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Darkness up Close

Paul Taylor Dance Company
UMBC Theatre
University of Maryland – Baltimore County
May 10, 2008

by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson

“Banquet of Vultures” is dark because of its topic and its lighting. When this piece was premiered at the Kennedy Center, Washington DC in 2005, I wasn’t able to see how utterly hopeless a view Paul Taylor had of history because my eyes couldn’t cut through the gloom of Jennifer Tipton’s illumination. Tonight, the Theatre at UMBC gave the entire audience a close up inspection. There are only 7 rows of seating, so even the last place in the house is practically on top of the big stage space - all of it very visible.  This isn’t a fancy theater, but what a venue for dance!

Chopin in Motion: Simplicity, Virtuosity, Structure

"The Dances of Isadora Duncan"
Word Dance Theater
The Dennis and Phillip Ratner Museum
Bethesda, Maryland
May 1, 2008

by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson

How have the dances of Isadora Duncan survived? Neither notated nor filmed originally, they have been passed down body to body, spirit to spirit through the sisterhood of Duncan’s adopted daughters and subsequent disciples. Perhaps pheromones have helped in the process? Our unreasonable expectation for a Duncan program isn’t just that the current performers do the movement well but that, like wine in a church chalice transformed into sacred blood, they become the divine Isadora. Of the three dancers doing the ten Duncan choreographies on this bill, one had something of the air of an original about her.

Lightheaded

“Sawdust Palace”
Susan Marshall & Company
Kogod Theatre, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland
April 12, 2008

by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson

With its circus title and cabaret staging Susan Marshall’s latest opus was on the light side and a little giddy. It dovetailed neatly with springtime frolics on the college campus. Oh, there were moments when a serious breeze blew through its absurdist proceedings, acrobatic stunts and rangy dancing but these gusts subsided amidst bushels of surrealist fun. A pity that, because “Sawdust Palace” could have been more than an entertainment.  It started (rather like Jerome Robbins’s “The Concert”) with a put-upon pianist and passed through 20 scenes or circus “acts”. Some made you laugh, some made you squirm but a few of them almost made you think.

Remembrance of Things Past

Merce Cunningham Dance Company
“CRWDSPCR”, “Second Hand”, “eyeSpace”
Harman Hall, Washington, DC
March 27, 2008

by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson

“Second Hand”, Merce Cunningham’s 1970 dance, was revived tonight. Its title is evocative. Old objects and already used items come to mind. Once the John Cage piano score starts, one wonders whether “Second Hand” isn’t a musical reference - might one hand suffice to play the seemingly simple note progressions?  Cage himself, however, was known to have performed the composition using both his left and right hands. First on stage in the cast of ten dancers, and quite alone during Part 1 of “Second Hand”, was Robert Swinston. Concentrating on placement and balance as he maneuvered carefully and slowly, Swinston looked senior. This opening section isn’t short and the dancer’s stamina was admirable as he strove to be clean and precise in Cunningham’s version of anatomy-lesson choreography. Yet, Swinston also appeared vulnerable and a little lonely, immersed as he was in movement that dissects and in lighting that exposes. This role intentionally seems to be about the effects of time on the body and the “Second Hand” title could well refer to the dance’s leading character who is neither young nor inexperienced but is very human.

Beyond

“Migration” and “Rasa”
Lines Ballet
Kraushaar Auditorium, Goucher College
Towson, Maryland
March 14, 2008

by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson

The sensual impression is immediate and intense. Bodies impact your field of vision as substance and motion. The motion is not imposed by forces outside, but arises from deep within the flesh. Its emergence shows tension – a struggle, and triumph – that of form. Impulses arise continually and as they take shape, the context in which this happens impinges. You become aware that lighting isn’t just there but sculpts the dancers’ bodies and outlines the movement’s surge. Music provides push, of course, and also amplification or contrast, but keeps its separateness too. Although the pace is fast, it takes Alonzo King’s distinctive choreography time to run its course. Inevitably, beyond the feast the choreographer provides, questions begin to gather. King calls his Lines company ballet. Why? Is it any less so than Balanchine’s? Is it more so than Merce Cunningham’s or Mark Morris’s?

