danceview
a quarterly review of dance

Reviews

New York Report

A look at Zvi Gotheiner & Dancers, Pilobolus, Oregon Ballet Theatre, and Dance As Ever

by Mary Cargill
copyright © 1999 by Mary Cargill
Autumn 1999

It is inspiring to realize how a small group of farsighted and generous individuals can affect so many people; the Joyce Theater was transformed from a small movie theater into a fine dance space through the efforts of a few, and was filled with dance all summer. While I did not like everything I saw, the performances were usually well-attended and warmly received.

Zvi Gotheiner & Dancers is the straightforward name of the modern dance company that performed at the Joyce for a short season in July. Gotheiner, the choreographer, had extensive musical training in his native Israel, and his work is musical, varied, and rich. The dances are far from simple musical interpretations. The Israeli born, American resident choreographer is interested in dislocation and belonging, loss and alienation, which gives his choreography a purpose and texture; his talent saves it from didacticism.

Dust is set to traditional Yemenite songs sung live by the folk singer Lea Avraham. The dust of the title was really sand piled on the stage (a faint echo of the phrase “dust to dust” came through the piece), which was wonderfully lit by Mark London, to evoke the atmosphere of the desert with its rich golds and cool blues. The sand was Israeli earth, but it was also every other home people have left, and the haunting, mournful songs and the complex percussive accom-paniment combined with the simple but effective downward thrust of the choreography made this one of the most moving of new works I have seen for some time.

The more opaquely named Pilobolus was at the Joyce for most of July. The name comes from a type of sturdy fungus and the company, too, has proved quite sturdy since its founding in 1971. Its combina-tion of modern dance and gymnastic movements and its commitment to collaborative choreography give it a distinctive style. It is distinctive, but it is not varied, and I do find that an evening of their work can seem a bit long. Some of their works stretch the humor out (how funny can a man in a guerrilla suit be) or repeat their ideas far too often—men seem to be forever fighting and making nice, and then fighting again. Uno, Dos, Trey, with its catchy, Latin inflected movements and distinct characters, was a lighthearted exception. A waitress at a tropical resort flirts with two sailors, picks one of their pockets, and then starts on another pair. It was good sexist fun.

The programming of Aeros, which starts with the sound of a plane crash and a pilot dropping on stage, was unfortunate, since it coincided with the tragedy at Hyanis Port. Programming A Selection would have been unfortunate at any time. Pilobolus has always had a strain of adolescent sensibility, with a youthful self-absorption and raging hormones (there is a fair amount of nudity), which can be endearing. But this attitude does not match well with a dance about the Holocaust. In A Selection a group of actors miss the last train to safety and a bald-headed meanie enters. After much dancing (some of it interesting on a gymnastic level) the older couple strips and has sex. It is as if the concentration camps were just about bad sex.

Robby Barnett, one of the choreographers, was quoted in the New York Jewish Week as saying A Selection “simply explores what happens to a group in an extreme sense. In a way, we weren’t doing the Holocaust but our own self-portrait.” Everything is really all about me. When it is really all about them, as in Gnomen, dedicated to the memory of the former Pilobolus dancer Jim Blanc, the choreography can be genuinely moving. This features four male dancers, one of whom is carried on, attacked by an outside force, and then comforted in various serene and inventive poses.

There was not a great deal of comfort on hand in the Oregon Ballet Theatre’s August visit to the Joyce to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Though the company does include some traditional ballets in its repertoire and is planning a Balanchine program this year, the Joyce program emphasized the more modern choreography of James Canfield, its director, who, based on the pre-performance publicity, hopes to save ballet from itself by learning from MTV.

Popular and folk dances have enriched ballet throughout its history, but the programs presented by the Oregon Ballet Theatre do not. There were by and large pale, slavish imitations of whatever appears to be hot; if this is what the audience is buying, he appears to be saying, then this is what I will sell. The dances on the program did not seem to incorporate elements of popular dance and develop his own vocabulary. There was nothing new or innovative in the program. The ghetto chic of Speak, set oh so confrontationally by Trey McIntyre to rap music, will, I suspect, soon look as dated and condescending as blackface.

Canfield also has a taste for what might be described as tabloid ballet, dances based on celebrities involving lots of sex, and titled, in the over-familiarity of the tabloid mentality designed to flatter the audience by suggesting an intimate acquaintance with the infamous, by the subject’s first name. We saw Anaïs, a pas de trois between June and Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, based on a current film, and Edie, inspired by Edie Sedgwick of Andy Warhol fame. Anaïs had much rolling around, but no real characterization (I could see no difference between June and Anaïs except one carried a quill pen). Edie started with a photo-montage of her privileged upbringing and ended with the inevitable black underwear crotch shots; this is supposed, I guess, to make the audience feel badly about degradation. Can Marilyn or Di be far behind?

Moving away from the Joyce and from the tabloids, I saw Leigh Witchel’s small company Dance as Ever at the Pace Downtown Theater. Witchel is interested in music and in steps, and the performance was varied and lively. Scherzo Fantastique, to music by Josef Suk, featured three women (Mary Carpenter, Morgan Goddard, and Adriana Jacinto) in flowing romantic gowns, who seemed to be dancing with invisible partners. The work avoided a generalized swoony effect, though, because each girl had a distinct personality, conveyed through the choreo-graphy and not by gratuitous acting. Witchel is one of the few new choreographers I have seen who can create personality through steps.

Charles Askegard, a principal with the New York City Ballet, was featured in a solo called Aubade (helpfully glossed in the program as a love song sung at dawn) to music by Hugo Wolf. It was a very fine piece and Askegard looked relaxed and eager through the deceptively difficult little jumps and turns, and it showed off his long, elegant line. Again, the choreography was refreshing because Witchel wasn’t didn’t just pour in all the tricky, flashy combinations he could think of at the expense of atmosphere.

The centerpiece of the program was the premiere of Armature, set to pieces of Bach and to Glenn Gould’s lighthearted So You Want to Write a Fugue? with its repeated injunction “Never be clever for the sake of being clever.” This neoclassical exercise, with its lovely Greek-inspired costumes echoing Ashton’s Symphonic Variations, came across as a manifesto, an elegant demonstration of the power and beauty of steps when danced for a purpose. The music stops occasionally and a dry, matter-of-fact voice calls for a series of steps, as the dancers perform them. The contrast between the recita-tion and the performance was quite moving, like being granted the privilege of seeing something come to life. The dancers, especially Abraham Miha in his laurel wreath, used their upper bodies to noble effect. But then they, unlike the hapless Oregonians, were dancing choreography, not panting after the latest trend.