David Dorfman’s Prophets of Funk might well be subtitled The Way We Were. He first heard Sly and the Family Stone as a college freshman, back in 1973, and no doubt mourned the band’s demise in 1983. When the Jacob’s Pillow audience gets its first look at Dorfman during the work’s August run there, he’s surely channeling his younger self. Advancing along a diagonal—a bulky man, limber in his loose … [Read more...]
Morris, the Night, and the Music
When it comes to selecting music to spark choreography, Mark Morris is an omnivore. He gives loving, uncondescending attention to popular songs like George Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me,” Jerome Kern’s “Two Little Bluebirds, or (once) Yoko Ono’s “Dogtown,” as well as digging into scores by Bach, Stravinsky, Schumann and other musical giants. To Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, … [Read more...]
Forty Years of Magical Thinking
Labels like “ordinary” and “everyday” have often been pasted onto Trisha Brown’s movement, especially when someone is alluding to her early work as a member of the iconoclastic Judson Dance Theater. But when has anything she’s ever made been ordinary? Walking may be ordinary, but getting a dancer (to whom she was married at the time) to walk down the side of a very tall building is not your usual … [Read more...]
Being Together
When is a shadow not a shadow? That’s one of the mysteries of Jodi Melnick’s solo Fanfare(2009). Wearing a little black dress, her red hair fiery in Joe Levasseur’s lighting, Melnick inhabits a world within the Doris Duke Studio Theater at Jacob’s Pillow that’s otherwise all black and white, darkness and gleaming silver. Burt Barr’s set design consists of two double fans set on … [Read more...]
What Shape Are You In?
Is Jonah Bokaer 30 yet? During the silent beginning of his solo Recess, a woman in the audience of Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Studio Theater whispered to her companion “he’s so young!” He may look like a tall, self-possessed boy, but he has accomplished as much or more than many 40-year-old performer-choreographers. He spent eight years dancing in Merce Cunningham’s company; picked up a degree in … [Read more...]
To Hell and Back
To be and not to be. That is a different question. It hovers above Big Dance Theater’s The Supernatural Wife, Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar’s absorbing re-envisioning of the myth behind Euripedes’ Alkestis. Already seen in Europe and appearing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’ Next Wave Festival in November, the work’s U.S. premiere took place in Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Studio Theater from … [Read more...]
Korean Dancing: Ancient and Very New
Fifteen years ago, I decided that the Korean salpuri was one of the world’s great dances. For some time, smitten by a performance in an early black and white film, I had corralled graduate students from Korea to perform a salpurifor the dance history class I taught. They managed it with varying degrees of skill and spirituality. Then, in 1996, in Seoul, I saw a version of this solo (which derives … [Read more...]
Sharing the Wealth
Of late, I’ve been having a recurring daydream—probably prompted by the Mariinsky Ballet’s recent season at the Metropolitan Opera House (July 11 through 16), as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. Ballet companies square off like kids on the playground. “Nyah, nyah! I’ve got more Ratmanskys than you do!” “You do not!” “Do so!” “Well I’ve got the best Ratmanskys.” “Take that back or I … [Read more...]
Dark Matters in Summer Spaces
I like New York City in summer. Outdoor performances, picnics in the park, sidewalk cafes, late sunset strolls beside the Hudson or on the High Line. On the other hand, if you can swing it, not much beats lying on the lawn at Tanglewood and listening to music; it seems to be coming from the galaxy above. Another venerable Berkshire institution, Jacob’s Pillow, draws dance aficionados and … [Read more...]