Humor and Dance in the Capital

Washington, D.C., is well-known as a place where important people dance around issues, and sometimes unintentionally provide humor, but this post is about real dance and subtle humor, as seen in a performance of the Paul Taylor Dance Company at the Kennedy Center on Thursday.

All three pieces on tap that night were relatively recent productions (2009-2010) of the prolific choreographer himself. Brief Encounters, the first piece, was notable from the start by its fluidity of movement. The minimalist, stark black costumes (tight-fitting briefs for both sexes, plus bras for the women) and the often bright lighting combined to emphasize the movement and the individual bodies. Some of the frequent visual jokes in Mr. Taylor’s oeuvre were already noticeable, as well as some of the sexual ambiguity he often introduces.

Three Dubious Memories went one step further (so to speak) in that direction. In it, a love triangle is seen in turn from the perspective of each of the three participants. In each of the first three “memories” in question, a couple is lovingly minding its own business when a jealous third intrudes. A fight ensues. The contrast between the three recollections creates humor in itself: the Man in Blue remembers finding the Woman in Red and the Man in Green together, whereupon he beats up Green, and takes Red away. Laughter ensues when the second scene unfolds, and one realizes that Green remembers that he found Blue and Red together, beat up Blue, and took the girl. The third permutation brings an uncommon symmetry, as Red comes up on the two men frolicking together, goes from shock to anger, slaps them both and stomps away. The rest of the company forms a sort of Greek chorus that punctuates the storytelling. I can’t tell if it was the explicit allusion to a same-sex relationship that scared away the two ladies seated next to me, but they didn’t return after the second intermission.

The final piece, Also Playing, was a joyous romp made up of 15 short vaudeville acts danced with a faked incompetence that was sometimes reminiscent of the Trockadero Ballet. Of course, pretending to dance badly takes great mastery, even if the audience may have been laughing too hard most of the time to notice.

Another Houston Ballet evening

Woohoo, I got another autographed program cover. Ian Casady (at left) danced the role of Pecos Bill in Pecos by Stanton Welch, and I got him to sign the program bearing his photograph in that role. I say "role" because the piece was more theatrical than anything else, an impression Ian agreed with.

That piece closed a program that started with Ballo della Regina by Balanchine, which pleased one of my companions, since she learned classical ballet for eight years, but was too old-fashioned for me. And as fun as Pecos Bill was, I far preferred the middle part of the program, Sandpaper Ballet, a very abstract piece by Mark Morris, set to Leroy Anderson's music, including such whimsical pieces as Sleigh Ride, the Typewriter, and others.

Apollo, Hush, and Fancy Free

After a bit of a dry spell, I went to the Houston Ballet tonight and saw three good pieces. And since the season's Playbill has Connor Walsh on the cover, about whom I wrote before ("Arts and Politics, part II" on February 23, 2008, and "Icing on the Cake" on November 7 of the same year), I came back with a little prize besides having seen a great performance:

All three pieces had the common quality of combining great choreographers with great musicians. Apollo is by George Balanchine, on music by Stravinsky. However, composed in 1928, this is both relatively early Stravinsky and very early Balanchine. Interestingly, this means the score is more classical — not sense-jarring and almost cacophonous like the Rite of Spring — while the choreography is more modern than what Balanchine became known for later, even though it is based on Greek mythology. At least I was positively surprised.

Hush is by Christopher Bruce, who also choreographed Swang Song, the piece danced by Mr. Walsh that I commented on in my post two years ago. The dancing, while inventive, did not strike me as particularly extraordinary, but the accompaniment by Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma, with McFerrin's amazing ability to make his voice sounds like various sorts of musical instruments, added an extra dimension.

