|
Brought to
you by
the New York manufacturer of fine dance apparel
for women and girls. Click here to
see a sample of our products and a list of web sites for purchasing.
With Body Wrappers it's always performance
at its best.
Go back to Flash Reviews
Go
Home
Flash Review 1, 9-7:
Dance Theatre of America
DTH's Thrilling Thirties
By Paul Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2000 The Dance Insider
The thirties can be a
truly fertile time in anyone's life. Past the growing pains of your
teens and the cockiness of your "I know everything" twenties, you
can find yourself confident in your achievements, but at the same
time willing to risk turning down unknown alleys. Dance Theatre
of Harlem, celebrating its 31st season, finds itself in just such
a position: Confident in its rich heritage and, in fact, in its
ability to reach back much further than 30 years to accurately,
spiritedly represent the rich heritage of ballet. And, at the same
time, not only willing to take on new kinds of ballet hybrids, but
with the maturity and technique to present those nouveau works with
aplomb. All this was evident in the mixed program with which DTH
opened its New York season last night at City Center.
Let's start with "Creole
Giselle," act II of which was presented last night, in the first
of four DTH programs on view through September 17. And in terms
of DTH's ability to tap into tradition, we've got to start with
Frederic Franklin, still moving audiences nearly seventy years after
he made his debut at the Casino de Paris in 1931. This "Giselle,"
while owing the "Creole" to a scenario by DTH director Arthur Mitchell
and Carl Michel, as well as Michel's evocative scenery and costumes,
is faithful to the Jean Coralli/Jules Perrot 1841 original, and
set to the same Adolphe Adam music. But the staging and direction
is all Franklin's.
In anyone's book -- and
at the moment, I'm consulting Chujoy/Manchester's "Dance Encyclopedia,"
Balanchine/Mason's "Stories of the Great Ballets," and Terry's "Ballet
Guide" -- Franklin is one of the leading Albrechts of the twentieth
century. And his connection with this ballet shows in the exact
articulation of the dancers in the mime sections and, I think, in
Kip Sturm's unusually invested portrayal of Albrecht, who here is
named Albert Monet-Cloutier. (Having been moved to tears by her
already in Michael Smuin's "Song for Dead Warriors," I suspect that
the magical haunting quality of Kellye A. Saunders's Giselle is
all her own. Ditto the flawless esprit (es-willie?) of the corps,
particularly their immaculate chugs in arabesque.)
The nut of the story
here, for those of you that don't know, is that the frail-hearted
Giselle (so frail-hearted that dancing, her passion, also gives
her heart palpitations) has fallen for Albrecht, a count disguised
as a peasant. When Albrecht's royal fiancee shows up unexpectedly,
he shows his blue-blood and spurns Giselle. She goes nuts and dies.
Cut to the second act, where a repentant Albrecht is praying at
Giselle's grave. Her spirit shows up, but the bad news is so do
those of a bevy of other spurned virgins, whose Queen, Myrta, is
eternally pissed, which she vents by forcing any man who strays
into their neck of the woods to dance himself to death. In Albrecht's
case, Giselle is ultimately able to circumvent this with a couple
of stalling tactics: Giving Albrecht sanctuary at her grave, and
dancing with him herself. Finally, when he's on the precipice of
death, the sun rises, the wilis retreat, Albrecht is saved, and
he and Giselle part forever.
The only down side last
night is that we only saw the second act. So I don't think people
who didn't already know this ballet -- and my suspicion is there
were more than a few in the theater last night -- would get the
full gravity of the second act. I.e., where in the first act it
was Giselle who was frail and ultimately fell, in the second she's
the strong one, protecting the vulnerable Albrecht. Her love is
that pure -- and it ultimately redeems his heart (to say nothing
of his life) as well.
The plus side is that
what we did get -- for the first time I'd seen it in an admittedly
paltry four viewings of the ballet -- was a clear idea, through
pantomime, of what the group dynamics were here. This is Franklin's
teaching, obviously, but owes not a little to the execution of the
players. Lenore Pavlakos, whose Myrta was danced a bit too rote
sprightly for me (as opposed to cold as ice or vengeful), showed
her strength in the pantomime: to command Albrecht to keep dancing
when he prays to be able to stop, she doesn't just point at the
floor and shake her head, but seems to give him specific instructions
of the demanding dance he's going to do and, as my dancer companion
pointed out, tell him in no uncertain terms that he will not get
out of here alive. As well -- also noted by my dancer companion
-- the subtle breaking of her branch when Giselle harbors Albrecht
at her gravestone said volumes.
