danceviewtimes

Jasperse & friends

John Jasperse Company
"Becky, Jodi and John"
created and performed by Becky Hilton, John Jasperse and Jodi Melnick
Dance Theater Workshop, New York
May 27, 2009
by Tom Phillips
copyright 2009 by Tom Phillips

Dancemaking is a social art form, and the artist John Jasperse says that’s why he chose it from among the arts as a lifetime occupation. Midway through that life, he’s come up with “Becky, Jodi and John.” It’s a meditation on the pains of getting old in a world that’s constantly looking for something new, but it’s also about what endures in a life devoted to a fleeting form of art.

Coppelia

Coppelia
New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York
April 28, 2009

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2009 by Tom Phillips

"Coppelia" is one ballet that's probably safe from Disney culture. I can't imagine it being turned into an empty, treacly entertainment with a doll-like heroine who bats her eyelashes at the audience -- because it already has a doll-like heroine who bats her eyelashes at the audience, and she's a nasty girl. Especially in George Balanchine's masterful version of the tale, Swanilda is self-centered and cruel, and her lover Frantz is a village idiot who agrees to marry her only after she trashes the mannequin he's been pining after. Only through the magic of ballet can this unappealing pair be raised to a vision of the ideal, but it happens regularly in New York City Ballet's production, especially with Megan Fairchild and Joaquin de Luz as the young lovers.

A Dancer's Story

"Veronique Doisneau"
A Film by Jerome Bel and Pierre Dupouey
Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York
March 8, 2009

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2009 by Tom Phillips

Veronique Doisneau, 42 years old, married, with two children, winding up her career as a sujet in the corps of the Paris Opera Ballet. This middle-class worker is the subject of what film-maker Jerome Bel calls an “application of Marxist theory to a monarchical organization.” In 37 minutes “Veronique Doisneau” reveals the toll a lifetime of physical and emotional discipline takes on a beautiful young woman. But the film-maker is a dancer himself, and his portrayal does not slight the sublime nature of her toil. The result is a dancer’s story, told with a dancer’s exquisitely refined sense of balance.

Forever

Laura Peterson Choreography
"Forever"
Performed by Christopher Hutchings, Kate Martel, Stephanie Miracle, Laura Peterson
Dance New Amsterdam, New York
February 19, 2009

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2009 by Tom Phillips

“Modern Dance is Modern Art.” That’s what Laura Peterson tells her dance students, and it’s a teaching she follows rigorously in her company’s new work, “Forever.” This is dance strictly as a visual object, the elements being four dancers in four colors, moving on a white oval floor, among four faux Grecian columns and a mirrored rear wall. The set is vaguely reminiscent of the modernist paintings of Dali or de Chirico, but the dancing itself is even more abstract. Always a minimalist, Peterson makes art by strictly limiting her choices. In "Forever" there’s no emoting, no acting or miming, not even any touching. It’s just snippets of movement, driven by sound. Sometimes together and sometimes apart, the four run around in circles, march, jump, crawl, point, wiggle, spin and fall, roll, twiddle their fingers, bourree on their toes, cave in their chests, sprawl on the floor etc. and end up as they started, running around in circles. What’s going on? Turn the page.

A Simple Symphony

21st Century Movement
"Slice to Sharp," "Hallelujah Junction," "A Simple Symphony," "Mercurial Manoeuvres"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater, New York
February 17, 2009

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2009 by Tom Phillips
Melissa Barak’s first piece of choreography for New York City Ballet was a forgettable apprentice work when she was a NYCB corps dancer back in 2001. But a still photograph from her “Telemann Overture Suite in E-Minor” in the current Playbill shows what she was aiming at: dancers arrayed in the classical architecture of one of George Balanchine’s symphonic ballets. Now she’s back with a less forgettable work, aiming for the same ideal. “A Simple Symphony” still has the feel of an apprentice piece: it’s short (16 minutes) and set to a neo-classic piece by Benjamin Britten written in his youth for a school orchestra. But it has the formal serenity of a symphony, and something more: an unabashedly pretty look, and fulsome romance in the central pas de deux. The pretty look is supplied by Barak’s own costume design – pouffy skirts and satin bodices in silvery pink and blue. The romance comes from the patented perfume of the company’s most romantic ballerina ever, Sara Mearns.

