“Twin Pines”
Keely Garfield Dance
Danspace Project
Saint Mark’s Church
New York, NY
January 21, 2012
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2012 by Kathleen O’Connell
At the beginning of “Twin Pines,” dancer and veteran choreographer Keely Garfield nestles up against a tree stump—one of the half-dozen or so scattered around the performance space in mute testimony to some sort of arboreal apocalypse—and lays her head down on its raw top. Anthony Phillips, dressed in black, sits on another stump nearby testing the weight of a very real ax. Ever so softly, Garfield begins to sing the opening verse of the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry, Baby.”
By the time she gets to “I don't know why but I keep thinking / Something's bound to go wrong” you don’t need to know anything about Chekhov’s gun to know that sooner or later that ax is going to go off, and it won’t be pretty. But you giggle anyway. And when the other cast members—Phillips, Brandin Steffenson, and musician Matthew Brookshire—join in the refrain, you can’t help but giggle some more. Don’t worry, Baby? What have you been smoking?
January 26, 2012
January 05, 2012
The End
“Park Avenue Armory Events”
Merce Cunningham Dance Company
Park Avenue Armory Wade Thompson Drill Hall
New York, New York
December 31, 2011
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2012 by Kathleen O’Connell
At 9:00 PM on New Year’s Eve, just two and a half years after the death of its founding choreographer, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company gave its last-ever performance, and brought to an end both its valedictory Legacy Tour and fifty-eight years of legendary dance-making. The company—still dancing with disciplined power and intensity—marked its passage into history by mounting one of its trademark Events in the Park Avenue Armory’s colossal Wade Thompson Drill Hall, and presented it six times over three evenings. However much one might have ached for a last glimpse of vanishing repertory instead—please, just one more “Roaratorio,” one last “CRWDSPCR”—a newly-minted Event was the right choice. It paid fresh homage to Cunningham’s embrace of contingency and immediacy and to his enthusiasm for collaboration across artistic disciplines. It laid a feast of still-remarkable choreography before us. But most of all it celebrated the company’s fourteen dancers, splendid to a one as soloists and magnificent as an ensemble. They well deserved the honor: Cunningham’s work will live on in some fashion or other, but it’s hard to believe that we will again see it performed by dancers so attuned to its requirements and so palpably, touchingly alive in their commitment to its rigorous beauty.
July 22, 2011
Immersed
“Duets,” “Squaregame,” and “Inventions MinEvent”
Merce Cunningham Dance Company &
Merce Cunningham Repertory Understudy Group
Lincoln Center Festival Merce Fair
Frederick P. Rose Hall
New York, NY
July 16, 2011 (Afternoon session)
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2011 by Kathleen O’Connell
The Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s Legacy Tour has done more than offer a last look at some of the great choreographer’s notable works before the troupe disbands at year end. It’s also making the case—especially through its revivals—that many of these works can and should be preserved in active repertory somewhere once Cunningham’s own company is gone. Not merely because the works are the products of genius, but because the average dance-goer, and not just adepts, might genuinely enjoy watching them. The three works performed as part of the Lincoln Center Festival’s Merce Fair—“Duets” (1980), “Squaregame” (1976), and “Inventions MinEvent”—weren’t just accessible, they seemed designed to help even a novice dance-goer see what all the fuss is about.
July 10, 2011
June 22, 2011
March 26, 2011
Cunningham: The Legacy Tour at The Joyce
“CRWDSPCR,” “Quartet,” and “Antic Meet”
The Merce Cunningham Dance Company
The Joyce Theater
New York, NY
March 22, 2011
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2011 by Kathleen O’Connell
The program for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s final series of performances at the Joyce (the company's absolute final performances will be at the end of the year at the Park Avenue Armory) was something of a mini-retrospective of the great choreographer’s long career—minus the last two decades or so—taken in reverse chronological order. It reminded us of his range and did a bit of myth-busting besides. “CRWDSPCR,” a work from the early 90s, is the Cunningham we’ve come to expect: abstract, intricate, self-contained. “Quartet,” a work from the early 80s seemed explicitly, disconcertingly dramatic. Dramatic through line? Merce? And “Antic Meet,” a work from the 50s that hasn’t been seen in New York since 1969, proved to be less avant-garde than the iconic photos hinted that it might have been.
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March 10, 2011
Boss Man
“Orbs”
Paul Taylor Dance Company
New York City Center
New York
March 3 & 6, 2011
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2011 by Kathleen O’Connell
The comet-like reappearance of Paul Taylor’s all-too-rarely seen 1966 masterwork “Orbs” was among the highlights of his company’s two week season at City Center. This absorbing, hour-long work—set to music from Beethoven’s late string quartets—was last seen in 1982; prior to that it had been out of the repertory since 1970. Why a work so rich in images, so finely calibrated in mood, and so full of glorious, enigmatic, evocative movement is so often in mothballs is anyone’s guess.
March 03, 2011
He Said, She Said
“Dust,” “Three Dubious Memories,” and “Cloven Kingdom”
Paul Taylor Dance Company
New York City Center
New York
February 26, 2011
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2011 by Kathleen O’Connell
Paul Taylor’s latest work, “Three Dubious Memories,” set to a commissioned score by Peter Elyakim Taussig, has a chorus like Greek tragedy, unreliable narrators like Kurosawa’s “Rashomon,” and a tribunal of excavated memory straight out of Martha Graham. All it needs is a blood crime. What it’s got is bloodless Looney Tunes violence and a bedroom farce masquerading as Love Gone Wrong.
February 17, 2011
Morceaux
"Soiree Musicale,” Judgment of Paris,” “Othello,” “Septet,” and “Game Two”
New York Theatre Ballet
Florence Gould Hall
New York
February 11, 2011
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2011 by Kathleen O’Connell
New York Theatre Ballet makes a specialty out of revivals of 20th century rarities—works that are either seldom performed or unusual in the choreographer’s oeuvre. Merce Cunningham’s early “Septet,” a suite for six dancers set to Erik Satie’s “Trois morceaux en forme de poire,” is the latest addition to the company’s repertory. It’s a departure in style and technique from the Ashton and Tudor ballets that have been prominent among the company’s recent offerings, but it’s a worthy aspiration. Barely fifteen minutes long, the work is small-scaled but brimming with insights about movement and theatricality. It retains something of the frisson—and glamour—of mid-century avant-garde, but is readily accessible nonetheless.
February 04, 2011
Balé Folclórico da Bahia
“Sacred Heritage”
Balé Folclórico da Bahia
Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
New York
January 30, 2011
by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2011 by Kathleen O’Connell
Like Wallace Stevens’ snow man, one must have a mind of winter not to succumb to the white-hot exuberance of “Sacred Heritage,“ Balé Folclórico da Bahia’s latest program of Afro-Brazilian showstoppers. By the end of Sunday’s performance, the company’s 24 virtuosic dancers, drummers, and singers—now in the early weeks of a North American tour that runs through mid-March—had the Skirball Center audience on its feet and dancing in the aisles.
