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All the Lonely People

“Café Müller,” “Rites of Spring”
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Brooklyn, NY
September 14, 2017

by Martha Sherman
copyright © 2017 by Martha Sherman

It’s still hard to believe that Pina Bausch is no longer with us. But it’s not just homage that makes her company’s return season at BAM required viewing. In the almost 40 years since “Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch” first came to BAM, offering the New York premiere of the same double bill being presented this season, Bausch’s star, and her company’s power, has only risen. “Café Müller” and “Rites of Spring,” these early works, still pack a wallop, as her troupe of interpreters carry on the art she invented. Over these 40 years, the impact of Bausch’s “dance theater” has found its way into every corner of the broad form called performance art.

Photo: Pau Aran Gimeno, Azusa Seyama, Scott Jennings, Helena Pikon in “Café Müller." Photo © Stephanie Berger.

Love Unclocked

 

“Romeo and Juliet”

The Bad Boys of Ballet

North County High School’s Auditorium

Glen Burnie, Maryland

September 9, 2017 at 7:30 PM

 

by George Jackson

© 2017 by George Jackson

 

That this familiar story of young love could be happening right now or once upon a time haunts Adrienne Canterna’s dance retelling and gives it surrealistic clarity. Most of the characters are male, prone to fight, and that they do so in what may be seen as a contemporary gym or as a historic arcade makes time seem both eternal and urgent. The long gloves pulled over Juliet’s hands and arms as she dresses for a ball would suit a current fashion as well as one from just after World War 2; they might even match what was worn in the still earlier era of Ravel’s La Valse. Discounting the one crowd scene, just ten dancers – only two of them women – sketch out the action in very brief scenes. Canterna gives the varied figures distinctive movement traits but doesn’t appear to be a choreographer who develops the dancing musically or as motion sculpture. 

 

Photo:  Adrienne Canterna Juliet.

 

 

A Good Idea Half Realized

“Dance Among Friends”
Museum of Modern Art
New York, NY
September 6, 2017

by Gay Morris
copyright© 2017 by Gay Morris

Robert Rauschenberg spent important parts of his career collaborating with dancers and choreographers. He even created dances for himself, which he performed during the Judson years of the 1960s. As an adjunct to its extensive Rauschenberg retrospective, which continues through September 17, the Museum of Modern Art offered a half-hearted glimpse at the dance element of Rauschenberg’s work in a concert entitled “Dance Among Friends.” The museum would have been better off expanding the kind of video installation it provided for the Rauschenberg /Trisha Brown collaboration of Set and Reset. That work is being shown on a large screen in one of the exhibition galleries, and it is stunning. The viewer comes away with a real feeling for Rauschenberg’s sets and costumes and how important, and generous, his contribution to dance was.

Silas Riener in Merce Cunningham’s “Changeling” (1957) at the Museum of Modern Art’s “Dance Among Friends.” Photo: Julieta Cervantes

Between the idea and the reality

“Falls the Shadow”
Daniil Simkin
Guggenheim Works in Process
New York, NY
September 4, 201

by Martha Sherman
copyright © 2017 by Martha Sherman

Despite the dancing star power of “Falls the Shadow” at the Guggenheim, the most powerful shadows were those that festooned the spiral of Frank Lloyd Wright’s glorious rotunda. American Ballet Theatre principal, Daniil Simkin, and his splendid dancing contingent – including Brett Conway, Ana Lopez, and Cassandra Trenary – made a beautiful quartet, gliding across the floor of the rotunda. But their movement was in service of the eye-catching design created by Simkin’s father, Dmitrij Simkin, and media designer Arístides Job García Hernández. That isn’t to minimize the quality of the dance; “Falls the Shadow” was a visual feast that managed to dwarf not only the dancers, but also the huge Calder mobile and the treasure of modernist master paintings that surrounded the audience. Arrayed along the spiral at every level, the audience’s vision had to expand as the projections filled the space. It was field, not figure, that was rewarded with the lion’s share of attention.

Cast in "Falls the Shadow." Photo Courtesy of Works & Process at the Guggenheim