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Maa

Maa: A Ballet by Kaija Saariaho
Miller Theatre, Columbia University, New York
September 22, 2010
by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2010 by Tom Phillips

Ballet dancers rarely go barefoot, but they often wear socks in class, especially at the barre, as the lack of resistance from a shoe makes sliding and pointing the foot easier. But I never saw socks on stage until the world premiere of "Maa", a new ballet choreographed by Luca Veggetti to music by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. I mention it at the outset because the dancers’ sliding moves, and the extraordinary pointed feet of one, were among the few interesting things to see in this portentous, pretentious, overhyped production.

Midsummer at Saratoga

"A Midsummer Night's Dream"
New York City Ballet
Saratoga Performing Arts Center, New York
July 7, 2010

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2010 by Tom Phillips

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center was conceived and built as a summer home for New York City Ballet, and the company inaugurated the center in 1966 with a ballet set, like the stage, in a forest. Back then it seemed like the perfect match, but in recent years relations between the company and SPAC have been strained, and the ballet season has been cut to less than two weeks. But on July 7 some of the magic returned, along with the crowds, as New York City Ballet brought back "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

Khmeropedies

Emmanuele Phuon's Khmeropedies l & ll
Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York
June 25, 2010

by Tom Phillips
copyright 2010 by Tom Phillips

Much buzz was generated recently by "Dancing Across Borders," a documentary (I didn't see it) by a woman who discovers a teenage Cambodian classical dancer in Phnom Penh, and takes him to New York to become a ballet dancer. Less hoopla surrounds Emmanuele Phuon's ongoing project "Khmeropedies," but it strikes me as a worthier cause. She is working with classical Cambodian dancers, honoring their exquisite tradition, but at the same time helping them integrate it with western forms of dance.

Music Lessons

"La Source"
"Monumentum pro Gesualdo/ Movements for Piano and Orchestra"
"Luce Nascosta"
"Who Cares?"

New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
Lincoln Center, New York
June 18, 2010

by Tom Phillips
copyright 2010 by Tom Phillips

It’s not enough to dance to the music, you need to dance with the music. That was the object lesson in Friday’s NYCB program – with a senior principal and young soloist showing the way. Both Jenifer Ringer, dancing to Gershwin in “Who Cares,” and Ana Sophia Scheller, dancing to Delibes in “La Source,” made the music their own, and added a dimension of play in the same way a good vocalist puts her own inimitable touch on a song.

Unrelated Solos

"Unrelated Solos"
Mikhail Baryshnikov, Steve Paxton, David Neumann
Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York
May 21, 2010
by Tom Phillips

Copyright 2010 by Tom Phillips

It doesn't seem accidental that the Baryshnikov Arts Center is located neither downtown nor uptown, but in the ugliest part of midtown Manhattan, on West 37th Street in Hell's Kitchen. In this dreary setting, sandwiched between the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the Lincoln Tunnel, BAC is also halfway between Lincoln Center and Greenwich Village, and thereby able to reject both the ritzy romanticism of the former and the anti-establishment establishment of the latter. Instead it is going for the real thing in dance -- stripping away the layers of posturing and illusion to reveal the human body in motion. And nobody does it better than Baryshnikov himself.

Gaff Aff

Zimmermann & de Perrot
"Gaff Aff"
Jerome Robbins Theater
Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York
May 6, 2010

by Tom Phillips
copyright 2010 by Tom Phillips

"Gaff Aff" is Swiss-German slang, meaning something like "staring at the monkey." Swiss artists Martin Zimmermann and Dimitri de Perrot give us a monkey, in human form, but also something like an organ grinder, who appears to be really running the show. The plot is simple, the execution complex: a man (Zimmermann) emerges from a box and takes on the accoutrements of humanity. He combs his hair and puts on a tie, waits for a bus, gets a job, repeatedly loses and finds his briefcase, shuffles papers, sucks up to the boss, yaks into a cell phone, hammers out hysterical text messages, becomes the boss and lords it over his subordinates, gets rich, builds a home, gets fat, counts his money and meditates, pets his cat, keels over and dies. All this happens at a breakneck pace among props created of cardboard, on a stage that revolves like a turntable in two concentric circles, often in opposite directions. And it is seeingly driven by an intense, almost demonic disc jockey (de Perrott) who sits next to the action, riding three turntables of his own, prompting continual twists, turns, contortions and conniptions from his partner.

Pan-Asian Protests at Japan Society

13th Annual Contemporary Dance Showcase
Japan Society, New York
January 8, 2010

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2010 by Tom Phillips

Protest and satire have long been leading themes of Japan Society’s annual Contemporary Dance Showcase, even in the last few years when it’s been expanded to include artists from Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere in the east. The general target seems to be the formal constraints of Asian society – over there even more than here, dance is an instrument to subvert the conventional order of things. Sometimes the protest is blunt and obvious, but at its best it is deft and daffy and outrageous.

Midwinter Night's Dream

"A Midsummer Night's Dream"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater, New York
January 7, 2010

by Tom Phillips
copyright 2010 by Tom Phillips

Putting on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in January might seem like a perverse attempt by New York City Ballet to prove that ballet has nothing to do with the world outside. (It’s as crazy as showing “Nutcracker” outdoors at Saratoga in July, which they have also done.) On the other hand, running “Midsummer” just a few days after ending a month of “Nutcrackers” might also be seen as a master stroke of programming – a bookend of Balanchine masterpieces, each built on the same template. With that in mind it was a pleasure to see two beautiful young dancers, Sara Mearns and Ana Sophia Scheller, as Titania and Hippolyta in “Midsummer,” with a fresh memory of the same pair as the Sugar Plum Fairy and Dew Drop in the winter classic.

Judson Redux

Deborah Hay and Yvonne Rainer
"If I Sing to You"
"Spiraling Down"
Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York
November 17, 2009

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2009 by Tom Phillips

Irony is about the distances between things, and it gets better with age. Yvonne Rainer has been making art and writing about it since the 1960s, and in the process she has attained an awesome ironic distance, which she displays in her new piece “Spiraling Down.” It’s about the distance between then and now, the discipline it took to get from there to here, and the gap between the artist and the present-day world she contemplates. “Spiraling Down” might refer to the state of the world, or it might also be the process of exploring the artist’s unique, living memory.

Comedy Night at Fall for Dance

Basil Twist, "Petrushka Suite"
Monica Bill Barnes & Company, "I feel like"
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, "Go for Barocco"
DanceBrazil, "Culture in Motion"

Fall for Dance Festival
City Center, New York
September 26, 2009

by Tom Phillips
copyright 2009 by Tom Phillips

Saturday was comedy night at Fall for Dance. Three out of the four pieces on the bill were spoofs or takeoffs of one kind or another. Still, there was enough pure dance and theatrical magic to satisfy even the most serious-minded dance lover.

The most outright cut-ups, naturally, were the “ladies” of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, who performed their Balanchine travesty “Go for Barocco” with great sweep and just the right proportion of slapstick. But a more subtle and satisfying gender-bender was Monica Bill Barnes' “I feel like.” The blank space at the end of that sentence is the puzzle attacked by three women, trying to act out the role of a female in this post-feminist age. Barnes’s humor has long been a staple for hip audiences in small downtown venues, but here she demonstrates that she can rock a big house with a mixed audience just as well.