FIRST POSITION XLV Faster, Higher, But Better?
Mar 3, 2005
By
ALLAN ULRICH
allan@voiceofdance.com
Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell in George Balanchine's Agon. Photo courtesy of ballerinagallery.com.
I had a revelation a few weeks ago, and although it should have cheered me, it left me in a ruminative mood. As part of a week's residency at the University of California, Berkeley, the New Yorker's estimable dance critic Joan Acocella offered an illustrated lecture on George Balanchine's pre-occupation with the female crotch and how the choreographer elevated his obsession with that area of the woman's anatomy into an artistic first principle of American neo-classicism.
One of these days, I will discuss Acocella's thesis and its implications. However, during her talk, Acocella showed us an astonishing document, the pas de deux from George Balanchine's watershed 1957 ballet, Agon. The excerpt featured the original dancers, Arthur Mitchell and Diana Adams, and was shot live in the Montreal studios of the Canadian Broadcast Corporation a year or two after the premiere (and, it is not, regrettably, commercially available). Acocella showed the clip in support of her argument and watching it gave me an extraordinary thrill. I never saw Adams live, but on the evidence here (and in a kinescoped Concerto Barocco with Tanaquil LeClercq shown as part of the 1984 PBS Balanchine documentary, rebroadcast last year), she was probably a very great dancer and surely a great Balanchine exponent.
But it wasn't Adamstechnique that wowed me. I could name a half dozen women on both sides of the Atlantic today who could deliver the steps with more confidence, women whose arabesque would be deeper, whose extensions would be more dazzling. Then, Acocella reminded us of Mitchell's memory of Adams in Agon, The assignment scared her to death every time she danced it, and Balanchine knew it. That was it. The sense of challenge, of exploring every performance, knowing that danger was lurking in every cantilevered combination, was exactly the quality that lent Adamsdancing its incredible stature.
Now have a look at the DVD of the Agon pas de deux performed at the gala that concluded the eight-week New York City Ballet Balanchine Celebration in 1993, given on the 10th anniversary of the choreographer's death. The woman was a guest, the Royal Ballet's Darcey Bussell. She was dazzling at New York State Theater 12 years ago, and she is dazzling on my video screen. But Bussell is dazzling in a way that draws attention to her technique and away from the ballet, perhaps the most important of the second half of the 20th century. Here, it emerged a series of technical hurdles to be leaped; once surmounted, the job was done, the applause was substantial. Adams, on the other hand, looked genuinely terrified in the CBC clip; and, at the end when she leans on Mitchell for support, you know that she has been through an experience, which, in some way, changed her life.
It is easy to miss that quality today when technical standards are far higher than they were 40 years ago, when dancing can be too smooth and practiced, when it is drilled into dancers that getting out the steps is what matters. Never mind that communicating the meaning of those steps comes second or not at all. That's not to say that superior technique and a feeling that the dancers have been altered by the experience are mutually exclusive. Last season at the San Francisco Ballet, Gonzalo Garcia gave us everything in his first Apollo. Last season in Balanchine's Square Dance and this winter in his Theme and Variations, Tina LeBlanc carried it off, too. And I admired Joan Boada's concentration during his first attempt at the male assignment in Theme. He looked a bit intimidated, and why should he not be? The list of his predecessors in the part is daunting and he was concerned about an injured knee, too.
Yuan Yuan Tan, Vanessa Zahorian, Sarah Van Patten and Gonzalo Garcia in Balanchine's Apollo. Photo courtesy of SFBallet.
Perfection in Balanchine doesn't exalt the choreography. Technique is where the performance begins (after musical comprehension, of course). If coaches are to blame for inculcating spotless execution in dancers, so, too, are critics. I read local reviews, especially from former dancers, which blither away about line and technique, without ever informing us about how the performers deployed the technique in the service of the works they are attempting. I'm surprised sometimes that the choreographers are even named in these reviews.
Modern dance is prone to the same malaise. There was an excitement to Trisha Brown's Set and Reset 20 years ago that was missing from the Berkeley performance last week. The choreography hasn't changed, but the dancersability to cleave and devour space is so much grander now that, despite all the snazzy execution, Brown's imaginative rearrangement of perspectives and her meticulous building of phrases looks a bit smooth and digested. Her style and vocabulary do not faze dancers who have embraced postmodernism for the last 25 years.
Better trained dancers do not necessarily yield better performances. People who recall Alvin Ailey's Revelations during its first decade, roughly the 1960s, assure me that the piece is barely recognizable now. We're not talking about a massive rechoreographing job, either. We're talking about execution. My reliable informants say that the grit has been planed and sanded over, and the sense of a community sustaining itself through enduring faith has succumbed to a propensity for razzle-dazzle. These days, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater trots out Revelations to end at least 66 percent of its programs and the piece has become an exercise in showmanship (at which, I might add, the AAADT personnel are extremely adept). These are some of the best trained dancers in the world, and the sense that they may be too sophisticated for Ailey's material increases annually.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Ailey's Revelations. Photo by Paul Kolnik.
AAADT has launched its annual American tour and arrives at UC-Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall for a 10-day visit March 14, and Revelations will end two-thirds of the programs. This year, however, will mark the farewell season for Dudley Williams, who has danced with the troupe for four decades. This wonderful performer doesn't dance much more repertory than Revelations these days. But he does represent the company the way it used to be. If you're lucky to catch Williams, observe his performance carefully. He was there when Revelations was new. Does he move differently than the youngsters? Does he allow the traditional gospel music to stream through his body in a unique way? We know what dance has gained over the past 40 years. Williams may tell us what it has lost.