Sex and War at Japan Society

Chelfitsch Theater Company
"Five Days in March"
Japan Society, New York
February 5, 2009

by Tom Phillips
copyright 2009 by Tom Phillips

Back in 1969, Andy Warhol made his “Blue Movie,” a sexually explicit film (seized and banned by the Manhattan D.A.) which according to a program note was about “the Vietnam War, and what we should do about it.” In the film Viva and a middle-aged dude named Louis Waldron hang around an apartment, have casual friendly sex and discuss their disgust with political posturing, the futility of protesting. The point seemed to be that the best thing Americans could do about Vietnam was make love, not war. Forty years later, a Japanese theater troupe brings us “Five Days in March,” about a random young couple who have five days of sex in a windowless Tokyo “love hotel” in 2003, while demonstrators outside protest the U-S invasion of Iraq. The point seems to be the exact opposite. “Make love, not war,” has gone from a rallying cry to a cop-out. It’s not that protesting is any less futile – the Tokyo demonstrators, we’re told, are completely surrounded and hemmed in by the police. It’s that sex has gone from an act of solidarity to a waste of time.

NYCB's "Early" Music Masters

Early Music Masters
"Divertimento No. 15," "Stabat Mater," "Brahms/Handel"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater, New York
January 30, 2009

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2009 by Tom Phillips

Eight is a boring number, especially when it’s divided up into the standard four pairs or two quartets. But in the hands of George Balanchine, eight became a magic number in his “Divertimento No. 15.” Instead of the normal groupings, he used three men and five women as his principals, breaking them into ones, two and threes in kaleidoscopic shifting patterns, backed by a more geometric corps of eight women. As for Mozart’s four-beat, four-measure phrases, he often cut them into three fives, adding an extra step at the end to make 16. Thus does “Divertimento” endlessly divert and delight the viewer, especially when danced with the precision and verve that Sterling Hyltin and Ana Sophia Scheller brought to the opening Theme and Variations.

Bringin' It All Back Home

Miami City Ballet Program 2
"Square Dance," "Rubies," "Symphony in C"
Miami City Ballet
City Center, New York
January 22, 2009

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2009 by Tom Phillips

Not far into Miami City Ballet’s curtain raiser, “Square Dance,” about the time when principal Jeanette Delgado tossed off her first set of perfectly etched garguoillades, this observer felt a familiar sensation from a long time ago, but that’s been absent in recent years: a sense that one had just put on a new pair of glasses with a better prescription, and was suddenly able to see more clearly and vividly. I’d call it the Balanchine effect, a product of his revolution in dance, in which he stripped dancers down to their elemental forms, turned them out to reveal every angle of the body, gave them steps that revealed the inner workings of the music, and taught them to do it as if it mattered – to mean what they danced. No dancer produced the effect better than Edward Villella, whose turning leaps could make you feel like you were being kicked back in your seat, even in the top balcony. Villella performed in the premiere of “Square Dance” at City Center, with New York City Ballet in 1957. More than a half-century later, with his own Miami City Ballet, he’s bringing it all back home.

Tribute to SAB

75th Anniversary Tribute to The School of American Ballet
"Serenade," "Tarantella," "The Four Temperaments," "Vienna Waltzes"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater, New York
January 14, 2009

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2009 by Tom Phillips

At 75, the School of American Ballet has outlived its founders, Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine, and even exceeded their vision. Founded as an academy to train American dancers for what would become New York City Ballet, it now trains dancers from all over the world in the Balanchine style, for companies all over America and the world. For the school’s anniversary, NYCB and SAB chief Peter Martins generously invited SAB alumni who have never danced with NYCB to perform lead roles in three of Balanchine’s classics. Whatever the intent, the effect was to show that the style and repertory invented for NYCB is now danced at least as well in the diaspora.

Turning UnJapanese

12th Annual Contemporary Dance Showcase
Phase 2: Japan & East Asia
Yoko Higashino & Toshio Kajiwara (Japan) "E/G: Ego Geometria"
Jang Eun Jung Dance Co. (Korea) "Several Questions"
Wind Dance Theatre (Taiwan) "Optic Fun"
chelfitsch Theater Company (Japan) "Air Conditioner (Cooler)"
Ko & Edge Co. (Japan) "New Work"
Japan Society, New York
January 9, 2009
by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2009 by Tom Phillips

One doesn't have to have traveled any further than the Asian restaurants of New York to know that Japan is different; a more refined, uniform, and controlled culture than any of its east Asian neighbors. That's why it was such a bold move for Japan Society in recent years to open its annual dance showcase to artists from other Asian countries. It's a move that paid off this year, maybe even too well: the most appealing pieces in the 2009 showcase were not from Japan, but Taiwan and Korea. In different ways, they made Japanese refinement look sterile and confining.