{"id":4119,"date":"2016-03-28T19:13:18","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T23:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=4119"},"modified":"2016-03-31T23:08:55","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T03:08:55","slug":"the-old-and-the-new-dancing-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2016\/03\/the-old-and-the-new-dancing-together\/","title":{"rendered":"The Old and the New Dancing Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance continues its Lincoln Center run through April 3.<\/p>\n

\"Doug

Doug Elkins’s The Weight of Smoke<\/em>. Paul Taylor’s dancers (L to R): Heather McGinley, Michael Trusnovec, Michael Apuzzo, Michael Novak, and James Samson. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

In a program essay by Susan Yung for the Paul Taylor\u2019s American Modern Dance season (through April 3), guest choreographer Doug Elkins mentions that Taylor\u2019s Esplanade<\/em> was the first dance he ever saw on PBS\u2019s \u201cDance in America\u201d and acknowledges its influence on him. Not that you\u2019d guess it at the opening of his The Weight of Smoke<\/em>, choreographed in collaboration with the Taylor dancers (all sixteen of them). In Esplanade<\/em>, no one walks lazily onto an empty stage the way Michael Novak begins Elkins\u2019s premiere and looks around to see what\u2019s new in the neighborhood. Justin Levine and Matt Stine\u2019s score blasts some traffic noise and agitated voices to tell us where we are\u2014not that these and other disruptive sounds completely overwhelm the snatches of music by Handel (an aria here, piano notes there) that later seep to the surface of the taped mel\u00e9e.<\/p>\n

The Weight of Smoke<\/em> builds gradually, even though from the outset the movement has a punchy vigor. And the superb performers\u2014new to Elkins\u2019s affiliations with hip-hop, capoeira, and his take on modern dance history\u2014embrace his ideas with everything they\u2019ve got (and do some things that they may have thought they\u2019d never do onstage). No, Madelyn Ho cannot lift Michael Trusnovec, but she can give it a whirl. People saunter on at apparent random, swing their hips, ripple their arms, pal up. Eran Bugge straddles George Smallwood as he rolls; seconds later, she\u2019s standing on one leg on his shoulder<\/em>, and he carries her away. Elkins orchestrates messiness so skillfully that it\u2019s sometimes startling how swiftly it can transform into temporary unison or counterpoint.<\/p>\n

\"Doug

Doug Elkins’s The Weight of Smoke<\/em>. L to R: Michael Trusnovec, James Samson, Michael Novak, and Eran Bugge. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

In their smartly casual attire by Karen Young and skillfully lit by James F. Ingalls, these agile folks play against traditional gender roles and occasionally display a comradely sexuality (a hand on someone\u2019s crotch, a quick feel of a breast). Did you ever think you\u2019d see Novak, Smallwood, Trusnovec, Robert Kleinendorst, and James Samson swing their way toward you with a runway strut? What might seem individual and particular becomes somewhat abstracted or playfully treated. No steamy dramas arise. Partners in each of three kneeling couples simultaneously lock in a kiss and then find ways to twist, bend, or rise as they remained attached by the lips.<\/p>\n

Elkins might almost have titled the piece Legs in the Air<\/em>, so often do the dancers upend themselves on one hand or two, and there\u2019s energetic, free-wheeling movement\u2014the kind that makes you think of the stage as a place you\u2019d like to visit. When The Weight of Smoke<\/em> ends, it does so unceremoniously. The music just cuts out and the stage goes black.<\/p>\n

\"Martha

Martha Graham’s Diversion of Angels<\/em>. Parisa Khobdeh surrounded by (clockwise from L.): Sean Mahoney, Michael Novak, George Smallwood, and Michael Trusnovec. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

During the second week of the company\u2019s season, the Taylor dancers performed a piece that\u2019s part of Taylor\u2019s own heritage: Martha Graham\u2019s 1948 Diversion of Angels<\/em>\u2014one of the few from that decade in which Graham did not dance herself. Set to a made-to-order score by Norman Dello Joio (played by the Orchestra of St. Luke\u2019s, led by Donald York) and with lighting by Jennifer Tipton (after Jean Rosenthal\u2019s original designs), it might be taking place in an Elysian field instead of on a New York stage. During his seven seasons dancing with Graham\u2019s company, Taylor was one of the four men in Diversion of Angels <\/em>who leap and cartwheel and celebrate love. Three of these and their partners represent the phases of that love. The woman in yellow is a young girl\u2014vivacious and playful, adoring to be swung through the air. The woman in red is more sensual, more in thrall to passion. The woman in white has reached a kind of serenity that still has room for questioning.<\/p>\n

