Seeing Things: May 2007 Archives

Press luncheon given by the Philadelphia Museum of Art at the Culture Department of the French Embassy, NYC / March 21, 2007

The seven dining tables are circular. Each is set with severe elegance for nine or ten people clad in the suave yet subtly imaginative costumes of urban art-inclined intellectuals. Five formally dressed waiters--raven-haired, immaculately groomed, their faces impassive--approach one table at a time, four of the men holding two filled plates, one in each hand, and, where there are only nine guests, one waiter holding just one, in his right hand.

Surrounding a given table, the waiters position themselves so that each stands at a polite distance behind a pair of guests. At a firm nod from the captain of the wait-crew, he and each of his underlings moves to the right side of one of the pair of diners he's attending and, without the slightest wobble or tremor in his hand (try this at home; you probably won't be able to do it), leans forward and places one of the plates he bears on the table before the guest. The waiters then straighten up in Rockettes-worthy unison, and each moves to the guest at the left of the person he first served and, again at the captain's nod, places the second plate he holds before that diner. This accomplished, the quintet marches off with a firmly articulated step. (Think of the treading chorus in Martha Graham's Primitive Mysteries.)

Just seconds later, the five waiters reappear, armed with another set of plates, to serve another table. Throughout this immaculately rehearsed ritual, the guests behave as if the waiters were invisible. (One recalls the protocol governing stagehands in traditional Japanese theater.)

While a given course is being consumed, the waiters stand at assigned posts on the periphery of the room, scanning the tables, far sharper-eyed than security guards, for a diner's need for a renewed supply of water (sparkling or flat--in Paris we used to call it non-gazeuse), wine (Chardonnay or Rioja), or miniature rolls infused with butter and cheese.

Whenever a waiter's left hand is free, he crooks his elbow and tucks the hand behind him at waist level. These moments occur on the emphatically paced entrances and exits; when a waiter has divested himself of the first of his two plates; and is, of course, the default stance for the waiter (the group's apprentice, perhaps?) who sometimes has just a single person to serve and thus just a single plate. (This odd yet elegant posture occurs in images and reconstructions of yesteryear's social dances--and in George Balanchine's Liebeslieder Walzer.) In this more practical case, it forestalls the social faux-pas--or unlikely physical damage--of a server touching a consumer.

I'm tempted to report the menu here. But you've been to this sort of event, so you can easily imagine it. The background "music," apart from the animated chat of the arts-journalist guests, consisted of concise slide-enhanced comments from the museum's curatorial staff on the exhibitions for its coming season (2007-2008) and a description of the formidable expansion the museum has undertaken--all this m.c.'d with easy grace by the museum's director and CEO, Anne d'Harnoncourt.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has always been a terrific place to visit and now, apparently, will be even more so. It has dallied happily with dance in the past. Might these choreographed press-luncheon waiters be a promise--entirely fortuitous, of course--of further engagement with Terpsichore?

Photos: Left: Jacques-Emil Ruhlmann, Chair, designed 1924, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Right: Ettore Sottsass, Jr., "Casablanca" Sideboard, designed 1981, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Both objects will appear in the museum's "Designing Modern: 1920 to the Present" exhibition, September 15, 2007 - February 2008

© 2007 Tobi Tobias

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on May 18, 2007.

May 18 (Bloomberg) -- The entire backdrop of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater fills with a black-and-white video close-up of a pair of fleshy moving lips as voices chant nonsense syllables to an eerie accompaniment. Onstage are a dozen gleaming office chairs, set in neat rows. Soon the space is invaded by dancers running, grappling and scuttling on all fours as if at war with each other and at the same time determined to form a community, to communicate.

Doug Varone, whose company is celebrating its 20th anniversary, has plenty of experience fusing his choreography with theater. With the New York premiere of ``Dense Terrain'' Wednesday night (his oddly belated debut at BAM), he revealed a masterly ability to blend dance, music, video and set design with an idea about the human predicament: the daunting challenge of not merely speaking, but of making oneself understood.

In the course of the piece, the onscreen actor (Anthony Cochrane), who seems, by turns, to be a madman, an obsessive professor or God, is seen scribbling gibberish all over the walls and floor of his otherwise barren habitat. Later the writing spills onto huge, roughly plastered panels that the dancers keep moving to reconfigure their space, perhaps to make sense of their world.

