You’re informed by program material that the compellingly idiosyncratic French choreographer Myriam Gourfink works with scores, sometimes with computers, in devising her dances, and that the breathing techniques of yoga are fundamental to her process. You learn that she is concerned with the “micro-movements” affiliated with breath and how these infinitesimal inner adjustments conspire to move her … [Read more...]
Getting Down With Ailey
Imagine a night at City Center watching the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater when the spectators cheer at the curtain calls and applaud certain stunning dancers or sections of a dance, but don’t whoop and holler in the middle of a serious (even reverent) passage. Imagine an evening in which electric high jumps, long balances, and legs kicking the sky are worked into the choreographic fabric and … [Read more...]
East to West to East
A choreographer who has just formed his own small company must be very, very brave to make Merce Cunningham’s 1964 Winterbranch the centerpiece of its debut program. Benjamin Millepied is certifiably brave. Starting a group in Los Angeles and naming it the L.A. Dance Project is already adventurous. I’m an Angeleno by birth, with the scent of eucalyptus and Pacific salt air embedded in my … [Read more...]
Calm Thou My Soul
Lovesick swains praying for either consummation or forgetfulness, maidens lamenting their lovers’ absences, men excoriating their faithless mistresses, women attacking men like bacchantes on a rampage, nymphs and shepherds, captive creatures, fever and repose, solitude and tender companionship. You might imagine that’s rather a lot to put into a dance, but Douglas Dunn expresses all that and more … [Read more...]
Listen Well, Children
When Trey McIntyre Project unveiled its new Ladies and Gentlemen in Jacob’s Pillow’s Ted Shawn Theater (August 8-12), you could feel a sunny haze of nostalgia settle over the audience. I’m betting that a good percentage of the spectators could have raised their voices along with the recorded score—songs from the epochal 1972 album Free to Be. . .You and Me, instigated by Marlo Thomas. Maybe—as … [Read more...]
Men Dancing: Then and Now
Eighty years ago, when Ted Shawn assembled the all-male company that toured the U.S. with him during the 1930s, he aimed to eradicate the notion that dancing was for sissies (the polite, if bullying term for boys whose masculinity was in doubt). Almost all of those who joined Shawn’s Men Dancers were graduates of Springfield College’s Physical Education Department, and he toughened them further in … [Read more...]
Midsummer, Music, Morris
In 1931, Noël Coward walked out of the first public performance of William Walton’s Façade: An Entertainment in 1923, and a critic described the music for flute, clarinet, trumpet, saxophone, cello, and percussion as “relentless cacophony.” Coward may have been put off by the fact that Edith Sitwell, the author of the poems that formed Walton’s libretto, sat behind a screen and read … [Read more...]
Channeling Chekhov
If this is a summerhouse somewhere in Europe around the end of the 19thcentury, why is the furniture still shrouded in dust sheets and marooned on a rumpled, sheeted floor? This question is not the only one you might ask yourself while watching the inhabitants of the room move in slow motion through 50 or so minutes of a deceptively uneventful day. Last Touch First (at the Joyce Theater, April … [Read more...]
Afterlife Meeting
The composer John Cage died suddenly in August 1992. In March 1993, his partner, choreographer Merce Cunningham, premiered a new dance, Doubletoss. These two facts resonated together for anyone watching the work’s first performances. Cunningham said at the time that he had made two dances and merged them—ensuring that all 14 dancers knew both and using chance procedures to determine how the … [Read more...]
Taylor: Then, Now, and Forever
Happy 50th birthday, Aureole! Sorry I missed the celebration. You certainly don’t look your age. When I think of all the ideas you spawned for your boss, Paul Taylor, I’m amazed at your daisy-freshness. This is some season for the Taylor company: three weeks at the capacious, formerly named New York State Theater, instead of the usual two at the smaller New York City Center. Twenty-two works … [Read more...]