\"Eran

Eran Bugge (L) and Laura Halzack in Martha Graham’s Diversion of Angels.<\/em> Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Diversion of Angels <\/em>is one of those perfect pieces\u2014clear, beautifully designed, and full of life and feeling. It was reconstructed by current Graham dancers Blakely White-McGuire and Tadej Brdnik and coached by Linda Hodes, a Graham company member of an earlier generation, and the Taylor dancers perform it with rapturous vitality. Bugge and Novak are the spirited youngest partners, Parisa Khobdeh and Mahoney the passionate ones, and Laura Halzack and Trusnovec the reserved, tender elders. Michelle Fleet, Jamie Rae Walker, Heather McGinley, Christina Lynch-Markham, and Smallwood complete the cast.<\/p>\n

A couple of small discrepancies struck me. At times Halzack eases into movements that are embedded in my memory as all-at-once ones. And Khobdeh, a vivid streak of red as she races across the space and a tempest in one solo, performs the famous progress across the front of the stage as if she\u2019d never heard of a Graham \u201ccontraction.\u201d The choreography has her repeatedly stepping sideways onto one leg, the other leg held high to the side and her body tilted away from it. Usually that too has been performed as a single, breath-caught move, sometimes followed by a deep contraction, as if the wind had been knocked out of her by her own exaltation. Each time Khobdeh performs this step, she hits the pose and then bends a bit further to the side, giving the step a yielding, almost sentimental look.<\/p>\n

\"Dayton

Dayton Contemporary Dance Company in Donald McKayle’s Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder<\/em>. L to R, front row: Demetrius Tabron, Joshua Ishmon, Quentin A. V. Sledge. L to R, back row: Alvin Rangel, Devin Baker, Robert\u200b Pulido. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

The other dance by a guest choreographer this season is Donald McKayle\u2019s 1959 Rainbow \u2019Round My Shoulder<\/em>, but although Taylor\u2019s company has the seven strong male dancers the piece requires, they might not get through the rest of the program after performing it. The accomplished men in the guesting Dayton Contemporary Dance Company are streaming with sweat by the time they\u2019ve finished the heavy, forceful blows that toiling in a chain-gang requires. They also jump over and over (although the piece feels a bit long, that length rams home the arduousness of these men\u2019s lives). The men (Devin Baker, Michael Green, Joshua L. Ishmon, Robert Pulido, Alvin Rangel, Quentin Apollo Vaughn Sledge, and Demetrius Tabron) do get a chance to rest or react emotionally to the visions conjured up of the women they\u2019ve left behind. Alexis Britford (excellent) appears as a remembered sweetheart, then as a mother, then a wife. A flower in her hair or a scarf tied over it helps signal that she will tempt, nurture, or support a dreaming man (Sledge and Green are the two soloists). Destan Owans, with Michael McElroy and the Broadway Inspirational Voices, plus guitarist Gary Sieger perform from the pit the fine old songs collected by the Allen and John Lomax\u00a0 and arranged by Robert DeCormier and Milton Okun.<\/p>\n

\"Quentin

Michael Green and Alexis Britford of Dayton Contemporary Dance Company in Donald McKayle’s Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Not all the Taylor works on the programs that I saw are masterpieces. But although Snow White<\/em> (1983) and Three Dubious Memories <\/em>(2010) are slight works, the choreographer gives deft comedic twists to plots we know. Snow White<\/em>\u2019s dwarfs (only five: Kleinendorst, Samson, Francisco Graciano, Michael Apuzzo, and Smallwood) are marvels at clumping round, walking in a squat, capering acrobatically, and hinting at their various characters as per the fairytale seven. But the charmingly playful Snow White (Khobdeh) ends up finding her reflection in the mirror much more absorbing than the strutting, nose-in-the-air Prince (Sean Mahoney) who\u2019s carrying her off. Mahoney also plays the evil, mirror-obsessed Queen, and Heather McGinley twitches around as her poison-laced Apple. All to York\u2019s specially composed score.<\/p>\n

