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DanceView Times, New York edition |
Volume 1, Number 5 October 27 , 2003 An online supplement to DanceView magazine
Letter from New York 20
October 2003 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. 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 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. Innovative
Works Program 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. Master
Works Program 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. Fall
Gala 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. Motion Tabled Sleeping
Beauty and Other Stories 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. If you missed last week's issue, click here for Nancy Dalva's review of Merce Cunningham Dance company at BAM: Chances Are
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What's On This Week October
27 October
27 October
27 October
27 October
28-November October
28-November 1 (opened October 22) October
28-November 9 (opened October 22) October
29-November 2 October
29-November 2 October
30 October
30 October
30, 31, November 1, 2 October
31, November 1 November
1 October
30-November 30 November
2
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