Fancy Free is a fascinating piece, not only because of its inherent qualities, but because it was premiered in 1944, and one might have almost found it sacrilegious to feature sailors on leave while WW II was still going on. But the other interesting aspect is that while it is a very traditional "boys chase girls" story, the guys try to win the girls by demonstrating their not-very-macho footsteps, there are gestures that hint at the traditional semi-funny, semi-homophobic jokes that guys can make about each other... and then both the music and the dance were composed by two of the biggest closet queens in New York's so-very-gay artistic world, Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein!

I got my autograph in the Wortham Center's Green Room after the performance, and had time to chat a little with Mr. Walsh. I complimented him on giving a very complex dimension to his character in Fancy Free: especially during the duo dance with one of the girls, his sailor had at times the cocksure attitude you would expect of a slightly drunk sailor on leave in New York; at times, the hesitancy and shyness of a corn-fed boy who doesn't know what to do in a new world; and finally, a big grin on his face that says "I can't believe what's happening to me!" He said, in different words, that there was indeed a conscious attempt to layer several personality aspects onto the character, and he seemed genuinely pleased to be told that it had come across successfully.

Soldiers' Mass

I went to the Houston Ballet tonight, and as has often been the case, this is nudging me to post about it. The three pieces were programmed in the right order, going from the more classical ("The Leaves are Fading" by Antony Tudor) to the most contemporary, "Soldiers' Mass" by Jiří Kylián, on music by Bohuslav Martinů. The middle piece, "The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude," choreographed by William Forsythe on Schubert Ninth Symphony, was a nice transition piece, the most recently premiered of all three, yet not as modern as Soldiers' Mass, and in comparison just a nice little academic exercise.

Instead of writing my own review of Soldiers' Mass, though, I found this one written after the first New York City performance by the Nederlands Dans Theater (a year after the premiere in Scheveningen, Netherlands), and it is so good that I can only bow in deference to Anna Kisselgoff (The New York Times, 7 July 1981), and quote:

In some respects, "Soldiers' Mass" might recall Antony Tudor's "Echoing of Trumpets," a great antiwar ballet to another Martinu score, "Fantasies Symphoniques." That ballet, however, was inspired by the German massacre of Czech civilians at Lidice in World War II, an event that also spurred a Martinu work.

Like Antony Tudor, to whom he dedicates another ballet this season, Mr. Kylian is an expressionist and a romantic. He is, like Mr. Tudor, interested in the weighted gesture, the broad, abstracted emotion. He is not a step-oriented choreographer.

In "Soldiers' Mass," known otherwise as the "Field Mass," he is not concerned with civilians but with very human fears and youngsters called to duty, conscripts. His approach is generalized, and in this faceless mass of 12 men, the individual's predicament surges all the more poignantly.

The men, dressed in stylized khaki outfits, are seen in a typical Kylian pose, with their backs to us. Just as typically, they will tend to move in a mass. One of the glories of Kylian choreography at its peak is its choral sweep. And here the actual male chorus in the pit, conducted by David Porcelijn with Bernard Kruysen as the touching baritone soloist, is at one with the dancers onstage.

The images are not all unfamiliar -- men cringe and fall. They die multiple deaths, and their mutual consolation and isolated fears are all clear. When one small figure -- Chris Jensen -- breaks out for a solo, the picture of wasted youth becomes embodied in the very energy he displays and that we know will die out. There are also stereotyped movements, using Martha Graham's floorwork. But there are also sensational theatrical moments. At one point, the dancers sing, as the condemned, along with the chorus. Another time, they rip of their shirts. Mr. Kylian's horizon decor, which disappears and reappears, is just as dramatic. In the end, the cross and the firing squad become one: A ballet that moves the mind and the heart.

She said it all -- the passion, the humanity, the tragedy, the stupidity of war. It was beautiful and moving. I believe that the solo piece mentioned above was the one danced by principal dancer Connor Walsh tonight -- a dancer I have (app)lauded in this blog before (see the entry for 23 February 2008, about Swan Song). And yes, the venerable New York Times spelled "Kylian" and "Martinu" without the diacriticals on the "a" and "u". Shame on them.