Eager, Obedient

Eventually Cochrane appears in the flesh and attempts to teach the dancers his vocabulary, along with cryptic -- but oddly eloquent -- accompanying hand gestures. The students, seated in the primly arranged chairs, are eager and obedient in repeating their lesson by rote. But the moment they're left to their own devices, the material and its ostensible meaning disintegrate. Their inability to connect through either language or gesture seems suddenly tragic.

``Dense Terrain'' opens and closes with a solo by Eddie Taketa, who blends extraordinary speed with a deep visceral quality -- a rare gift. Much of the choreography belongs to the ensemble, but Varone is an astute dance architect: He makes sure there are two stunning duets at the heart of the work.

In the first of them, John Beasant III and Ryan Corriston get into a violent fight when the professor's lesson fails them. Even a sudden kiss leaves them frustrated. Their physical rage escalates, climaxing in a sexual union partly diverted to the video screen, as if the men were dreaming it.

The savage duet is offset by a beautiful, ingenious adagio for Daniel Charon and Natalie Desch, the company's most seductive dancers. The passage keeps them recumbent on the floor, simply shifting the forms of an endless embrace. Their tangle of legs and palms reaching around to cradle heads suggests that connection may be possible after all -- even if only just briefly.

Too Complex?

``Dense Terrain'' may well be too complex to be fully absorbed in a single viewing (a flaw, if it is one, preferable to that in many pieces on view nowadays that are considerably less than the sums of their parts).

Varone, credited with concept, direction and choreography of ``Dense Terrain,'' duly thanks his dancers for their input. The art-rock and movie composer Nathan Larson created the score. Allen Moyer designed the set; Blue Land Media, the video; Jane Cox, the lighting. Liz Prince provided costumes deliberately dull-toned and unremarkable to make the performers look like Everyman and Everywoman. If ever there was a symbiotic team, this is it.

Doug Varone and Dancers is at BAM's Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn, through May 20. Information: +1-718-636-4100; http://www.bam.org.

© 2007 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on May 4, 2007.

May 4 (Bloomberg) -- Mark Morris may not have been an obvious choice to stage and choreograph the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Gluck's 1762 ``Orfeo ed Euridice,'' which had its premiere Wednesday night at Lincoln Center. The Met has been slow to acknowledge postmodern choreographers. (George Balanchine was the last to try that double role -- in 1953, with ``The Rake's Progress'' -- and the results weren't happy.) For Morris, whose passion for vocal music may even outweigh his love of dancing, the results are strange and beautiful, which is to say typically Morris.

The stage picture, devised by artists previously associated with this choreographer, is strikingly bold, as the Met's proportions demand. Set designer Allen Moyer has constructed a pair of three-tiered shallow arcs that seat the 100-strong chorus, leave a spacious dancing ground in front of them and separate or abut as the action requires.

Isaac Mizrahi has dressed the chorus in what looks like an exotic selection from every opera in the Met repertory. The dancers -- the entire Mark Morris Dance Group plus a few from the Met Opera -- were assigned contemporary casual clothes, as if to underline the fact that love, sorrow and unexpected joy exist in the here and now, not merely in the realm of ancient myth.

Simple Dancing

This is not Morris's first encounter with ``Orfeo ed Euridice.'' An earlier production, with a different design team, was seen in 1996 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The choreography itself is kept very simple, from huge arm gestures in the beginning that echo and amplify Orfeo's yearning lament to the final rejoicing -- a cheeky mix of ballet, folk and sock-hop antics -- when Euridice is firmly fixed once again in the world of the living and her husband's arms. The most noteworthy passage is a triple duet studded with postures of uncanny grace. It's meant to convey to Orfeo that Euridice will be returned to him through the force of love, and it makes that proposition convincing.

David Daniels, the countertenor playing Orfeo, sings with the deeply human quality Morris particularly values. Maija Kovalevska was technically impressive as Euridice, if not emotionally persuasive. Heidi Grant Murphy made a cheerful, unpretentious Amor, as if rescuing troubled lovers from catastrophe were all in a day's work.

