ABT City Center Season
Week One
(Reviews of the Fall Gala, Master Works Program and Innovative Works Program ran as daily reviews last Thursday, Friday and Saturday, respectively, and are republished here for those who may have missed them)
Fancy Free, and a Friendly Matinee
Family
Friendly
American Ballet Theatre
City Center, NYC
October 25 matinee, 2003
by
Eric Taub
copyright ©2003 by Eric Taub
ABT's
Family Friendly series is a nice mixture of old and (somewhat) newer ballets,
and seemed to please the many voluble kiddies in the audience Saturday
afternoon (as well as their parents). I did wonder a bit about the effect
of some of the stories presented, as I overheard a mother reassuring her
little girl that the noisy trips to Hell taken by the title women in Three
Virgins and a Devil were just "pretend." Similarly, in
this day and age one has to wonder how kids might react to the encounter
between the three sailors and the first girl in Fancy Free, where
it can sometimes seem less playful and more threatening. Certainly it's
not Politically Correct. In any event, the children in the audience (at
least the ones who surrounded me) seemed anything but bored.
read review
Innovative
Works Program
by Gia
Kourlas
copyright ©2003 by Gia Kourlas
It is far
too easy to criticize the name of American Ballet Theatre's Friday-evening
program: Innovative Works, but I can't resist. It's all marketing. Aesthetically,
there was one such ballet—William Forsythe's wonderful workwithinwork.
Framing it were two pieces so bereft of a creative spark that instead
of pushing the form in a new direction, they only served to flatten it
to choreographic mush. Nacho Duato¹s Without Words, a vapid
dance created for the company in 1998, costumes four couples in unflattering
nude bodysuits (Duato's design), boasting intricate partnering that rambles
into mind-numbing mediocrity. It is not so much a piece as an exertion—mindless
toil for the audience as well as the dancers. The closer, Within You
Without You: A Tribute to George Harrison, wouldn¹t even cut
it as choreography for a music video. The only thing Without Words
and Within You have in common with Forsythe's mysterious gem
is the word WITH in the title.
read
review
Master
Works Program
by
Mindy Aloff
copyright ©2003 by Mindy Aloff
For
its three-week City Center season this fall, ABT has divided
its repertory into four categories, each represented by one program of
three or four dances: “Master Works,” “Family Friendly
Works,” “Innovative Works,” and “Contemporary
Works.” Surely, the packaging is intended to appeal to audiences
who don’t know much about ballet, would like to try it, and need
some guidelines. What those audiences are going to make of the fact that
a ballet entitled Three Virgins and a Devil is on the “Family
Friendly” program would require a disquisition by Dr. Ruth; but
let that pass. What matters is that the company is attempting to get people
into the theater—perhaps with the hope that the dancing and the
choreography will win them over to the point that they can begin to think
independently, to question, for instance, why some dances by living choreographers
are considered “innovative” while others are considered merely
“contemporary,” or why innovation is so decisively separated
from mastery, or why families with small children who have been exposed
to countless acts of violence and mayhem in Saturday morning cartoons
should require “friendliness” in their ballets. These questions
touch on some core preconceptions about the art and culture of our time,
of course, and it is to ABT’s credit that it is not only willing
to raise them but also that it would do so indirectly, through its marketing,
using what used to be called reverse psychology.
read review
Fall
Gala
by
Eric Taub
copyright ©2003 by Eric Taub
It's
always a happy occasion to welcome American Ballet Theatre back to NYC,
in this case for its fall City Center season. The program showed the great
range of ABT's repertory, focusing on works celebrating the upcoming centennials
of Sir Frederick Ashton and George Balanchine in 2004. The evening promised
well for the next three weeks—especially once the dancers start
dancing as well as they've shown us they can. Unfortunately, last night,
despite some fine moments, there were times when it looked as if everyone
needed a good jolt of caffeine.
read review
Decoding
Nikolais—
A Conversation
Nikolais
Dance Theatre
Ririe-Woodbury
Dance Company
Stanford University Memorial Auditorium
(Presented
by Stanford Lively Arts)
October
24, 2003
By
Rita Felciano and Rachel Howard
copyright
@2003 by Rita Felciano and
Rachel Howard
Rather
than write a review, Rita Felciano and Rachel Howard decided to test the
limits of dance writing on the internet and have a conversation following
the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company's program of Alwin Nikolais works. The
performance included Crucible (1985), "Lythic," from
Prism (1956), Blank on Blank (1987), "Finale"
from Liturgies, Noumenon Mobilus (1953), Mechanical
Organ (1980), and Tensile Involvement (1955).
read
article
Letter from New York
20
October 2003
By Mindy Aloff
Copyright
©2003 by Mindy Aloff
Mindy Aloff's Letter will return next week. Read her review of ABT's Master Works Program, or catch up on past Letters you may have missed.