\"Paul

Paul Taylor’s Three Dubious Memories<\/em>. Sean Mahoney (L) and Robert Kleinendorst manhandle Amy Young (in an earlier cast). Photo: Paul B. Goode<\/p><\/div>\n

Three Dubious Memories <\/em>brings to mind the 1950 film Rashomon<\/em>, which was in turn based on a Japanese short story. What fun there is in Taylor\u2019s dance, set to Peter Elyakin\u2019s intriguing Five Enigmas <\/em>(four sections only and heard on tape) comes from seeing how each of two men and a woman tells a different version of a love-and jealousy encounter in the forest before a mysterious group of seven billed as Choristers, with Samson as the Choirmaster. Perhaps he is the judge and they the jury that can\u2019t decide which of the three is telling the truth. about his\/her encounter. The twist is that after the Man in Blue (Mahoney) \u201cremembers\u201d coming upon the Woman in Red (Bugge) and the Man in Green (Kleinendorst) nestled together, and \u201cGreen\u201d rages at the sight of \u201cBlue\u201d and \u201cRed\u201d romancing, the men have a guys-only adventure, and the woman wallops them both. The Choristers reach no conclusion, and the three squabble themselves into an exhausted heap.<\/p>\n

\"Paul

Paul Taylor’s Images<\/em>. Laura Halzack center and, clockwise from center front: Heather McGinley, Madelyn Ho, Jamie Rae Walker, Francisco Graciano, Robert Kleinendorst, Michael Trusnovec, and Eran Bugge. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Taylor delved into antiquity for the lovely, small-scale Images <\/em>(1977) and Profiles<\/em> (1979). For the first, Gene Moore costumed the eight dancers like Cretan athletes and maidens (originally, the women\u2019s breasts were covered by flesh-colored net, but as the result of a last-minute decision this season, they were bare), and the accompaniment is delicate piano pieces by Claude Debussy, played by Margaret Kampmeier. Sometimes, in sections with names such as \u201cTotem Dolphins\u201d and \u201cAntique Cortege,\u201d the performers fit into patterns as controlled and two-dimensional as processions on a painted vase, but they also frolic. In the central solo, \u201cOracle,\u201d Halzack\u2014covering her mouth, her eyes; snaking her arms; tossing her head from side to side\u2014indeed seem to be dragging difficult visions into the small circle of light in which she stands.<\/p>\n

In Profiles<\/em>, to a commissioned score for string quartet by Jan Radzynski, four dancers (Trusnovec, Halzack, Bugge, and Novak) enact what might be the fragments of a lost story. The music sometimes buzzes around them like a swarm of bees or contradicts their composure with drastic imagery. Sometimes one pair freezes in a pose while the other moves. Positions that could be two-dimensional flower into three dimensions when the dancers rotate them.<\/p>\n

\"An

An earlier image of Paul Taylor’s Spindrift. L to R: Michelle Fleet. Anna-Marie Mazzini, Michael Trusnovec, and Robert Kleinendorst. Photo: Paul B. Goode<\/p><\/div>\n

I can\u2019t recall ever seeing the 1993 Spindrift<\/em>, and I\u2019d like to see this enigmatic work again. It\u2019s set to Arnold Schoenberg\u2019s haunting 1933 Concerto for String Quartet<\/em> (after H\u00e4ndel\u2019s Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 7). Donald York conducted Kristi Bennion Feeney and Anca Nicolau (violins), David Cerutti (viola), and Myron Lutzke (cello). \u201cSpindrift\u201d refers to the ocean spray stirred up by wind, and Santo Loquasto\u2019s handsome backdrop by conjures up in the most mysterious and romantic way a glowing red sky, a sea, and a strand. Initially, this design is a smallish rectangle on a blank surface; later, it fills that space.<\/p>\n

