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Flash Review 1, 6-7:
Mood Swings
At Parsons, Surprises, Pleasant and Unpleasant
By Paul Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2000 The Dance Insider
SPECIAL!
Video Clip: 1.8MB
I've said before that
I like nothing better than to be surprised at the theater: That's
what makes it live performance, as opposed to canned movies. I'm
particularly delighted when a performer, company, or choreographer
makes me change my mind about him/her for the better. Hey, you think
it's fun being a crank?! Well, last night at the Joyce, I arrived
at the opening of the Parsons Dance Company season prepared to pooh-pooh
the contribution of Parsons collaborator photographer Howard Schatz;
to sound the alarm again about Parsons's baffling anointing of dancer
Robert Battle as the Jerome Robbins to his Balanchine (er, comparison
for rank-relationship purposes only!), and not so sure anymore how
I would feel about Parsons's own work. (With the exception of a
couple of ballets, I'd previously been a fan.) Well, the surprise-o-meter
hit "sizzling" last night, as I was surprised on all counts. And
speaking of sizzling, let's note in this first paragraph that the
luminous Elizabeth Koeppen proved the latest exponent of the theorem,
"It's the dancer, stupid!"
Let's start....hmmm....Well,
let's start with the simpler questions and work our way to today's
$64,000 one. I've had almost as many mood swings about Howard Schatz
over the last six years as this eye doctor specialist turned commercial
photographer turned dance photographer has published photography
books. The first time I encountered Howard's work was at San Francisco's
Vision Gallery, which was exhibiting Howard's monograph "Homeless:
Portraits of Americans in Hard Times" (Chronicle Books, 1994). In
a word, Howard made street people look breathtaking; not by augmenting
their photos, but by bringing out their inner beauty and making
it inflect their outer appearances.
In 1995, a dance connection
arrived, as Howard published "Waterdance," (Graphis Press), a collection
of dancers photographed underwater, and I did a short item on the
book for Dance Magazine, introducing Howard to that publication.
(Not that he wouldn't have introduced himself eventually, the man
had moxy and brought to dance photography the passion of a new convert,
one thing we shared in common; this was around the time I was discovering
my own passion for seeing dance. Howard interpreted it with his
camera, me with my pen, but both of us with fresh eyes.) On my wall
hangs a print from that book of one of my favorites, Tina LeBlanc,
reddish hair and chiffon gown swirling wildly about her, toe pointed
down as she floats in the water. The print is a gift from Howard,
who graciously signed it.)
There came a point, or
several points, where I had to revise my opinion of Howard's work
and the nature of his contribution to the field. I'm not going to
lay it all out for you, because, after all, this is putatively a
review of David Parsons, not Howard Schatz. Suffice to say that
I came to feel that Howard's point of view of the dancers had less
to do with the dancers than with Howard Schatz; that they were little
more than beautiful bodies to him (as opposed to artists, worthy
of, say, crediting in the photo caption); that he gave most of the
credit for the appeal of his photographs not to his beautiful subjects,
but to his own artistry; and that he seemed to think of himself
as a choreographer on a level with the actual choreographers. As
I write this, I'm looking at a blow-up of the DM cover of Elizabeth
Roxas (January 1997), which Howard shot to go with my profile of
Liz. It's a beautiful silhouette, the dancer in wide red dress;
but you can't see her much of her face. Howard has captured one
of Roxas's most enthralling features, her dancing, but not another
key one: her full expression. This is not a small point to miss
in a photograph of an Alvin Ailey dancer; at that company, it's
not just about shape, but soul.
In essence what I'm saying
is that as regards dance, in my opinion Howard doesn't quite get
its soul -- and I'm not so sure he's interested in getting it. He
seems more interested in capturing the physiognomy than the spirit.
Photography, certainly; dance photography -- I'm not so sure.
Feeling this way, then,
how nicely surprising it was for me to find that the best thing
about the new Parsons/Schatz collaboration which made its New York
premiere last night, "Images," is the Schatz portraits of the dancers
which serve as the backdrop. Composition-wise, Howard's images here
have more in common with "Homeless" than his latest body-related
book, "Knots." Where "Knots" features much groovy manipulation of
images by the photographer, the images projected last night are
stark, black-and-white, simple, with no caprice or artifice. We
see close-ups of the dancers' faces, right down to their freckles,
that remind me of the close-ups of the earlier book. We see the
wrinkles in their feet. We see awkward positions, too. We see nudity
(notably of Ruth-Ellen Kroll and Henry Jackson, in images mirroring
their duet which rather than exploitatively focusing on the obvious
body parts get the natural whole). Schatz delves into the intimate
archeology of bodies we usually just see from afar, and we get to
watch. Nice!
Now, the relation of
these photos to the dance is another question. First, they tower,
taking up the entire backdrop. Second, I was reminded of a recent
Nacho Duato dance on American Ballet Theatre. That dance, too, incorporates
images of the actual performers which mirror the live bodies, but
their use is much more limited and therefore less distracting: We
see the tableaus at the beginning and ending of a dance, and sometimes
with the entrance of a new dancer.
