BALLET PHENOM SYLVIE GUILLEM RIVETS THE EYE IN POIGNANT `PUSH'

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on October 12, 2006.

Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- At first glance, they're an odd couple, classical-dance superstar Sylvie Guillem and the down-to-earth contemporary dancer and choreographer Russell Maliphant.

Though they hardly speak the same dance language, they've teamed up for ``Push,'' a two-person show that won raves in London last year and opened last night at New York's City Center. What they have in common is curiosity and daring.

Guillem is a highly celebrated ballerina, famous as much for her glamour and willfulness as for her beautiful mannequin-style body and dazzling technique.

She rose to the rank of etoile, the highest the Paris Opera Ballet has to offer, at 19. Five years later, asserting her independence, she left for a guest-artist position with England's Royal Ballet and free-lance engagements. Now 41, sunset age for most classical dancers, she's seeking even wider horizons.

Though Maliphant trained in ballet, he moved on to modern dance, and both his dancing and his choreographic style are heavily influenced by contact improvisation and non-European disciplines such as yoga, capoeira and tai chi. Like the iconoclastic dance-makers of early postmodernism, he's self- invented.

The first half of the ``Push'' program, which runs through Oct. 15, consists of three solos choreographed by Maliphant that introduce him and Guillem as individuals.

Lethal Leg

Guillem appears first in ``Solo,'' a striking figure in a diaphanous white odalisque's outfit that leaves her midriff bare. She arches a bare foot into bowstring position and unfurls a fabulously long and shapely leg as if it were a gorgeous, lethal snake.

She undulates her long arms with their infinitely flexible joints. To Carlos Montoya's recorded flamenco guitar music, she moves almost casually around the stage, suggesting Spanish dance forms without actually quoting them.

None of this is remarkable as dancing per se, but Guillem is riveting as a phenomenon.

Maliphant, in his 1996 signature solo, ``Shift,'' appears to be Guillem's physical and temperamental opposite. His movement, in his particular fusion vocabulary, is rounded, weighted, deliberate. The piece is the portrait of a plainspoken man, as seriously allied to gravity as a ballerina is to transformation and flight.

Shadow Dance

Maliphant's unwavering concentration gives the proceedings a spiritual dimension. That is increased by the lighting of Michael Hulls, a longtime associate, who creates three ever-shifting silhouettes of the dancer. They seem to be souls accompanying a seeker after truth.

Guillem's second solo, ``Two,'' choreographed for another performer in 1997, depends almost entirely on Hulls's tour de force of lighting design.

Fixed in a rectangle of light, she jackknifes her malleable body to reveal a nearly nude, exquisitely muscled back. From that center, she extends her arms and legs, rippling them so that, as the intensity of Andy Cowton's percussion score escalates, her hands and feet suggest flickering flames.

The program's second half was given over to an absorbing 30-minute duet, ``Push,'' to music by Cowton. Making the whole undertaking cohere, it allowed you to forget the flimsiness of Guillem's solos.

The piece opens with Guillem mounted on Maliphant's shoulders, swaying and gesticulating in tandem with him, then spilling down his spine to the ground.

Vivified Gods

Repeated with inventive variations, this configuration suggests statuary of Indian gods that have come to life. The images reveal great feats of control, and the result is haunting.

Then, traveling through the space, the dancers repeatedly separate and come together. They conjure up the idea of a couple whose relationship has matured to a point where their individual habits and desires have become perfectly complementary. An extended push-and-pull encounter seems to tell the poignant story of this evolution.

``Push'' is at the New York City Center through Oct. 15. Information: (1)(212) 581-1212; http://www.nycitycenter.org.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.