Initially the eleven clustered dancers too suggest waves and ripples within a larger undulation\u2014two women stepping out of the group and receding back into it, then four men, and so on. Trusnovec seems to be a man apart. He falls a two or more couple of times. You think the dance could involve an initiation; he others create a tunnel of their legs and he scrabbles the way through it. Or is it an oblique drama about a man trying to fit into a playful group\u2014a kind of Robinson Crusoe cast ashore? All the shifting interactions emerge within an ongoing rush of dancing, which eventually he joins\u2014one of them. Nevertheless, he ends almost alone; Ho, on the opposite side of the stage backs away. He raises an arm toward her in a curious gesture that recurs throughout Spindrift<\/em>; it\u2019s like a summons or even a \u201chail.\u201d The lights go out.<\/p>\n

\"Laura

Laura Halzack and Michael Trusnovec in Paul Taylor’s Beloved Renegade<\/em>. Photo: Paul B. Goode<\/p><\/div>\n

Trusnovec is as fine now as he was in 2008 as the central figure in Taylor\u2019s Beloved <\/em>Renegade\u2014perhaps even finer. This great work and the quotes from Walt Whitman\u2019 Leaves of Grass <\/em>that introduce its sections allude to the poet\u2019s work as a battlefield doctor during the Civil War, and Taylor builds images of wounded and dying soldiers, children playing games, a man and woman in love (Khobdeh and Kleinendorst), a woman who reaches out to the hero (Christina Lynch Markham), and another, Halzack, as (perhaps) his muse. Francis Poulenc\u2019s Gloria<\/em>\u2014conducted by York and performed by the Orchestra of St. Luke\u2019s and the St. George Choral Society\u2014underscores and bears the weight of Whitman\u2019s and Taylor\u2019s themes: love, sensual awakening, sacrifice, and death.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how the Taylor dancers have been appearing to spectators in the second or third ring of the former New York State Theater. From my fortunate orchestra seat, I\u2019ve been relishing the gusto with which they attack the jubilant steps, the grave simplicity with which they perform the quieter passages, and the mischief that they bring to comedy. It\u2019s also a pleasure to watch them grow into Taylor\u2019s style. In 2014, it was Francisco Graciano who suddenly seemed to own the steps he was performing. In 2016, Novak, McGinley, and Lynch Markham come across more vividly. But as important as the physical skills they all possess is the way that they see\u2014 really see\u2014and respond to one another. My eye goes, say, to Samson offering his hand to a partner so they can run offstage together. He doesn\u2019t just take<\/em> her hand; through his focus and a slight inclination, he asks her permission (\u201cwant to come with me?\u201d). And, for the most part, everyone delineates those subtle aspects of group behavior. Watch the always terrific Kleinendorst, the last (I believe) to touch the shoulder of the dancer beside him in that tight sinking-down circle in Esplanade<\/em>; he doesn\u2019t embellish or exaggerate the gesture, but makes you feel its firm, yet gentle pressure. Maybe Michelle Fleet goes a little overboard in her first solo bit in that dance, but it\u2019s rare for her\u2014or any of them\u2014to court the audience (unless that\u2019s the point). And it\u2019s through that onstage camaraderie , those small details, and their investment in the moment that they illumine Taylor\u2019s choreography\u2014making his lesser works gleam and his great ones light up the theater.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance continues its Lincoln Center run through April 3. In a program essay by Susan Yung for the Paul Taylor\u2019s American Modern Dance season (through April 3), guest choreographer Doug Elkins mentions that Taylor\u2019s Esplanade was the first dance he ever saw on PBS\u2019s \u201cDance in America\u201d and acknowledges its influence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4123,"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":[275,109,199],"tags":[2041,278,401,2032,279,2031,2042,662,276,1449],"class_list":{"0":"post-4119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-classic-modern-dance","8":"category-contemporary-dance","9":"category-postmodern-views","10":"tag-donald-mckayle","11":"tag-donald-york","12":"tag-doug-elkins","13":"tag-james-samson","14":"tag-michael-trusnovec","15":"tag-michelle-fleet","16":"tag-orchestra-of-st-lukes","17":"tag-parisa-khobdeh","18":"tag-paul-taylor","19":"tag-paul-taylors-american-modern-dance","20":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4119","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=4119"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4146,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4119\/revisions\/4146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}