"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.
In his opening solo "Years Later," Baryshnikov seems to pull off this feat despite the opposite intentions of the choreographer, Benjamin Millepied. Using film footage of a young, brilliant Baryshnikov leaping and spinning in an empty studio, Millepied has the present-day dancer act frustrated as he tries to replicate the moves in shadow against the movie projection. Of course, Baryshnikov can't jump as high or turn as fast as he once did. But what we see is not so much that the bloom has faded, but that his greatness as a dancer is still intact. One who remembers Baryshnikov in the 70's doesn't recall his spectacular leaps and turns as much as the exquisite care he showed in the steps that connected them. That quality is still there, along with his electric response to music, and his madcap ability to shift between drama and self-satire, as if in a running commentary on his own performance. I started out mesmerized by the illusion of the film, and wound up watching the man himself, alive.
In "Valse-Fantasie," by Baryshnikov's fellow Russian emigre Alexei Ratmansky, dancer and choreographer are more on the same page. This is a spoof on the postures of romantic ballet, from clutching the heart to pointing sternly at an outstretched ring finger. Dancing and miming with an invisible lover, Baryshnikov brings out the comedy in all this anguish -- the essential illusion of romance itself. The program notes that Glinka composed his ravishing "Valse" while obsessed with a certain lady, but seeing her again years later he realized he had no feelings at all for her. Likewise, at the end, Baryshnikov holds an imaginary pistol to his head, then takes a second look and decides to call the whole thing off. Who needs this?
Still, Baryshnikov's radical reductions of dance paled next to Steve Paxton's masterpiece of minimalism, "The Beast." To an intermittent soundtrack like dripping water or static electricity, Paxton walks out unshaven in nondescript work clothes, and gives us a riveting display of the human body in motion, but with no attempt at beauty, usefulness, or communication. Slowly and deliberately he tilts, twists, turns, raises and lowers himself, but with no task to accomplish, no point to make, he appears to be moving simply because he can, because that's what a body does. "The Beast" is like an animal in a zoo, or King Lear in the wilderness. "Thou art the thing itself," says the King. "Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art."
The program ended with a wistful work-in-progress by Baryshnikov and choreographer Susan Marshall, titled "For You." This could be kind of an "Afternoon of a Faun" for a retired dancer. He steps into an empty space and begins to practice, but something's missing. So he fetches a young woman from the audience, then another, then a man, and sets them in chairs on stage to watch. (These were real, self-conscious audience members, not plants.) Like a true performer, Baryshnikov aims to please -- especially the ladies. He kissed them both at the curtain call. Once again this was an exercise in cutting through the illusion and getting to the essence of dance -- and finding, to one's relief and enlightenment, that the thing itself is a joy to behold.
Also on the bill were two solos by David Neumann that seemed more like low comedy. So "Unrelated Solos" was a fine title for this program; it let the performers off the hook so they could do whatever they wanted. Either uptown or down, presenters would have labored to package this show with a theme. ("Heroes of the Dance," or "Men Not in Tights," anyone?) But at BAC, the thing itself will do.
Copyright 2010 by Tom Phillips