Dance, American Dance

DA CONSTAANTLYN EVOLVINGCE TRADITION AD CONSTAANTLY NEVOLVINGCE TRADITION BY OCTAVIO ROCA here is no time like the Michael Smuin’s jazzy abandon, in present to look at the future of Broadway’s newfound love of dance, American dance. So much in every daring bit of performance art keeps coming, so much is left that tries to redefine what dance is behind, and the uncertainty and what it is not. American dancers Tand immense promise of all that lies today represent the finest, most ahead tell us that the young century exciting, and most diverse aspects of is witnessing a watershed in our country’s cultural riches. American dance history. Candid The phenomenal aspect of dance is shots of American artists on the that it takes two to give meaning to move reveal a wide-open landscape the phenomenon. The meaning of a of dance, from classical to modern dance arises not in a vacuum but in to postmodern and beyond. public, in real life, in the magical Each of our dance traditions moment when an audience witnesses carries a distinctive flavor, and each a performance. What makes demands attention: the living American dance unique is not just its legacies of George Balanchine and A poster advertises the appearance of New distinctive, multicultural mix of Antony Tudor, the ever-surprising York City Ballet as part of Festival Verdi influences, but also the distinctively 2001 in Parma, Italy. genius of Merce Cunningham, the American mix of its audiences. That all-American exuberance of Paul Taylor, the social mix is even more of a melting pot as the new commitment of Bill T. Jones and Joe Goode, together millennium unfolds. And it makes for a uniquely with a vibrant new generation of American dance- varied, gripping tale of dance and dancers facing a makers who are responding to the amazing growth of new era. dance companies and their audiences from coast to Ours is a constantly changing tradition whose very coast. vitality is what we will bequeath future generations: Most of all, the optimism and sheer daring that the cowboys and sailors alongside the magical swans have long marked American dance are alive and well and sugar plums, the dances of political questioning from New York to San Francisco, from Miami to and the dances of pure joy of movement, the Seattle, and from Houston to our capital in selflessness and optimism, the generosity of spirit, Washington, D.C. They are alive in Mark Morris’s the elemental theatrical excitement that is the cheery iconoclasm, in Lar Lubovitch’s invention, in promise of each rising curtain. American dance stays U.S.SOCIETY&VALUES / APRIL 2003 alive by ensuring that it never remains the same, that Balanchine started is an exuberant work in progress, it is a living tradition, the American tradition. much of it being carried out today by muses turned Enriching that tradition involves not just looking ballet masters. Peter Martins, Balanchine’s ahead to the next surprise but also looking back with handpicked successor at New York City Ballet, is both pride and affection at the giants of American perhaps the chief guardian of neoclassicism and dance who have made the future possible. continues to delight with new ballets that reveal hidden possibilities within the syntax and speed of the THE BALANCHINE LEGACY American style. Helgi Tomasson, the most sublime "Ballet is like a rose," George Balanchine once said. male Balanchine dancer of his generation, is the "It is beautiful and you admire it, but you don't ask artistic director of San Francisco Ballet and oversees what it means." In the colorful garden of 20th century one of the most exciting neoclassical repertories dance, Balanchine, who was born and studied dance anywhere. in Russia, cultivated the American rose: exuberant, In both New York City Ballet and San Francisco bright, optimistic, and triumphant. He revolutionized Ballet, young Christopher Wheeldon is at the forefront ballet for all time, changed the meaning of of a new generation of choreographers who create classicism, nurtured the speed and athleticism he valid new works that are extending the definition of found in the New World, and made these qualities American ballet. Arthur Mitchell has been performing integral to the very nature of beauty in motion. his own miracles in Manhattan as founder and More than a century ago, Petipa took the French director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Edward style of ballet to Russia and transformed it into what Villella is reproducing and elaborating on the sensual we know as classical ballet. In the United States in Balanchine style in his Miami City Ballet. The fiery the 20th century, it took an atmosphere of openness Suzanne Farrell has created her own Suzanne Farrell to change to nurture the genius of George Ballet at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Balanchine, and it took a lifetime of dance to change Performing Arts in Washington. Not one of these the classical ballet once again, to create an American troupes