduction (and, Bausch adds, slyly contradicting herself, are compromised by it).

Solos, duets, and vignettes for small clusters of people are central in ``Nefes.'' They're offset with a few passages for the full cast that, at their most attractive, reveal the pleasures of a wider camaraderie. In all of these configurations, the memorable element is a visual image that combines loveliness with a touch of magic.

Acts of chivalry abound, beautiful and absurd. Single women walk along, languid and serene, each attended by a pair of crouched men who make the hems of their gowns ripple like petals in a spring breeze.

Sometimes the attention is raunchier, as when a man repeatedly humps a bored woman who leans over her wash bucket, hoping to get on with her other chores. But what water bearer -- balancing on her head a long pole with an inflated translucent plastic bag suspended from each end -- would not be grateful for two worshippers who support her willowy, erect body on the palms of their hands?

Playthings

Now and then, the women don't fare too well. The men toy with the most petite of them as if she were a child or a plaything, easily held and cuddled, easily flung any which way. On the whole, she seems pleased with her situation, full of kittenish smiles. But in one such scene, she -- or is it her look-alike sister? -- clearly is being abused and is granted a little solo of distress to drive the point home. For the most part, though, Bausch ignores Turkey's social problems, like the mistreatment of women, and its political ones as well. She has called ``Nefes'' a respite from such matters.

The piece is much too long and many of its incidents unnecessary, redeemed only by the excellence of the performers. The music, an eclectic collage by Matthias Burkert and Andreas Eisenschneider, can best be described as complementary.

Messy Stage

Decor is far more important to Bausch. She has always favored a messy stage, to underscore primal human functions and impulses. In ``Nefes'' she chastely restricts herself to water, referring to the Bosporus Strait, which runs through Istanbul. Designer Peter Pabst has engineered falling rain, varying from drizzle to torrent, which accumulates to form a little lake center stage. The dancers splash through it lustily on occasion, but more often --this is the new Bausch, after all -- leave it becalmed, and picnic by its shores.

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch is at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, through Dec. 16. 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 December 4, 2006.

Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- David Parsons's 10 dancers, each a bundle of energy and verve, are getting undressed, down to their skivvies. And dressed. And undressed again. All at top speed, turning their reversible baggy tops and bottoms inside out in the process and simultaneously tearing through space.

This is the theme of the popular choreographer's new ``Peel,'' which will have its New York premiere tomorrow at the Joyce Theater.

After a decade as an unforgettable performer with Paul Taylor, Parsons began creating his own enormously successful repertory of easy-watching dances. His company, now almost 20 years old, aims at entertaining the general public rather than appealing to the dance connoisseur.

Nothing too complicated or enigmatic happens in a typical Parsons dance. The choreography goes in for simple fun, delivering infusions of it's-great-to-be-alive vigor.

Accordingly, Parsons's dancers rarely look arty. They're robust bodies doing robust dancing. Their bravura feats, which require power, daring and precise judgment -- are brought off with an air of unfettered athletic exuberance. Watching them, a civilian might feel he could do that stuff too, if only he went to the gym more often.

Gotta Get a Gimmick

``Peel'' is based on a gimmick: the presto, change-o! wardrobe maneuvers on which many a change is hung. It also quotes from Parsons's signature work, ``Caught,'' in which a jumping dancer on a pitch-black stage is captured in flashes of strobe light so that she seems suspended in space and time.

But then, in the adagio section of Michael Gordon's score, Parsons reveals more poetic leanings. Abby Silva, an ethereal blonde with great personal charm, plays goddess to a quintet of strongmen who toss and catch her, supporting her exalted flights and swooning falls. Midway through the segment, she tires of the dependent-female role and tries to escape, but, like most worshippers, these guys refuse to let their idol go.

Parsons Dance performs at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street, from Dec. 5-17. 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 December 4, 2006.

Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Is Judith Jamison, the dynamic, savvy leader of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, trying to give the company a new look?

Two additions to the repertory unveiled in the first week of the Ailey's monthlong season at the City Center are by celebrated choreographers -- both female, both white, both renegades -- who operate far from the themes of black experience, the humanistic outlook, and the conventional sentiments typical of Ailey's own work. True, the company has gone postmodern before, but never with dance-makers as singular as Karole Armitage and Twyla Tharp.

Ironically, ``Gamelan Gardens,'' the piece commissioned from Armitage, known for exploding tradition and for brainy obfuscation, turned out to be as tame as the pictures of a Sunday watercolorist. Set to Lou Harrison's Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Javanese Gamelan, the choreography mirrors the music's evocation of Southeast Asian culture. A pair of lovers (Dwana Adiaha Smallwood and Clifton Brown) and their 10-member community have an air of languid serenity. Movement ripples through their bodies, emanating from miraculously flexible spines to finish in delicate gestures of the hands.

Time seems to stand still in this peaceable kingdom. Occasionally conflict intrudes -- a lovers' quarrel? social unrest? Some punchy fighting motifs are introduced, a few combat poses that recall Asian martial arts, and a sudden surging of the crowd. These, kept formal and subdued, are not forceful enough to lend the piece the drama it lacks. And then the troubles, vague from the start, resolve themselves magically, allowing the dance to flow gently on, a travelogue about the land of eternal bliss.

Peter Speliopoulos has dressed the performers in variations on a theme of ivory underclothes, with gleaming ornaments on their heels and ankles. They look camera-ready for an ad promoting a girlish perfume.

Tharp's `Golden' Oldie

The Tharp acquisition, called ``The Golden Section,'' proved to be a better vehicle for the Ailey dancers, given their ability to couple daredevil movement with intense personal projection.

Set to a rock score by David Byrne, the piece originally was the 15-minute abstract, athletically extravagant finale to ``The Catherine Wheel,'' a rage-fueled, high-decibel tale of family dysfunction that Tharp presented on Broadway in 1981. She salvaged ``The Golden Section'' for her troupe's touring repertory.

Since then, other companies, from London's Ballet Rambert to the Miami City Ballet, have taken it on. Now the Ailey is giving it an unusual interpretation.

The choreography, for a baker's dozen fearless movers, is an ingeniously organized compendium of slashing leaps, tumbling falls, pyrotechnical variations on the theme of turning, and partnering that looks utterly reckless. As is typical of Tharp, the movement vocabulary is eclectic, drawing on classical ballet, jazz, gymnastics, African dance and boxing.

Softer, Sweeter

When Tharp's dancers performed it, ``The Golden Section'' seemed as frenetic as the melodrama that preceded it. Its ever- escalating challenges proposed an ultimate rendezvous with ecstasy. The Ailey treats it differently, presumably with the blessing of Shelley Washington, the former Tharp star who set the current production.

The physical feats are softened so that they look more like fun, not invitations to catastrophe. The dancing is lush, not tough. The emotional climate is sweet-tempered. Tharp's own dancers never deigned to play directly to the audience, but the Ailey's performers always do. With ``The Golden Section,'' they seem simply aiming to please.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is at the New York City Center, West 55th Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, through Dec. 31. Information: +1-212-581-1212 or http://www.alvinailey.org.

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