Two Ways to Tango
Smuin
Ballet
Tango Palace: Tangos, Fados, and other curios
Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center
October 25, 2003
and
The Tango Lesson
Written and directed by Sallie Potter
With Pablo Veron
1997
by
Ann Murphy
Copyright
©2003 by Ann Murphy
Tango
is one of those rare dance terms that sounds like the dance. Minuet, waltz
or polka—none of these words signal what to expect when the music
starts. Tango is different. The sudden shot of the "t"
is followed by the nasally aggressive "a." These sounds pick
up the "n" and together sail like a well-feathered arrow into
the stolid "g" of the word. Tango begins as two dancers carefully
embrace then slip warily into an opening figure. This innocent start quickly
becomes a series of contests and confrontations about power and longing.
Feet feverishly slice through legs toward the vulnerable crotch, or a
leg encircles the partner's hips, hungrily. Born in bordellos and poor
men's cafes and fusing various immigrants' music and dance styles tango
became a fevered code of entrapment between pimp and whore, man and woman,
and man and man.
read article
Motion Tabled
Sleeping
Beauty and Other Stories
Susan Marshall & Company
2003 Next Wave Festival
BAM Harvey Theater, Brooklyn, N.Y.
October 24, 2003
By
Nancy Dalva
Copyright
©2003 by Nancy Dalva
The pivotal prop in Susan Marshall’s Other Stories is a table. A table sets the scenes, a table, moved hither and yon, is the scenery. A real case of deja vu all over again: Just a few weeks ago, there was a whole raft of tables on stage in Brooklyn when the Frankfurt Ballet danced William Forsythe’s One Flat Thing, reproduced. Tables! Tables are the new chairs. And plot is hot.
Or vestiges
of plot. Marshall’s Sleeping Beauty, which precedes Other
Stories, is a metaphor about a metaphor—an interpretation or
meditation on the idea of a beauty, asleep (or locked away) and resistant
to rescue. The narrative is vague, if full of clues. The fairy tale itself,
of course, not only submits to all sorts of deep analysis (spindle, pricked
finger; hello, Dr. Bettelheim! Hello, Dr. Freud!) but also provides superficial
pleasures and satisfactions, among them romance and charm. Marshall strips
away these latter qualities. The ideal response to her dance would be
emotional, visceral, swoony; the least desirable would be to sit there
thinking “It’s beautiful, and I’m asleep.” But
the choreographer does have a predilection for beautiful, low lit torpor.
If this dance and the audience were buddy breathing (perhaps on a deep
sea dive for meaning), the dance would be taking more than its fair share
of air.
read review
If you missed last week's issue, click here for Nancy Dalva's review of Merce Cunningham Dance company at BAM: Chances Are
Airborne
CityDance
Ensemble
Terrace Theater
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
Wednesday, October 22
Reviewed by George Jackson
copyright ©2003 by George Jackson
It isn't easy being a Rasta Thomas fan. He's elusive. Here today, there
tomorrow: the transient artist, forever a guest and solitary, often appearing
in tricky, tailor-made solos. Undeniably, though, Thomas leaves behind
him fans as faithful as those of the stars who dance standard repertory
and have regular orbits around big ballet companies. On his home ground,
the Washington area, Thomas first attracted attention at age 11 on a school
recital program. He danced with adult intensity and refined precision,
standing out despite considerable competition from his fellow students,
a top generation at the Universal/Kirov Academy of Ballet. For that debut
he had choreographed his own vehicle, a Black Belt fight solo. It was
a well made piece. Thomas's first fans date from that performance. In
the years since, he's been globe trotting. Only with the Hartford Ballet
in Connecticut and the Kirov in St. Petersburg, Russia did he dance sustained
roles as a regular company member. Because his stays there were brief,
it hasn't been possible to see his Prince or Prodigal grow. Fans, though,
keep springing up regardless.
read review
A New Wind from Britain
Ballet
Boyz
George Piper Dances
Lisner Auditorium
(presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society)
October 21, 2003
By
Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 2003 by Alexandra Tomalonis
The
Ballet Boyz are one of the best things to happen to ballet in years. They're
young and trendy and on record as saying they want to bring dance to people
not used to watching it (a noble endeavor), but former Royal Ballet dancers
Michael Nunn and William Trevitt make serious work accessible and fun
to watch without dumbing it down. The company's members and repertory
shift as circumstances dictate. For the current U.S. tour, there are five
dancers: Hubert Essakow, Oxana Panchenko and Monica Zamora, in addition
to Nunn and Trevitt. What they present is as far from the typical "we're
not doing anything much this month so let's put on a show" off-season
gig as can be imagined: three serious works in styles that range from
contemporary ballet to modern dance, interspersed with home movie-style
videos that give the audience a glimpse of life on tour, a mini-introduction
to each of the works and their choreographers, and time for both dancers
and audience members to catch their breath.
read
review
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