In "Images," it seemed
at times like every live phrase had it's gigantic mirror in the
large background. Tho, not always mirror; the photography sometimes
offered, as counterpoint, a micro-view of a phrase we were seeing
in front of us (for example, a close up of the foot, in the position
it's currently in). During the most sensuous duet, between Katarzyna
Skarpetowska and Jason McDole, I even got the feeling that Skarpetowska
was trying extra hard to make sure she arrived at a position at
the same time the related image was being flashed behind her.
In other words, the images
competed with the live dance as often as they complemented it. (And
the photography usually won out, which is not a comment on the dancers,
but the dance.) And sometimes, they even took the punch out of a
live moment, as when we saw a desperately self-huddling Koeppen
on film before we saw her give us this powerful, tortured moment
live. A shame, really, as the positively-glowing Koeppen was the
stand-out here -- as she would be most often during the night, the
dancer making the dance look better than it actually was.
I suspect it was Koeppen
that helped me find one reason to like Battle -- his 1993 "Jewel
Lost." (For my general assessment of this choreographer, see Flash
Diary, 4-25: An Insider Fan's Notes and Flash
Review 1, 5-16: Juilliard in Trouble.) This was a solo very
much in the introspective, contraction-driven Grahamian mode, right
down to the fine gown, designed by Battle as well. This eloquent
dancer made the dance eloquent, never moreso than it its final moments,
when she scooped up something from the ground -- water, a baby?
-- then stepped forward and opened her arms, presenting the object
to herself/us and then, after the lights faded, letting go a final
sigh of...being unburdened.
Koeppen will be dancing
Parsons's signature 1982 piece "Caught" on June 8 and June 10, but
Jaime Martinez, performing this virtuoso solo last night, did not
give us any reason to regret we weren't seeing Koeppen. If you haven't
seen this solo, on its surface it boils down to using strobe lights
to make the dancer seem, among other things, to be flying. (This
is achieved by his/her landing in darkness, then alighting when
the stage is illuminated.) As a dance built on a trick, it requires
a gripping dancer to make it more than a gimmick. Parsons himself,
dancing this piece, achieved this through his drollness, particularly
in the moments where, after a seemingly flying tour of the space,
a spot comes up on the dancer simply standing with his hands clasped
behind his back. Parsons was oh-so-nonchalant (Who, me? Just an
average guy standing here.), a delicious contrast to the tour-de-force
we knew he just performed. (To fully achieve the effect of flying,
the dancer has to quickly rebound to alight at the precise moment
the strobe is flashing.)
The ballet star Vladimir
Malakhov, in a version of the dance specifically re-tailored for
his particular gifts, infused "Caught" with his faun-like mystery
and grace and magical flights of fancy. I haven't seen Koeppen so
I can't comment, but Martinez brings both fire and depth to this
gem. The timing of the strobe-flashing seemed a little off last
night, diminishing the effect, but things seemed to gel by the time
we got to the flying portion, and Martinez, fleet here, was also
dignified and humble at the conclusion.
We won't see Parsons
do this dance this time around at the Joyce and, I'm told, though
he's neither retired nor injured, we won't see him at all during
the Joyce season, a first as far as a I know and so something of
an unfortunate milestone. I'm told that the company founder/director
is trying to pull back from dancing so that he can concentrate more
on choreography, but as long as he hasn't completely retired, greedy
Parsons-the-dancer maws like me can't help but ask, can't the boy
turn out for the hometown crowd? For even one performance?
However, Parsons's absence
as performer did provide one less veil in analyzing the ability
of the dance, the choreography, to charm on its own merits. And
I've got to say that while previously I've been a defender of Parsons's
dance for the masses credo, if dance for the masses means the predictable
mediocrity I saw last night, I take it back! Popular Parsons peers
like Pilobolus and Momix are able to appeal to the masses without
giving them emasculated dance. They still go over the top on occasion
with comedy, and they still take uneasy risks with their serious
pieces. (Momix with "Passion," which rarely gets booked in this
country simply for being set to the Peter Gabriel score of "The
Last Temptation of Christ," and Pilobolus, most recently, with "A
Selection," its no-easy-answers Holocaust collaboration with Maurice
Sendak and Arthur Yorinks.) But "Images" and the other Parsons ensemble
pieces on the evening, the 1987 "Sleep Study" and the 1994 "Mood
Swing," offered little that was risky, provocative (in an idea or
even a pure movement sense), or moving. It was all predictable.
I have seen more on-the-edge choreography farther downtown, and
I have seen better choreography (as I'm not saying something has
to be over-the-edge to be considered high art) uptown at the New
York State Ballet in the Balanchine and Robbins canon.
In other words, I was
not engaged, in either the eye, the brain, or the heart. And what's
dance if it doesn't engage you? Movement, maybe; dance, I'm not
so sure.
I am sure that the live
musical accompaniment -- one thing I like about Parsons is his commitment
to live music -- was stupendous, particularly Cristina Valdes's
playing of the Erik Satie which, along with Alberto Ginastera, made
up much of the score for "Images."
To form your own opinion
of Howard Schatz's work, I suggest starting with his web site, which
is generously provisioned with photographs from Howard's books.
Just go to http://www.howardschatz.com/.
For more on the Parsons season, which continues through June 18
(another program kicks in next week), go to www.joyce.org.
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