{"id":2664,"date":"2014-06-24T16:20:01","date_gmt":"2014-06-24T20:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=2664"},"modified":"2014-06-24T19:15:18","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T23:15:18","slug":"aging-as-in-fine-wine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2014\/06\/aging-as-in-fine-wine\/","title":{"rendered":"Aging, as in Fine Wine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jacob’s Pillow opens its summer season with a solo performance by Carmen de Lavallade.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A 2007 Jacob’s Pillow Inside\/Out performance (Erica Esner Coop). Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n

The Gala that opened the Jacob\u2019s Pillow Dance Festival\u2019s summer season was full of goodies\u2014and by that I don\u2019t mean just the dinner and the whooping it up on the dance floor. The program opened in the Ted Shawn Theater with the 22 students in the Pillow School\u2019s Ballet Program performing an astounding pi\u00e8ce d\u2019occasion by Jessica Lang, set to two movements of a Vivaldi concerto. Hard to believe that Lang and the cast had created the work, with its sleek, changeable patterns and contrapuntal wizardry in just four days. Representatives of the three companies to be featured in the upcoming months performed (The Hong Kong Ballet, The McIntyre Project, and John Heginbotham, who accepted the Jacob\u2019s Pillow Dance Award with a frisky solo). Then there was Carmen de Lavallade.<\/p>\n

Suddenly we are in the woods. The back doors of the stage have been opened to frame greenery. The audience gasps. De Lavallade, walking onto the stage in a long, flowing red gown (designed by her husband, Geoffrey Holder), stops to drink it in, before performing a sequence from Holder\u2019s The Creation<\/em> in which God, still feeling lonely, makes a man for himself out of the earth that he dreamed up a few days ago. The trees we contemplate begin to seem part of the Genesis creation myth, as this inimitable performer casts her spell.<\/p>\n

De Lavallade accepts her age with uncommon grace (which is not to say she embraces its difficulties). It\u2019s all right with her that, the following week, the Pillow\u2019s director, Ella Baff, mentions in her speech introducing de Lavallade\u2019s solo performance, As I Remember It<\/em>, that Carmen is one year older than Jacob\u2019s Pillow\u201483, in fact.<\/p>\n

\"Carmen<\/a>

Carmen de Lavallade in front of her younger self in As I Remember It<\/em>. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve seen de Lavallade in several settings\u2014dancing onstage; walking down 6th<\/sup> Avenue on her way to City Center, all dressed up and looking the way any queen would like to look; and backstage at a couple of performances she and I both took part in. So: accomplished, gorgeous, and down to earth (as in such exchanges as: \u201cAnyone have an extra safety pin?\u201d and \u201cCan you please help me with this hook?\u201d). As I Remember It<\/em> shows her in all these aspects, as well revealing her as a smart, thoughtful, and witty person.<\/p>\n

Watching and listening to de Lavallade in this hour-long performance that she crafted with Talvin Wilks (dramaturg\/co-writer), Joe Grifasi (director), and Dianne McIntytre (movement consultant), we learn that she was first cousin to Janet Collins, the first black woman to become the prima ballerina of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. And we accompany her travels from a Los Angeles childhood through her career as a dancer on concert stages, in Broadway shows, and in movies, to her choreography and her appearances in recent years in Paradigm with Gus Solomons jr and Dudley Williams. Mimi Lien\u2019s ingenious set\u2014a tall, slanted \u201cwall\u201d of shimmering threads\u2014receives Maya Ciarrocchi\u2019s montages of archival photos and films.<\/p>\n

Wearing a handsome, burgundy-colored pants outfit and a fuschia-pink coat designed by Esther Arroyo, de Lavallade moves around the performing space of the Doris Duke Studio Theater, re-entering her past and sharing her memories. Sometimes she sits, erect yet at ease, on a cushioned stool; sometimes she strides about or sinks into remembered dance steps and gestures. She may walk at times as if her toes were stiff (I share her pain), and at other times rush about like a girl or push aside the hanging tendrils to make a grand entrance. In addition to the visual material and James F. Ingalls\u2019 lighting, music (composed by Jane Ira Bloom) and Christopher J. Bailey\u2019s sound design bring out aspects of her long, rich journey of a career.<\/p>\n

\"Carmen<\/a>

Carmen de Lavallade in front of a picture of herself and Lester Horton. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s not possible to learn everything you\u2019d like to know about her and how she felt and what she learned in the space of a single performance. A lot of famous people make only cameo appearances and\/or are mentioned briefly. Some of these are memorable; Duke Ellington kissed her twice on each cheek, murmuring that the caresses were intended for all of her cheeks.<\/p>\n

