After
33 years of writing about them, it’s difficult to find a new way to describe
Garth Fagan Dance. Yet, though the dances are always definably Fagan’s, they
are newly inventive. Fagan adds unique work every year. How difficult must it
be to achieve that level of creativity?
           The
performances are equally remarkable. Fagan’s very personally trained dancers
are now recognized worldwide as an ensemble of astounding virtuosos. The
company’s two top female dancers, Bessie Award Winners Natalie Rogers and
Sharon Skepple, are on leaves of absence, but junior women have moved up to
leading roles with much aplomb. Senior males, looking impossibly younger than
they are, continually improve their technical and interpretive strengths. And,
for once to use our young folks’ sloppily understood term of approval
accurately, the young guys in this company are awesome.
           We
saw all that when Garth Fagan Dance and the Wynton Marsalis Septet recombined
for a gala performance of their collaborative masterpiece, Griot New York. Marsalis won’t be available for the spring tour of Griot, but most of the same artists who
played it at Eastman Theatre in September 1993 joined many of the same dancers
at Eastman in September 2003 for one sold-out, glorious reunion performance.
           Excepts
from Griot began the company’s
opening night at Nazareth Arts Center last week. Martin Puryear’s monumental
sculptures and C. T. Oakes’ stunning lighting look better on Eastman’s large
stage, and the dancers had to interact with a recording, not live musicians. But
it is clearly a masterpiece, and would not be outclassed if these dancers
performed it as a special guest entry on any dance company’s program anywhere.
           Viewers
and critics have remarked on the extraordinary new life that Norwood Pennewell
and Nicolette Depass bring to the sensual, topless love duet, Spring Yaounde. Pennewell looks even
more perfectly sculptured now than when he created the dance a decade ago.
Depass joins him in an embrace that expresses both essential sexual attraction
and an almost complete loss of separate identity. They move as one sinuous
organism. Depass has clearly achieved star status. This season she is joined by
Keisha Laren Clarke and Jin Ahn in must-see performances of major roles.
           The
new work, DanceCollageforRomie, is inspired by and dedicated to
Fagan’s friend, the Harlem Renaissance artist Romare Bearden, a pioneer in the
art of collage. It is worthy of its subject. The “collage” includes props by
Fagan, costumes by Mary Nemecek Peterson, scenic pieces by Diana Shailer, and
lighting effects by Oakes which make reference to Bearden’s art. But don’t
expect a literal re-creation: One of the work’s many accessible and appealing
qualities is Fagan’s choice of disparate but equally lovely music to gather and
attach loosely in this collage.
           Starting with basics, “Matter and
Materiel” pastes daringly long-held poses and balances by one or two dancers
onto group movements. Its many contrasts include Fagan’s trademark unexpected
shifts from stillness or crouches to dramatic extensions and jumps, and statue-like
groupings, especially in couples: Depass with Ahn, Bill Ferguson with Kevin
Ormsby, and Steve Humphrey with a rubber snake.
           You’d
expect that last to be funny, but it’s a reference to a favorite Bearden image,
and an exciting contrast to the lyrical women and potent men. In this dance as
in this company, Humphrey seems an unquenchable life force, here struggling
with another. It has been noted, too, that the company’s fast-rising Guy Thorne
dazzlingly thrusts in and out of comparatively placid stage pictures created by
the more stately groups of the ensemble, paralleling the piano solo versus
orchestra in this excerpt from Shostakovich’s “Piano Concerto No. 1.”
           I’m told that the second section,
“Detail: Down Home Also,” reflects a detail from a Beardsley collage owned by
Fagan and currently on loan to the National Gallery in Washington, DC. It’s a
very complex, deeply felt duet, less sensual than Spring Yaounde but no less sexy. Its passionate thrusts are the
gorgeous Keisha Clarke’s sudden leaps onto or above her partner, Pennewell, who
receives her as if by reflex and helps her reach upward in mutual aspiration.
           I
know Villa-Lobos’ exquisite “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5”as sung by Bidu Sayao and subsequent sopranos, even Joan Baez,
with orchestra. But this version substitutes saxophonist Branford Marsalis, and
the haunting wordless vocalise is transmuted to a sustained, pensive jazz
sound. Fagan here realizes it perfectly in dance.
           The
finale is predictably up-tempo. Conjur
Man is set to Jelly Roll Morton’s “Jungle Blues” as recorded by the
Branford Marsalis Quartet. It provides a joyous group finale with the usual
high jinks that showcase a dance company’s energy and virtuosity and get an
encore of its climactic section. Fagan, as always, shapes the dance and stage
pictures and overall effect to fit his special purposes: Here he offers sly
props and movements to make allusions to Bearden’s work and has Oakes
collaborate to focus on thematic couples and groupings.
           I
haven’t mentioned Michelle Hebert, William Brown, and Momo Sanno, the newest
folks, who all look wonderful. Sanno is especially striking in his distinctive
way of attacking movement. And, for whatever reason, the company’s great Chris
Morrison appeared only in the final dance, a repeat of last year’s Translation
Transition.
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2003.