looks like the others, and not even New York ballet. Yet Balanchine shunned bravura, and he City Ballet looks the way older fans remember it. The worked consciously against the stellar virtuosity that dance goes on. marked the Petipa style. He deliberately distorted the That is Balanchine’s legacy, and it is part of our classical style even as he revitalized its tradition. past. But something so irretrievable as the past Like Petipa, Balanchine loved shifting geometric cannot hold back something as promising as the patterns and cultivated their intricacies with stubborn future. Balanchine’s biggest gift of all may well turn insistence. He absorbed the rhythmic freedom of out to be the revelation of the endless possibilities of American jazz and made the dancer's body reflect it. American ballet. To this day, Balanchine dancers boast feet flexed almost as often as they are pointed, hips loose and DANCE AS THEATER jutting, extensions impossibly high, turned-in poses, Those possibilities, of course, go beyond and unexpected resolutions in motion that could neoclassicism. It was another immigrant, Antony suddenly make sense of an entire musical score. The Tudor, who most radically changed the face of living style Balanchine created is drenched in both American dance by injecting a dose of emotional musical and kinetic logic: the sense of connection truth to the 19th century symphonic ballet formula, from phrase to phrase, the miraculous absence of adding depth and theatrical impact to the European preparation and the virtual explosion of movement narrative dance tradition. The American Ballet when it emerges, the utter integrity of music and Theater, the late Tudor’s home and today’s American dance. The man created works for every venue, from the Ringling Brothers Circus, from Broadway shows and the American Ballet Theatre, to his very own New York City Ballet. The tradition of American neoclassicism that U.S.SOCIETY&VALUES / APRIL 2003 national company, continues in the 21st century a A RETURN TO MEANING tradition of dramatic ballets that are thrilling But perhaps it is on America’s West Coast, with the reminders of the immediacy, of the vitality, of this art particular flavor of the arts of the Pacific Rim, that form. Lar Lubovitch’s Othello, choreographed for American modern dance is witnessing its most both the American Ballet Theater and San Francisco original developments. Working in San Francisco and Ballet, is the most ambitious and successful among Los Angeles, Patrick Makuakane has been recent narrative ballets, but there have been many revolutionizing the world of Hawaiian dance and from coast to coast that prove there is more to redefining the meaning of the folk art known as hula American ballet than neoclassical steps: the with his unique company, Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu. revitalized repertory of Gerald Arpino’s Joffrey Ballet His work proclaims the universality of Hawaiian of Chicago, Stanton Welch’s Houston Ballet, and culture even as he mixes hula and contemporary Mikko Nissinen’s Boston Ballet; the continuing rhythms in a giddy multicultural frenzy. balletic explorations of the African-American Also in San Francisco, the Lily Cai Chinese Dance experience by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company creates a uniquely American blend of Theater under Judith Jamison; works as diverse as traditional Chinese stage pictures, international pop, Yuri Possokhov’s Magrittomania, Dennis Nahat’s Blue and the cutting edge of post-modern dance. Cai’s all- Suede Shoes, Michael Smuin’s picaresque The female, quite beautiful company also boasts a Christmas Ballet. determined desire to entertain, even as the If American ballet presents a varied and colorful choreographer subtly nurtures a new dance language panorama, American modern dance boasts a that stands a radically new Chinese-American fusion. veritable kaleidoscope of possibilities in the new The African-American experience, gloriously century. The Merce Cunningham Dance Company expressed in dance by pioneers from Alvin Ailey to amazes at least as much today as it did when the more recent Bill T. Jones and David Rousseve, Cunningham first teamed up with John Cage in 1953 has its most youthful and original proponent today in to declare the independence of both music and dance Robert Moses. His West Coast company, Robert from any restrictions other than those of the human Moses’ Kin, mixes jazz, blues and rap, poetry and mind. street talk, casual movement and rigorous Paul Taylor is no longer the new kid on the block, postmodern syntax in new works — including Never but this greatest living American choreographer and Solo and the masterful Word of Mouth — that add up his Paul Taylor Dance Company continue to to a slice of African-American life, a universal dance challenge and entertain with the originality of new message, and, perhaps above all, a gripping works as well as the depths time brings to continuing theatrical experience.

Load more