Sourcing Stravinsky - Lisa Rinehart

Still feisty

"Sourcing Stravinsky"
David Neumann, The Collective,
Dayna Hanson & Linas Phillips,
Cynthia Hopkins, Yvonne Rainer
Dance Theater Workshop
New York, NY
April 20, 2006

by Lisa Rinehart
copyright ©2006, Lisa Rinehart

Curator Annie-B Parson wonders if Stravinsky's bunker busting music is still relevant to the MTV generation. She invites to DTW six artists whom she considers "scrappy enough to get in there and wrestle with him," and asks them to create new work with the composer as their inspiration. Then she gives them the gift — she leaves them alone. No criteria, no restrictions. The result is, in Parson's words, "a pretty meta experience." What this means is that two dances use the master's music as written, another dance is combined with film and underscored by a jumble of Stravinsky excerpts, a non-danced performance piece is built on the ghost of an idea Stravinsky had, but never pursued, and the final dance is about a dance that happens to be the penultimate fruit of the Stravinsky/Balanchine collaboration. Whew! Parson hoped for a "prismatic experience," and I'd say she got it. There are flaws — what good experiment doesn't have them? — but the evening is a great excuse for five different takes on a short, funny looking Russian, and his music.

David Neumann's "hit the deck. (studies and accidents)," is set to incidental piano pieces (and one sung piece) and is the evening's wittiest and most choreographically complex offering. Neumann's movement is a little like a game of Simon Says with gifted and, presumably, hyper-active children. Tics and shrugs and two-footed jumps are translated into marvels of musicality that ring with humor and a sense of fun. Neumann manages to mimic Stravinsky's mastery of piecing melodic fragments into patterns as dancers swing in and out of a disorderly order, and he throws in surprises such as flying chairs that catch the maestro's unpredictable spirit. The tango between Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs is a wonder of non-literal rhythm that never stoops to cliche. Neumann has the remarkable ability to be smart, original, and accessible which, by the way, puts him in a very small group of choreographers. More!

The most literal interpretation of Stravinsky is Rennie Harris' "Heaven," set to an excerpt from "The Rite of Spring." Now, I'm a fan of Harris, and his dancers are phenomenal, but imposing a sort of mystical demon gang war against a solitary victim (the amazing Anthony "Why KNOTT" Denaro) — dressed all in red, natch — is just too obvious for this project. Harris has a well-deserved reputation for bringing street inspired break dance to the legit stage, but "Heaven" feels like he's run out of ideas. The group, in skull-like make up and black doo rags, has moments of hip hopping fury to Stravinsky's primal thumps, but mostly Harris holds them in a clumped foursome that circles and hisses around Denaro with predictable menace. More narrative and less movement, or less narrative and more movement might elevate "Heaven," to something more adventurous, but for now this dance will hopefully die the natural death of a "piece d'occaision."

The evening's third installment, "Track 11," refers to the "Essential Stravinsky" CD Linas Phillips and Dayna Hanson have referenced as their quicky tutorial on the composer. It's immediately clear, however, that what Phillips really wants to talk about is homelessness in America. Charmingly boyish, Phillips is undeterred by any apparent incompatibility between a turn-of-the-century classical composer and sad storied bums from the street. He riffs on the topic like a high school student winging a class presentation, throwing in any bit of Stravinsky lore he can think of until we are watching film clips of homeless men recalling last week's lunch with Igor, acknowledging what a good guy he was, and how little money it would take for our government to set them up with an apartment. The unlikely parallels continue when we are asked to stand for a stanza of the Star Spangled Banner as a split screen pairs shots of Stravinsky eating with those of homeless men doing the same. Throughout, Hanson expertly reins in Phillips with dead pan deliveries of historical fact and pertinent chunks of movement. "Track 11" is a multi-media walk-on-the-edge that's clever and heartfelt.

The vertiginous offering for the evening is Cynthia Hopkins' "Tsimtsum," a way out there vocal theater piece propped up by Stravinsky's unrealized desire to create an opera in collaboration with Dylan Thomas. Somehow this involves aliens taking over the world, Hopkins slipping out of a silver lame spacesuit to play the role of Dylan Thomas in a rubber pig nose, and the audience taking on the persona of a mysterious Dr. Cook to whom Thomas reveals his inner fears. Hopkins has a beautiful voice, and occasionally she allows us to hear it from under the draped dress, bizarre hat and funky eye wear, but, call me a peasant, I have no idea what this piece is intended to do other than give us a peek into the intensely strange and private world of Cynthia Hopkins. "Tsimtsum" is her vision fiercely realized, however, and one has to commend the commitment.

The last piece on the program is the glamour event as it features the return of Yvonne Rainer to the choreographic world after a 20 year absence (except for a brief stint with Mikhail Baryshnikov's Past Forward tour in 2000). Rainer, ever the iconoclast, takes on Balanchine's "Agon" in her "AG Indexical, with a little help from H.M." The dance is a pretty wonderful deconstruction and reconstruction of "Agon" using three veterans of the modern world (Pat Catterson, Patricia Hoffbauer and Sally Silvers) and one classically trained dancer (Emily Coates). Rainer plays with our reactions to Balanchine's steps as interpreted by less than dewy bodies, calling into question notions of beauty and exoticism. A video tape of "Agon" plays as the women prepare, three in dumpy rehearsal wear, and Coates in point shoes and sleek black. Coates snaps off the monitor and they begin to move. The bones of Balanchine's steps are there, but with an earthier punch. Silvers performs a winning picking-it-up-on-the-fly version of the male solo with the video tape monitor facing where only she can see it. Coates watches as the three women move their generous curves through Balanchine's angular choreography. They create daisy chains supporting Coates in arabesque and attitude much as she would be supported in Balanchine's original, but the effect is radically less lofty than in the uptown version. Rainer professes to a fascination with "this range of competencies" and whether she believes it or not, her dance defines that fascination as a love/hate relationship with formalized, performance oriented movement. In a final gesture of respect and irreverence, Rainer sets the identical beginning steps to Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther" theme — and, surprise, it's a perfect fit! Stravinsky's genius may be irrelevant for these few brief moments, but by way of the arcane and the obvious, the old geezer's still making a ruckus.

Photos, all by by Julieta Cervantes
First: Rennie Harris company.
Second: Dana Hanson/Linus Phillips.
Third: Yvonne Rainer's "AG Indexical, with a little help from H.M."

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Still feisty