Archives for 2006

“Beautiful Day,” a duet to Baroque music, proposes lovers who might be dwellers on Saturn. Their movement is heavy and slow, their mood solemn. Their partnering is blunt, effortful and awkward. Even so, they achieve a sublimity ordinary Romeos and Juliets might envy.

“A Spell,” a trio danced to mid-17th-century songs by John Wilson, sums up the tradition of pastoral comedy. Rural lovers animated more by their loins than by their brains are egged on by a winged Cupid (originally danced with glee by Mr. Morris). Their antics are jolly — flirtation nicely seasoned with vulgarity — until the final passage. Then, as the pair finally lie down and couple, the joys of lust suddenly seem profound.

Why segregate the small pieces from the Opera House repertory? Most of these dances were geared to the modestly scaled performance space that an emerging choreographer could command. Longtime Morris fans based in New York recall their early sightings of the work at Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea, where, before its renovation in 2002, the stage measured 36 by 24 feet and spectators were plunked down on some 100 folding chairs arranged precariously on wooden tiers.

Choreography on a grander scale came with the company’s engagements at the Opera House, beginning in 1986, and its three-year residency (1988 to 1991) in Brussels at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Belgium’s national opera house. Among the many luxuries Mr. Morris enjoyed as director of dance at La Monnaie was the opportunity to double the size of his troupe, making possible larger works like “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato,” the 1988 program-length work that is still accounted his masterpiece.

But according to Mr. Morris and many of his reviewers, the smaller works are in no way lesser ones and deserve the setting in which they will have their best effect. “They don’t need an opera house stage,” he said. “They’re little and gorgeous, and they need to be seen up close. They’d be dissipated in a huge house, sandwiched between the big pieces. One person onstage isn’t enough for an opera house, even if you’re Isadora Duncan.”

Now that so many of these pieces are back in his troupe’s active repertory, Mr. Morris plans to use them on tour, to give them further showings at the Mark Morris Dance Center, and — proof of his commitment — to keep composing new works on that scale.

Originally, Mr. Morris appeared in many of the small pieces himself. He was, after all, not just the company’s choreographer but also its leading dancer. A big, dramatically good-looking man, he is strong, fluid and sensuous, with a diva’s appetite for performing. He makes technically thorny maneuvers look entirely natural and infuses his movements with wit, joy, intense theatricality or just plain silliness, as the occasion requires. Most important, he’s a master of complex rhythms. As a dancer, he’s a hard act to follow.

In reassigning these pieces to a new generation, Mr. Morris has often chosen dancers entirely different from himself in physical type and, frequently, of the opposite sex. Maile Okamura, a tiny, fragile-looking woman, has been given “Dad’s Charts” because of her skill in improvisation, which parts of the piece require. Another small woman, June Omura, a longtime company member distinguished for her impassioned dancing, has been allotted “Jealousy,” the writhing-snake solo set to Handel’s celebrated chorus. A few roles are being cast to type. Daniel Leventhal, the most balletic member of the company, will take over the solo “Three Russian Preludes,” created in 1995 for Mr. Baryshnikov, with whom Mr. Morris worked closely in the first phase of the White Oak Project.

For the chamber concerts, Mr. Morris will appear only in the 2001 trio “From Old Seville,” a witty riff on the tango that incorporates some dark insights into romance. He won’t perform at all at the Opera House.

Does this mean he’s hanging up his dancing shoes? “Oh, I’m barely dancing at all these days,” Mr. Morris said. “And I don’t think I’m going to perform on tour much anymore. But I’m not retired from the stage. I’m sure of that. I’ll still be dancing in shows I plan to give in my own building. I like the scale there,” adding that it reminded him of Dance Theater Workshop.

To teach the choreography for dances not in the active repertory to the new interpreters, Mr. Morris used a combination of videotapes of earlier casts, the hallowed body-to-body method of having the originators or former performers help teach the roles to their successors, and the essential element of his own presence as explicator and coach. He strongly opposes formal dance notation, a technique considered by many to provide the most accurate recording of choreography.

“It doesn’t work at all,” he said, referring to Labanotation, the most widely used system. “It’s absolutely impossible to use. With my dances, for it to be specific enough, it would take a year to write down one move, and two years to decode it. By then I could have made up thousands of fabulous moves.”

