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Dutch Choreographer Revisits New York: Netherlands Dance Theater Emphasizes Agility and Angst
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13402 |
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THE ARTS
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9 / 1987 |
621 Words |
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Karen Onoda
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Balletomanes turned out in force for the return to New York of the Netherlands Dance Theater. But just as silk slipping through fingers will eventually lose its sensory appeal, so artistic director of the dance theater Jiri Kylian's choreography seems beautiful but bland after seeing a number of his ballets. Heart's Labyrinth is an excellent example of the easy virtuosity of his work; the unaffected dynamism of movement blends with the vigor of the dancers into a characteristic opulent smoothness.
Other factors contribute to a certain monotony in Kylian's work: most noticeably the choreographer's beat-for-beat integration of music and dance. A trill in a score, for example, will have a corresponding trill-like gesture; repeated musical motifs are paralleled by repeated movements. In L'Histoire du Soldat, the dancing merely serves as a visual rendering of the music. In each dance on the two alternating programs during the dance theater's Lincoln Center run, there was little counterpoint between music and dance. A dance phrase never rode above a musical phrase, nor did it comment brightly or inventively on musical structure. Instead, movements of the dance were inextricably bound to the notes. Lacking interplay, juxtasposition, and contrast with the music, dance loses its texture.
Aboriginal Influence
Only in Kylian's comic works is this literal use of music effective. In Stamping Ground, inspired by the dances of the Australian aborigines, two men lift a woman into the air. She swings from side to side like a bell clapper, feet clapping together to coincide with each bell-like toll of music. As a self-parody the sequence is funny; however, Kylian may not have meant it to be ironic.
In the program notes, he says that his dances are connected by the idea of "borders." Although some of these borders may be abstract, Kylian also introduces literal borders such as doors or doorways in all his ballets. They may be either a door-like panel of Lucite as in Silent Cries or, as in the rest of the dances, an actual means of entrance and exit. The doors, nearly always at the back of the stage, are dramatic devices that easily become overused.
Two of the ballets employ music with strong choreographic associations: Silent Cries, a mimelike solo with expressionist and art nouveau overtones is danced to Igor Stravinksy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'une faune; Svadebka, to his Les Noces. Svadebka, unable to move out of the shadow of Bronislav Nijinska's compositional ballet masterwork, instead, flutters in angst. Against large wooden gates, dancers grasp their heads, ripple and roll their backs, and curve their arms to express anxiety. These wedding guests do not just wring their hands; they wring their entire bodies. We recognize a familiar formation: a layering of heads that seems to refer to the famous head-braiding motif in Nijinska's Les Noces.
At the end of Svadebka, the bride and groom walk slowly to the entrance of the wedding chamber at the back of the stage. With the repetition of the chilling note at the end of Stravinsky's music, the bride quickly turns to look at her new husband, her chest caving as if she is suddenly nauseous, a look of revulsion and fear appearing on her face. Suggesting the shadowy, frightening unknown of her oncoming wedding night, the ballet ends on a distinctly disturbing note. A
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