Shining

“Balanchine and Robbins” 
New York City Ballet
Opera House, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
February 27, 2008

by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson

The Japanese just did it on this very stage and other ballet companies bring it too, so why must we see “Serenade” again?  Because it has become the measuring stick for style, attack, technique and attitude. Right now NYCB is astir with a fresh wind as management fields new dancers into familiar roles. The pace on opening night in Washington was furious, as if the Tchaikovsky score had a race to win. Maurice Kaplow’s conducting hardly let up for dramatic pause or romance in the George Balanchine choreography. Blue-white gauze whipped across the stage: women, heedless of their gowns, shot into traveling arabesques and took aim with pirouettes. The female corps couldn’t be bothered trimming formations or clicking into file like the Japanese. It got where it was going with spontaneity, ambition and passion. The great groupings appeared shimmering with energy, and dispersed again as individuals went their own way. Determination seemed to be the emerging generation’s standard in all three ballets - the ubiquitous “Serenade”, the seldom seen and silent “Moves” by Jerome Robbins, and the treasured Bizet/Balanchine “Symphony in C”.

Couplings+

7x7: Love Duets
The Washington Ballet
England Studio Theater, Washington Ballet Building
Washington, DC
February 21, 2008

by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson

Some lovers are sensual - they arch and swoon, every touch lingers and their bodies gravitate to each other when they are apart. Some are all business, dispatching kisses as if sealing envelopes containing checks. Others are selfish, possessive and even miserly. A few can be noble to the point of sacrificing for the sake of love. Septime Webre must have imagined the entire spectrum when he conceived this year’s edition of 7x7 – seven different choreographers’ ballets, each seven minutes long. What the Washington’s Ballet’s artistic director did differently this time was to schedule performances not at the end of the season but earlier, just after Valentine’s Day. The program is being performed 26 times, from February 19 to March 9 with, as previously, the public being invited into the company’s home. There is cabaret-style seating and quarters are close, which means that people who normally sit in the top balcony of theaters have the chance to see the pores opening in their favorite dancer’s skin.

Eurotrump

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Opera House, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
February 19, 2008

by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson

Politics, personal allegiance, even morality and not merely aesthetics come into play when an American dance company decides to do choreography by Maurice Bejart. This Frenchman (he resided in Belgium for a major part of his career and then in Switzerland until his death late last year) was persona non grata with critics in the USA. Other choreographers could be bad sometimes or often, but Bejart became the anti-Balanchine, the contra-Cunningham. To be seduced by anything he did was the sign of a lost soul. Despite the bad press, he acquired a following in this country. His company hadn’t toured here in decades but a couple of summers ago, when a documentary film on his Lausanne work was shown, venues filled up unexpectedly. Live performances, too, have functioned as drawing cards in the rare instances when a Bejart ballet was taken into an American repertory. The most recent example is the Ailey’s acquisition of “Firebird”, with which the company opened its Washington season. The performance did not do Bejart justice.

Before the Cherries Blossom

Noism08 “Nina”; Sankai Juku “The Kumquat Seed”; Akira Kasai “Pollen Revolution”
Japan! Culture & Hyper Culture
The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
February 2008

by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson

Winter winds stir the stark branches. Washington’s cherry trees are wagging a thousand fingers as if to ask why Kennedy Center couldn’t have waited a few weeks until transplanted nature too would celebrate Japan. The only hint of an answer is that February was computer chosen as the most opportune month for the Japan festival. Such reliance on artificial intelligence seems apt. If there is a theme running thru the displays of lacquer sculptures, folding screens, costume fashions, flower transparencies, highway photographs, bamboo constructs, pearled jewelry and lifelike machinery, and furthermore if this supposed theme also imbues the festival’s lectures, workshops and performances – it seems to be that culture and nature interact unpredictably. The festival’s strong dance bias isn’t as surprising as its subtext: the art’s future lies in its details today. These included the blinking eyes of the robot Geisha on display in the Hall of States as it refused to answer a patron because the question asked wasn’t original enough, or the only waist-high upright arabesques allowed in the venerable and Western “Raymonda” as performed by Tokyo’s New National Theatre Ballet. Little things, alongside big ideas and lasting images, were notable too in the three modern/post-modern dance presentations I’m commenting on.   

Useful

Stars of the 21st Century – International Ballet Gala
New York State Theater, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
New York, NY
February 11, 2008

by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson

Utilitarian, little pomp and circumstance, no orchestra: the Tencer gala’s true function is to display dancers New York hasn’t seen enough of or not at all. Coming on the heels of New York City Ballet’s festive and familial “farewell and future tidings” fete for Nikolai Huebbe, the down to business aspect of the program assembled by Nadia Veselova Tencer was palpable on this, its 15th anniversary. We saw 13 dancers in 13 pieces plus a stage-crossing finale. The occasion’s discovery was Daniil Simkin, a 20 year old currently in the Ballet of the Vienna Staatsoper and Vienna Volksoper but the product of Soviet training via his parents, Dmitrij Simkin and Olga Aleksandrova.