“Map,” “Chui Chai,” “Fire,” “Soldiers’ Mass”
Shen Wei Dance Arts/Pinchet Klunchun Dance Company/
Keigwin + Company/National Ballet of Canada
City Center
New York, NY
September 17, 2008
by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel
The fifth season of the Fall for Dance festival at City Center came
close to selling out the same day tickets went on sale. The theater
was packed on opening night; there was happy anticipatory chaos out
front and the second balcony was in use – a rarity for this house.
Management keeps getting better at publicizing the festival and it
appears to be reaching a wider audience. Wanting to see all the
programs as well as do my part for audience development, I braved the
line the day tickets went on sale to buy extra tickets for myself and
as many friends who were not “dance people” as I could finagle into
coming. Standing in line were not only dancers and ex-dancers, but also
college teachers, folks from the neighborhood, dads from Brooklyn
taking their daughters out . . . it made the wait far more palatable.
The actual process of getting tickets is unfortunately still a total disaster, easily the worst thing about Fall for Dance. I was on line at 8:40 a.m. The box office opened at 11 a.m. with 150 people ahead of me. I got to the window three hours after that at 2 p.m. People buying their tickets online faced a 60% surcharge and a computer system that kept timing out; some reported two hour wait to buy tickets online. Certain days had so many orchestra tickets held back for VIP seating that only second balcony was available. Management has seen this mess happen now for five years running, and knows their computer servers can’t handle the capacity. It’s well past time to fix it.
On to the show. At $10 a ticket for All You Can Eat dance, it’s hard to complain angrily about what’s on the buffet table, but City Center did choose a comparatively weak program to kick off the Festival. Shen Wei led off with an excerpt from his “Map,” a large group work that premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2005. Wei also designed the costumes and the handsome backdrop that looked more mathematical than cartographic. He used Steve Reich’s “Desert Music,” which like other Minimalist compositions can be a seductive trap with an easy, compelling meter but little development. It takes rigor and stamina to create the structure a large dance needs. In excerpt, “Map” seemed content to simply let its dancing spill over the stage.
Wei has a strong visual arts background and thinks like an artist. Beginning with the dancers maneuvering along the ground (breakdancing seems to have influenced Wei’s movement vocabulary) the tallest woman got up first. The moment was striking; in contrast to everyone else on the floor her limbs seemed elongated to Giacometti proportions. The company’s notes on the dance describe a movement exploration process not really visible from the audience as it went from floor work to a lounge-y bobbing of the hips. The incessant activity in Wei’s dances reminded me once again of an ant farm. For the first ten minutes it was fascinating, but I was ready for the piece to end halfway into the excerpt.
Pichet Klunchun performed in New York last year with Jerome Bel, now he got his own moment in the sun to show New York City Khon, Thai classical dance. He brought with him six more dancers to perform “Chui Chai,” listed as a world premiere in the program although Klunchun has made versions of a dance with the same title going back to 2001.
The stage was black with six pools of hot, white light; six female figures entered in silence. Well, almost silence. In a packed theater true silence that isn’t punctuated by stray cell phone ringtones is a luxury. The dancers made their way into the light as slowly, silently and implacably as if time did not matter. One dancer came farther front and did a series of slow, beautiful poses. “Chui Chai” had more shapes than steps; it was as ornamental and sculptural as Thai architecture.
Klunchun entered not in traditional costume, but in a plain black t-shirt and pants. An athletic man, one could watch for hours mesmerized as his hands curled like smoke in the impossible and decorative positions of Khon. The stated narrative is one of transformation – “The princess Benyakai is ordered by her king to transform herself into Sita, the queen of his enemy.” It wasn’t immediately apparent to Western eyes. It helped to have seen Klunchun last year when he explained some of the stock characters of Khon (man, woman, demon, monkey) and to know that Klunchun might occasionally portray a woman. I think that the transformation was implied when he danced in parallel with the lead costumed figure.
At first Klunchun’s movement was traditional; later when he danced a solo at the front it moved almost imperceptibly into contemporary dance that might have derailed the logic of the piece, but was short enough not to. “Chui Chai” ended with a slow processional across the back and off the stage, leading to a stunning curtain call where almost nothing happened except for the dancers slowly prostrating themselves, yet it had the audience roaring.
After the intermission, Keigwin + Company presented a short excerpt, “Fire,” from the full-evening “Elements.” “Fire” was light and inconsequential; Jenn Freeman, Nicole Wolcott and Julian Barnett bounced and vogued through four short songs that had the wispiest relation to fire. The entrée to a Handel aria was all fuzzy costumes, corsets and ribbons. To a Chopin nocturne, the dancers paused at the front and dealt with an imaginary dressing room mirror. Wolcott spoofed Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” in a short skit about Wolcott finding her spotlight and all the dancers returned for a parody of a Youtube phenomenon (I suppose that’s cutting edge in some way), the “Walk it Out Fosse” remix of Gwen Verdon dancing.
Keigwin’s choreography is sweet-natured. He’s brought drag humor to the concert stage, but he’s also removed the subversion and danger that is hidden right below the surface so it’s palatable, amiable . . . and castrated. “Fire” was like cheap wine, it was agreeable, went down easy, and there was even craft in the making, but in the end, it was still cheap.
The National Ballet of Canada imported twelve of its men from Toronto and ended the evening with Jiří Kylián’s “Soldiers’ Mass,” a dance Kylián made in 1980. It entered NBoC’s rep 15 years later and was performed once again last March in Toronto. “Soldiers’ Mass” transferred awkwardly to the City Center stage. The Martinů score is richly magical when performed live with an orchestra and male chorus; here the company made do with a thin recording. There were also blocking problems on the more cramped City Center stage. Replete with handsome NBoC men cradling and lifting one another and taking off their shirts just in time to keel over, “Soldiers’ Mass” hasn’t decided if it’s a pacifist statement or war porn. Still, led by company principals Zdenek Konvalina and Piotr Stanczyk, the men performed fullheartedly. It’s a shame the company didn’t bring a more interesting Marie Chouinard piece, “24 Preludes by Chopin,” danced on the same program in Toronto as the Kylián, but the Kylián was a more practical choice given the limitations of the performance.
It wasn’t the strongest start out of the gate the festival has had. But with Merce Cunningham’s company performing “Sounddance” tonight as well as American Ballet Theatre doing a portion of “The Leaves are Fading,” things are bound to improve. At $10 per ticket, there’s no need to cross any of these artists off our lists; maybe their next performance will be better. Artists need the room to take risks and occasionally fail, room that high ticket prices take away. City Center has been working like crazy to keep the whole experience entertaining and prices affordable, including a performance lounge with budget drink specials. I watched the whole show sober, but you don’t have to. Even smarter, they’ve put inserts into the program with discount offers for the rest of the season, including ticket prices as low as $15 for ABT. Spotty repertory, lame servers and other carping aside, if art is about access (and in so many ways it is) City Center and crew get kisses and kudos.
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel
Photo: Pichet Klunchun by Edmund Low
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