The moves that constitute a given piece often add up to an unusually taxing assignment. “Some of these dances are physically very hard to do — tough, detailed and fatiguing,” Mr. Morris said. “Others, especially the ones I originally did myself, are hard on the mind because they’re so complicated structurally and conceptually. I always made up dances for myself that were over my head. Then I had to learn them very, very seriously in order to be able to perform them accurately. Believe me, they weren’t just loping around to music.”

Mr. Morris lavishes praise on his dancers’ resourcefulness in learning the pieces. “It was a big project,” he said, “and they did a lot of it on their own — watching the tapes and taking notes or whatever, then figuring things out in the studio. They’re smart and independent, and of course they know the language of my work. And they know how I want things danced — directly, honestly, no showing off, no faking.

“That’s one of the things that distinguishes my own performances and my company’s. And that’s what’s exciting.”

The company’s anniversary season, with its retrospective of small dances, coincides with Mr. Morris’s turning 50 this year. Asked how he feels about these landmark events, he said: “Well, turning 50 is just what happens after you turn 49. And I’m not a very nostalgic person. So I’m not going around saying, ‘I’m so happy to see these old dances again.’ They’re good, well-built pieces to fabulous music, and I’m proud of them. But I’m not sobbing with sentiment every minute.”

“Let me put it this way,” he added. “We’re alive, and we’re doing this work that we love.”

Copyright © 2006 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.

March 1 (Bloomberg) — In filmy costumes tinted the pale green of budding leaves, a boy and girl enjoy an innocent caress. The music surging around them like delectable weather is by Richard Strauss. The choreography is by Paul Taylor.

“Spring Rounds,” a pleasant, innocuous ballet evoking English country dancing, had its New York premiere last night as the curtain raiser for the Paul Taylor Dance Company’s season at City Center, which runs through March 19.

That first couple, danced by Lisa Viola and Sean Mahoney, is quickly multiplied into a whole world: seven pairs of friends and lovers meeting and greeting, pairing off in ever-shifting combinations.

They’re all happy in each other’s company, except for a few misunderstandings and fleeting glimpses of the notion that another person — perhaps of a different gender — might best be the object of one’s affections.

Both men and women get to operate in single-sex groups. Full of rowdy energy, the guys cluster and butt heads. Their girlfriends show how delicacy and lyricism can civilize oafish partners.

Couples pair up once more, then merge into a fleet-footed communal celebration, presumably of the season in which the natural world is reborn.

Distinct little trios and solos, soulful or exuberant, offset the ensemble work. They serve as a reminder that being part of a group — say, a dance company — needn’t squelch one’s singularity.

Importance of Community

The subject of community is often on Taylor’s mind. Many of his dances even suggest that it may provide more support than the relationship to a significant other.

Admittedly, “Spring Rounds” is far from the most compelling piece Taylor has ever created. It can be admired for its flawless construction, which is simple, logical, and natural looking. You’d think the choreographer had been born with a gene for making order interesting.

Taylor regularly creates two new dances a year. Typically, one of them is, like “Spring Rounds,” light. It evokes unquenchable joy or tender romance, often seen through a prism of nostalgia.

Its dark opposite deals with physical or emotional deformity — distorted bodies, depravity, and the madness of crowds. “Banquet of Vultures,” which will have its New York premiere on March 3, is this year’s nightmare piece.

Seen in rehearsal, it’s an antiwar work, the most politically specific statement Taylor has ever made.

Death Triumphs

On an ominously dark stage, a tense, conservatively suited man (Michael Trusnovec) oversees a roiling mass in camouflage. The anonymous crew fights an unending directionless battle, creating and submitting to horror after horror.

Gradually the suited figure emerges not just as the instigator of the carnage but its sole victor: death.

Taking on the devouring gait of Death in Kurt Jooss’s famous antiwar ballet of 1932, “The Green Table,” he singles out a lone woman (Julie Tice). Vulnerable in appearance but spirited in her resistance, she is mourning her losses.

He rapes her, stabs her in the groin, belly and breast, then flings her body away like so much offal. In the upstage corner where he first appeared, another man, twisted and violent, comes to take his place.