Morris's free-wheeling spirit does occasionally get out of hand. Amor, sheathed in a flying harness, is lowered from the skyscraping top of the stage, singing gamely all the while. Orfeo totes a guitar (though he never seems to play it) to substitute for the mythological character's lute. Euridice, who is indeed gorgeous, is gotten up like a trophy wife in a gown sprouting ostrich feathers. ``Orfeo ed Euridice'' is a work of myriad fluctuating moods -- that's an essential part of its poignancy -- but it's hard to imagine it being jokey.

Still, the simplicity and naturalness of Gluck's score, revolutionary in its time, remains profoundly touching today, and James Levine conducted with his customary vitality.

This season's performances of ``Orfeo'' are dedicated to the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who was to have sung the role of Orfeo.

Further performances are scheduled for May 5, 9 and 12 at the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center. Information: +1-212-362- 6000; http://www.metopera.org.

© 2007 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on May 3, 2007.

May 3 (Bloomberg) -- There's nothing like having the right people on your side. Wednesday's sold-out premiere of Peter Martins's ``Romeo + Juliet'' for the New York City Ballet had Bill Clinton in the seat once reserved for Lincoln Kirstein at the New York State Theater. One can only hope the former president didn't come expecting a glimpse of George Balanchine's ideas about the future of classical dance.

The world probably doesn't need another ballet set to the Prokofiev score. Kenneth MacMillan's 1965 version (which will be danced by American Ballet Theater across the plaza at the Metropolitan Opera House June 18 through 23) has long served as the definitive one. But City Ballet needs its own ``Romeo'' because, with its melodramatic narrative, interesting, troubled characters and lavish costumes and scenery, it's the kind of spectacle that sells tickets.

Martins believes these full-length story-telling classics need updating for today's audience, as he has shown in his versions of ``Swan Lake'' and ``The Sleeping Beauty.'' This means, primarily, zipping along at a contemporary urban pace. His ``Romeo + Juliet'' sheds everything he deems unnecessary, including the mime that can give story ballets texture and the quiet or extended moments that provide atmosphere, psychological depth and balance for the hectic passages.

Snazzy Swordplay

Martins's choreography is vigorous and serviceable but not very interesting. The exception is the lovers' duets: While impressive by virtue of their sheer daring, they are more acrobatic than romantic or erotic. Even more disappointing is the fact that Martins provides no particularly memorable scenes. It's pretty much business as usual -- love at first sight with dire consequences. The snazziest aspect of the show is the painstakingly staged swordplay.

The weakest link is the set by the celebrated Danish painter Per Kirkeby, who also designed Martins's ``Swan Lake.'' Both the backdrops and the front cloth are essentially abstract paintings that do little to define where the action is taking place. A unit set, stolidly rooted center stage, opens and closes as necessary to become bedroom, ballroom, balcony, crypt. It is unconvincing in its every guise.

Part of Martins's master plan was to make the cast as young as possible. Of the four Juliets alternating in this week's performances, two are relative newcomers to the company, one merely an apprentice. This guarantees a certain freshness, but if the policy spreads throughout the repertory, it will have promising talents aging out in their mid-20s.

High-Flying Sprite

The first cast's principals, however, were undeniably wonderful. The 21-year-old soloist Sterling Hyltin is a fair- haired, high-flying sprite; her Juliet a joyous child who only grows braver and truer as her innocence is destroyed. Romeo is a breakthrough role for Robert Fairchild, just 19, who combines pure classicism with a soft, almost plush quality.

On the whole, the dancers were superb, even where viewers might occasionally question their assignments. One wonders, for instance, why Romeo's pals Mercutio (Daniel Ulbricht) and Benvolio (Antonio Carmena) are played as genial thugs, since their dazzling virtuoso dancing renders them heroic. Was Martins channeling Jerome Robbins's ``West Side Story''? One wonders, too, why the vivid Georgina Pazcoguin has been encouraged to play the Nurse as a caricature.

As Tybalt, Joaquin De Luz exudes a menacing quality that, being tightly controlled, makes him the more threatening. Nikolaj Hubbe, in his two brief scenes as Friar Laurence, is reality itself. He's the most persuasive actor in the show.

Elders of the company -- Darci Kistler, Jock Soto and Albert Evans among them -- add weight to the proceedings, while Martins's mandolin dance for a quintet of boy students shows off the rising generation's impeccable technique with considerable wit.

``Romeo + Juliet'' will be performed through May 13 at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center. Information: +1-212-721-6500; http://www.nycballet.com.

© 2007 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.