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Flash Review 2, 9-29:
The British are not Yanks! The British are not Yanks!
All that (Royal!?) Jazz from Birmingham
By Paul Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2000 The Dance Insider
Hmmm....Well, yes, this
week in dance has certainly been one of the more bizarre this dance
viewer has witnessed in five years. To re-cap: From last Thursday
to Tuesday at City Center, Birmingham Royal Ballet brought us "Edward
II," in which the protagonist is killed with a hot poker stuck up
his ass. On Tuesday and continuing through Sunday at the Joyce Theater,
Rennie Harris is in the house with a hip-hop version of "Romeo &
Juliet" with, er, no live Juliet and no death scene. And last night,
the veddy British BRB tried to carry off three very American jazz
ballets. "Edward II" and "Rome & Jewels" worked gloriously. The
triple bill of jazz ballets, which opened last night at City Center
and plays through Sunday, wasn't so successful, but even that at
least failed gloriously. Can you say, "Dance Boom"?
My colleague Alicia Mosier
gave us the first American take on "Edward II," choreographed by
BRB director David Bintley and receiving its U.S. premiere this
month. (See Flash Review 1, 9-22: Forces of
Nature Meet Forces of Bintley.) We (we being me!) were so blown
away by this work, that we also asked renowned choreographer Mark
Dendy to offer his take on it. (See Flash
Review 1, 9-29: The British are Coming Out! The British are Coming
Out!) And I explained, in Flash Review
1, 9-27: Hip-hop is in the HOUUUUUSE, why "Rome & Jewels" is
such a breakthrough. But where "Rome & Jewels" succeeded because
Harris addressed the Shakespearean tragedy on his own, hip-hop terms,
BRB's mixed program of Balanchine's "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue"
and two more-or-less light-hearted Bintley ballets (one his own
take on Shakespeare, the other his take on Duke Ellington/Billy
Strayhorn's take on Tchaikovsky's "Nutracker") fails because the
mostly non-American personnel are trying to be something they're
not, twice over. Which is to say, ballet dancers doing straight
jazz is already a tough sell, and European ballet dancers doing
American ballet dancers doing straight jazz is pushing it -- at
least too much to convincingly carry it off for an entire evening.
Why BRB brought "Slaughter
on 10th Avenue," which brought down the house when staged on a dream
team of City Ballet and Dance Theatre of Harlem stars last spring,
is a mystery. Even set by the same stager, Susan Hendl, it was,
in spirit, a shadow of the ballet seen on the stage of the New York
State Theater. That David Justin (who played the hoofer entranced,
in the play and the play within a play, with a stripper and the
dancer who plays her) is American did not help much. There was little
chemistry between Justin and Monica Zamora's Stripper. It's difficult
for me to say that; Justin is one of my favorite dancers of all
time, the prototypical...well...I forget the word for it but I think
it's demi-character dancer, someone who can dance both character
and danseur roles. And Zamora wowed me just last week as Edward's
Queen Isabella, evincing a frailty and vulnerability towards her
homo-straying husband in the first act that makes her betrayal of
him in the second believable, and not just emptily arch.
However, as the Stripper,
I found Zamora for the most part emptily vampish. When she shimmies
her fingers, I didn't buy it. Sure, she's hot -- beautiful and with
flashy legs that soar -- but I don't believe her as someone who
would have gone into stripping (or even, since this is supposed
to be a story within a story, as a ballet dancer who would be able
to play a stripper). It's all like someone taking advantage of her
high kick to play at being a vamp. But vamping demands much more
equipment than that.
None of this is exactly
Zamora's fault; the problem is more that she's been asked to do
this. And not only once. Zamora returns for the evening's closer,
"The Nutcracker Sweeties," playing an equally vampish and teasingly
clad character named the Sugar Rum Cherry -- doing the exact same
high kicks and, inexplicably, constantly telling the audience to
"Shhhh."