Sturm's dance to death
was the first one of these I've believed in four Albrechts. Julio
Bocca's dance, with American Ballet Theatre, was just the usual
assemblage of male bravura, and even somewhat restrained, so that
I couldn't see he'd done anything that would push a man to the precipice.
With other portrayals I've seen, one moment they're dancing vigorously
and then suddenly they're near-death. Sturm worked up to his collapse
slowly. With his first variation, you got a sense that, indeed,
he was not entirely in command of his limbs, so we were not totally
surprised when, suddenly -- in a way to his own surprise -- he fell.
And as Myrta wore him down, Sturm's indications of this went beyond
clasping his heart, tho he did that. We saw it in his sweat, in
the fear in his eyes, in the slowly, so slowly increasing panting
in his gut. Each time he fell, he really seemed nearer death. Thus
making more obvious the cruciality of Saunders's timely entrances.
Saunders, ethereal in
variations -- and, especially, in the initiation turns in which
we see Giselle make the transition from burdened earthling to floating
phantom -- was not always successfully so when being partnered.
But, having said that, more than any other Giselle I've scene so
far -- Alessandra Ferri with ABT, Diana Vishneva with the Kirov,
and Nina Ananiashvili with the Bolshoi -- I got a clear sense of
her protective impulses towards Albrecht/Monet-Cloutier. I got it
in the way she stroked the arm of the prostrate Strum, pointing
it to the Heavens, as if to say, daylight will be here soon, and
so will your salvation; and in the way, after the other wilis have
disappeared and she is about to disappear behind her gravestone
for the last time, she gently touches his face with her hands, turns
his head down, and then disappears. Saunders always projects, anyway,
a knowledge of tragic dimensions deeper than this world. And she
definitely uses that here, to great effect; she had Sturm and me
crying!
As for Caroline Rocher's
Sulma and Tanya Wideman's Moyna, they had me quavering, especially
Rocher. Unlike Pavlakos's Myrta, Rocher's portrayal of her assistant
conveyed both beauty and the icey edge beneath it. Ethereally lovely
as she was, I had no doubt that Rocher would shed no tears from
her downcast eyes after she'd danced me to death.
The risk factor on this
evening came in the form of "South African Suite," in the expanded
version which premiered in March 1999. Choreographed by Augustus
Van Heerden, Laveen Naidu, and Mitchell, this has got to be the
most successful merging of western ballet and African folk dance
positions I've ever seen! There's a dance called "Lambarena," by
Val Caniparoli, which mixes African and western ballet phrases to
a musical palette mixing Bach and traditional African music. Caniparoli,
more or less, sets ballet moves to the African music, and African
shimmies to the Bach. I love that ballet, don't get me wrong, but
when it comes to melding, Caniparoli can't hold a candle to what
this choreographic team has created on these dancers. I tried to
distinguish when they were doing what, and, just as I was about
to classify a set of steps as African, the women rose on pointe!
Just as their arms seemed to shake, bent at the elbows, the next
second they were fully extended, their hands limp. And it all seemed
seamless -- not just, I think, due to the choreographers, but also
the dancers. (Side note: How strange that it should be a ballet
company, DTH, which is uninterested in fancy superfluous pyrotechnics,
but lingers over every step, displaying it at full flower, while
the putatively modern company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater,
races through every ballet as if there's no tomorrow. Here it's
the ballet company that's dancing from its heart, the modern, for
the most part, from its feet!)
Oh, and while we're on
the dancers, let's get back to that Giselle corps, whose members
last night were: Bethania Gomes, Paunika Jones, Lynda Sing, Raintree
Halpern, Christiane Cristo, Rejane Duarte, Amy Johnson, Ebony Haswell,
Akua Parker, Jarina Carvalho, Dionne Figgins, Camille Parson, Amanda
Fitzgerald, Erika Woodward, Tiffany Glenn, and Melissa Morrissey.
Rounding out DTH's Program
A is the premiere of van Heerden's "Memento Mori," a death parable
(replete with solitary death figure) which I found to be cliche
and melodramatic; yes, a man, Sturm, is taken by Death and retreats
into a narrowing square of light in the black curtain upstage, enters
it, only to have it close and then suddenly the whole stage be bathed
in -- wait for it -- white light!
Music last night was
provided by the energetic Dance Theatre of Harlem Orchestra, cleanly
conducted by Joseph E. Fields, particular in "Creole Giselle," and
by the Soweto String Quartet with percussion by Samir Chatterjee
and Donald Eaton.
For more on the DTH City
Center season and other tour info, visit the
DTH web site.
Go
back to Flash Reviews
Go Home
|