Taylor’s dancers are extraordinary — all of them lusty athletes, each one a unique personality.

Annmaria Mazzini, who manages to be both sweet and sexy, is the girl everyone’s in love with. Pale and long-limbed, with quiet strength, Michael Trusnovec can play both haunted figures and the modern-dance equivalents of ballet’s noble princes.

Taylor rejoices equally in fiercer types: Richard Chen See makes dancing look like a venerable form of martial art. Lisa Viola’s daredevil force approaches the grotesque, which Taylor understands as a kind of beauty. She might even be this choreographer’s muse.

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

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) — If ever a ballet event had an agenda, it’s “Kings of the Dance,” on view at the New York City Center through Feb. 26. A showcase for a quartet of stellar male dancers, it actually has several conflicting missions.

The gentlemen in question are Angel Corella of American Ballet Theatre, who trained in Spain; his fellow ABT star, Ethan Stiefel, an all-American product; the Danish-bred Johan Kobborg, now with England’s Royal Ballet; and the Georgian Nikolay Tsiskaridze of the Bolshoi Ballet.

They’ve joined forces to push their already considerable fame up a notch, emphasize the fact that it’s now men who dominate the classical dance world, not ballerinas, and show that they’re not simply sensational jocks but sensitive and forward-looking artists. They also want to prove to the ballet-shy public that they’re just regular guys — and make a few bucks in the process. (Tickets range as high as $150.)

The erratically constructed video that opens the show covers several of the points, as the men toss off bits and pieces of their virtuoso work in standard classics. This is the stuff that made them famous in the first place and is regrettably missing in the live show.

The gasp-inducing footage is paired with some quick biographical voice-over and a banal insistence that “luck and hard work” got them to the top.

Playing Pool

They’re also seen in downtime — shooting pool, walking on the beach — a tactic dismally employed in a TV precursor of the “Kings” production, Dance in America’s 2002 “Born to Be Wild: The Leading Men of American Ballet Theatre.” That program gave us Stiefel on his motorcycle.

Not a moment too soon, the four kings appear in “For 4,” created for the occasion by today’s fair-haired boy of classical choreography, Christopher Wheeldon.

Set to Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden,” it embeds several of the spectacular leaps and turns for which the dancers are famous. But it’s basically a lyrical affair — sensitive to its score and intelligently constructed.

Its main flaw? With the dancers kept scrupulously equal, there’s no central focus and thus no drama. Yet they don’t cohere as a team, a unified force.

To test their acting prowess, the stars are rotating in the leading role of “The Lesson,” choreographed by Flemming Flindt in 1963. It’s a lurid piece about a ballet teacher who turns out to be a psychotic serial killer of nymphets who come to him for private coaching.

Out of Control

Taking the role on opening night, Corella grew more and more credible as he moved from grotesque repression to uncontrolled, demonic passion.

Gudrun Bojesen, a radiant Danish ballerina who deserves to be better known abroad, plays the just-slightly-provocative victim at all performances.

The final segment of the program furthered the notion of artistic exploration. Each of the men performed a long solo created for him by a choreographer of his own choosing.

Unfortunately, the pieces ranged from the mediocre to outright duds. There are no kings of ballet choreography these days.

Corella chose Stanton Welch, who tried, unsuccessfully, to mate the bravura with the debonair. Choreographer Tim Rushton, provided Kobborg with a pointless — and nymphless — gloss on Nijinsky’s “Afternoon of a Faun.”

Power of Sea

Stiefel chose Nils Christe, whose “Wavemaker” was at least a viable nature study, depicting the rising and subsiding force of the sea. Stiefel became, effectively, both wave and surfer.

Tsiskaridze was served by Roland Petit, who delivered a collapsed version of his program-length “Carmen.” The dancer, by turns, takes the three leading roles, including the female one.

Tsiskaridze is certainly not the most technically thrilling of the kings; that honor is divided between Corella and Stiefel.But he is, arguably, the most fascinating.

His dancing is voluptuous; his attitude, ironic and challenging. He’s a potent example of the idea that gender is a fluid business. This is just the sort of thing that supposedly alarms the general public. Yet the audience for “Kings” understood and adored him.