Unlike "The Harlem Nutcracker,"
Donald Byrd's choreographic take to the same Ellington/Strayhorn
composition, this "Nutcracker" doesn't cohere as one story. It's
a series of CLEVER vignettes that riffs on the characters in the
original, rarely successfully. The only segment that works, to my
critical mind and hetero libido, is a sultry, slow-but-hot tempered
"Arabesque Cookie." And that works only, I think, because of the
over-the top whirling dervish men and, more important, the supple
and sumptuously voluptuous Leticia Muller. The Arabian Dancer is
usually the credibility stretcher for me in this ballet (the exception
being Monique Monnier at City Ballet) -- the dancers I've seen in
this part either don't have the sexual/sensual abandon, or, frankly,
the meat on their bones to, well, entice (as I think is the drift
of the choreography!). But Muller -- whoa, Nelly! Even though the
choreography she's given is rather mincing than sultry, especially
at the beginning, she makes it work because she's totally committed
to it: this really is her character. When she disposes of her sheer
pants and reveals those legs -- oh, Mamie! As well, Muller's very
expression, a warm and natural smile that lights her whole face,
is inviting -- as an "Arabian Dancer" 's should be.
The one ballet which
worked for me, to an extent -- and would have worked better if it
were not grouped with two other jazz ballets -- was Bintley's "Shakespeare
Suite." Here, the, if you will, juxtaposition three times over --
quirky choreographic takes on a bunch of Will's characters drawn
from various of his dramas, danced also to modish Ellington -- was
just weird enough to maintain, at least, curiosity throughout the
dance. Standouts include the fleet Robert Parker -- who I saw as
Edward's paramour last week, and Mark Dendy saw as Edward Tuesday
-- as Hamlet. An unusually merry, but just enough gloomy Hamlet
to be believable. (He closes the ballet with a single candle.) With
punkish red hair and, in his case, a van dyke as well, the successfully
vampy and poised Catherine Batcheller and the versatile Wolfgang
Stollwitzer (the opening night Edward) were deliciously twisted
(even in their bodies) natural born killers. Justin by this time
seemed to have really loosened up; not quite unbridled and wild
enough as the hoofer, he was an unwitting, nerd-thinking-he's-suave
Bottom/Ass. His character was one permitted to actively mime playing
the music, and I loved the way he strummed Ambra Vallo's Titania
like a bass.
And speaking of playing,
the stand-out of the entire evening -- and reveling in it -- was
the jazz band Echoes of Ellington, conducted by Paul Murphy. They
jammed during the ballets, they jammed (in quite lengthy sets, that
had many in the audience standing, clapping, and peering into the
pit) before each ballet, they hollered, they played "The Star-Spangled
Banner," they played "Happy Birthday," and they even swung the theme
from the Flintstones. From Bintley and the BRB crue, the ballet
firsts are evidently endless. Hot pokers one week, hot swing the
next!
Programmatically, however,
what BRB should have done, I think, was to bring "The Shakespeare
Suite" as it's divertissement, and sandwich it with a couple of
the nice serious one-act ballets Bintley has in stock ("The Wanderer
Fantasy" and the AIDS fantasia "The Dance House" come to mind).
Bringing one Roman ballet to Rome would have been indulgeable. But
bringing three was too much hubris even for Bintley and these verve-acious
dancers.
Did I just say too much
hubris? Hmmm.... Well, I think I have to take that back. (Prerogatives
of the Flash: Flash change of heart!) What's been wonderful about
this whole week, folks, and particularly the Birmingham engagement,
is the utter abandonment of the play-it-safe choreographing we're
so used to by supposed American ballet wunderkinds like Christopher
Wheeldon and Kevin O'Day. I have never -- repeat NEVER -- been shocked
by a new ballet at either City Ballet or American Ballet Theatre.
Do they program or commission our native daring ballet choreographers
-- like Mark Dendy or Alonzo King? -- no! Instead they promote and
give us the placebo ballets of Wheeldon and Ryan Kelly. The mold
they expect their new choreographers to be in is NOT the break the
mold Balanchine mold, but the toe and hold the line Peter Martins
mold.
What's my point, as it
pertains to what I saw last night? Just this: Sure, I am criticizing
the piling on of three light American jazz ballets in one program
by a British company, and I have sincere individual criticisms about
each work. But I would much rather go to the ballet not knowing
what to expect -- fearing, for instance, that I might see someone
get a hot poker shoved up his ass -- than for the wet blankets we
usually see from our supposed leading U.S. companies. Three cheers
for noble failures, and Rule Britannia! God save the Queen!
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