People who don\u2019t know much dance history can learn about de Lavallade\u2019s growing up in Los Angeles (the first dance she learned was the Mexican Hat Dance, which she demonstrates a bit of) and her years in the company of West-Coast modern dance pioneer Lester Horton, who died prematurely in 1953. Horton\u2019s dancers\u2014who sewed costumes, made sets, and learned about a lot of things\u2014included Alvin Ailey, a high-school buddy of Carmen\u2019s whom she had lured into dance. De Lavallade takes off her jacket and ties it around her hips as she tells the story and indicates the action of Horton\u2019s Salome<\/em>, whose title role she took over as a teenager from Bella Lewitsky when Lewitsky parted ways with Horton. She makes us envision, as if through a veil, her youthful self as she seduces a guard, swings her hips for Herod, and is strangled by her own scarf. She is a master of the subtly telling gesture and timing, as well as gutsy when that\u2019s called for.<\/p>\n

Ailey and de Lavallade came together to New York in 1954 to dance in House of Flowers<\/em>, a Harold Arlen musical based on a Truman Capote short story. And it was in House of Flowers<\/em> that she first encountered her husband-to-be, Geoffrey Holder. A black-and-white film clip shows the two of them\u2014she young and sassy, he tall, slim as a snake, and as flexible as one.<\/p>\n

Oh, those 1950s film images and photographs! Who knew that de Lavallade had danced in South Sea Woman<\/em> (Horton provided the choreography)? Or in Demetrius and the Gladiators<\/em>? Or in Lydia Bailey<\/em> (choreography by Jack Cole)? There she is dancing a passionate duet on a beach with Ailey, who briefly took over the Horton company after its founder\u2019s death. Here\u2019s a snapshot of her in a dressing room, sewing a costume, while Holder\u2019s and her infant son, Leo, slumbers beside her in a nest of fabric.<\/p>\n

She tells, without overt rancor, of encountering racism when she and Glen Tetley, both dancers with John Butler\u2019s New York company, were to dance to the song \u201cWillow Weep for Me\u201d on the Ed Sullivan Show. A black woman and a white man could not be seen dancing together. Claude Thompson of the Ailey company replaced Tetley.<\/p>\n

\"Carmen<\/a>

As I Remember It<\/em>: Carmen de Lavallade converses with her shadow and an image\u00a0 from a dance she appeared in. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s enthralling to see de Lavallade fall in with movements she sees on screen and hint at some steps she performed\u2014as if they\u2019re flickering through her body\u2014and then deliver certain gestures with full power. Her eloquent speaking aids her too. For a time, she was part of Robert Brustein\u2019s Yale Repertory Theater, and it shows. Several times, she slips into Shakespeare\u2019s words, echoing Titania\u2019s \u201cThese are the forgeries of jealousy\u201d speech just after we see a poster for an early tour, with her name mast-heading a group just before Ailey\u2019s, and shortly before the beach duet.<\/p>\n

Near the end of As I Remember It<\/em>, de Lavallade speaks a few resigned words to us. They are not hers, but drawn from Robert Lowell\u2019s translation of \u201cThe Old Lady\u2019s Lament for Her Youth,\u201d a 15th<\/sup>-century poem by Fran\u00e7ois Villon. \u201cOh treacherous, fierce old age,\u201d she says, and \u201cOnce I was beautiful. . .[shrug] That\u2019s how it goes with us.\u201d But shortly after that, she invokes a more colloquial, centuries-later poet, Don Marquis, and a line she delivered as the old alley cat Mehitabel to Solomons\u2019 cockroach Archie in Paradigm\u2019s 2008 3 Scenes from Archie and Mehitabel <\/em>: \u201cwotthehell wotthehell\/ \u2028there s a dance in the old dame yet.\u201d I don\u2019t remember if she said the last part of the line at Jacob\u2019s Pillow, but it was, for sure, implied.<\/p>\n

Carmen de Lavallade is\u2014so what?\u2014in her ninth decade, but any comparison of her to a broken-down whore or a scraggly explorer of garbage cans is laughable. She\u2019s a beautiful woman with a quicksilver mind and gestures. Dance has taken up permanent residence in her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jacob’s Pillow opens its summer season with a solo performance by Carmen de Lavallade. The Gala that opened the Jacob\u2019s Pillow Dance Festival\u2019s summer season was full of goodies\u2014and by that I don\u2019t mean just the dinner and the whooping it up on the dance floor. The program opened in the Ted Shawn Theater with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[219,1220,1221,116,1222],"class_list":{"0":"post-2664","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dance-theater","8":"tag-alvin-ailey","9":"tag-carmen-de-lavallade","10":"tag-geoffrey-holder","11":"tag-jacobs-pillow","12":"tag-lester-horton","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}