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

Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) — Nine guys cut through the air with space-eating, turning leaps. They’re matched by nine young women, more delicately built but equally athletic and fearless. Heading these contingents, the stocky, buoyant Daniel Ulbricht and Tiler Peck, a virtuosa with showgirl lushness, confidently toss off daredevil feats.

“Friandises,” Peter Martins’s newest work for the New York City Ballet, is a gasp-inducing entertainment designed to show off the technical brilliance of the company’s rising generation.

Its score of the same name (French for “sweets” or “tidbits”) was commissioned jointly with the Juilliard School from the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Christopher Rouse. In five sections, the music alternately suggests the excitement of living, full-out, at the edge of doom and an idyllic sweetness that exists only in the imagination.

Adam Hougland will choreograph a modern-dance interpretation of the piece for the Juilliard Dance Ensemble. This production can be seen at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Feb. 22-26.

In Martins’s version, the two meditative sections are danced by the ensemble. One suggests nostalgia for a lost kingdom. In the other, the women look like mermaids, snared for a moment in pearl fishers’ arms.

Both quiet passages are pretty, but with no main couple to focus them, they provide little more than a monotonously lovely landscape. In human terms, they make no point.

Circus Split

The dynamic sections adroitly play the leaders against the group. Ulbricht proves that a dancer can be both a high-flyer and a gyroscope-style turner — a rare combination.

Peck turns with equal panache — on point. To top this, she shows how a splay-legged arabesque — an exaggeration of the classical pose — can transfer to the ground as a circusy split.

In the finale, the dancers slash through the space one by one on crisscrossing diagonals, their spectacular exploits delivered with classical ballet’s unique exactitude.

Granted, the prowess displayed in “Friandises” is formidable. But though we gape at it and cheer it, it doesn’t provide the meaning yielded by a genuine work of art.

Unfair Comparison

Since 1978, Martins has contributed about 77 ballets to the NYCB repertory. “Friandises” is brighter than most of his efforts — and his dancers do him proud. But the body of work as a whole is disappointing. This is not choreography destined for the history books.

Of course, it’s tough to compete with genius. Martins’s reputation as a choreographer suffers, unfairly, from the fact that, as the NYCB’s main provider of new ballets, he’s measured against his predecessor, George Balanchine.

Veteran NYCB fans — who witnessed the glory days under Balanchine — habitually carp about Martins’s ballets. Even these naysayers admit he has craft, but they sense the absence of imagination. They’re also put off by the aridity of his pieces in the classical mode and the hostility between the sexes that prevails in his contemporary-style works.

Other Flaws

It’s possible, too, that the detractors conflate Martins’s lack of choreographic genius with other perceived flaws. During his tenure, the custodianship of the Balanchine repertoire has, arguably, been careless. Martins is blamed as well for excluding former Balanchine ballerinas, Suzanne Farrell first among them, from staging and coaching NYCB’s productions of the master’s ballets.

These days, Martins is falling further out of favor as a dance maker while Christopher Wheeldon’s star rises. Designated by Martins as the company’s resident choreographer, Wheeldon equals or betters his boss when it comes to craft. What’s more, his work harbors a wider range — if not a greater depth — of feeling.

Could it be that Martins no longer cares to compete? His own ballets often look tired — dutifully made, but lacking creative force. The same slow withdrawal was evident in the last phase of his dancing career.

A danseur noble if ever there was one, he went through the motions as impeccably and handsomely as ever. But the performances were increasingly sapped of vitality. He looked as if he just didn’t want to do it anymore.

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

IN a New York City Ballet studio, backed by a tape of implacable drumbeats, a lesson begins, emphasizing driving feet, lashing kicks set against a twisting torso and sudden, ominous halts, all executed with ferocious force at a relentless pace.

“The movement takes more than just physical energy,” Karin von Aroldingen, a ballet mistress with the company, explains. “You have to give it will power — and spirit.”

The lesson is how to be the chief of a vehement 10-woman marching clan, a role that Ms. von Aroldingen created in 1976 for George Balanchine’s “Union Jack.” Today she is teaching the role to Sofiane Sylve, who this season or next is to share it with its much-praised incumbent, Wendy Whelan.