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Eight Hundred Children and Some Dancing Policemen: The National Dance Institute Gets Very Creative
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13404 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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9 / 1987 |
1,264 Words |
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Don McDonagh
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"Bless 'em all, bless 'em all, the long and the short and the short and the tall" could easily be the theme song of Jacques d'Amboise's National Dance Institute, which presented A Celtic Tale in Manhattan's Felt Forum on June 8. It was the eleventh annual "Event of the Year," assembling eight hundred elementary school children together with a contingent of New York City police officers along with seasoned singers and dancers. The pageant united raw energy with professional polish in an improbable collaboration celebrating the necessity of the arts in our lives.
Flickering back and forth between the otherworldly Kingdom of the Faeries and the workaday Land of the Celts in the best traditions of nineteenth-century Romantic ballet, the work combines dance, song, and recitation to resolve the conflict of a despotic Faerie King intent on keeping all artistic expression confined to his own kingdom by kidnapping an enchanted newborn Celtic infant possessing inspiring artistic gifts.
Accumulated Impact
The plot has operatic complexity and improbability, but the conventions of the fairy tale generously allow digressions and unlikely occurrences in the name of a higher order of truth. As an hors d'oeuvre to the production itself, d'Amboise staged a rapid-fire crossover of every dancer on the program. A file of children in costume and grouped by school ran from left to right while another file upstage raced in the opposite direction. As each reached a spotlight center stage, he or she jumped. The leaps were as varied as the individuals who made them. They were exuberant, studied, abandoned, modest, or hurried, but their accumulated impact was that of joyous energy ready to be released.
After the last crossover, A Celtic Tale began with a brief plot synopsis spoken by d'Amboise, who introduced the principals of the first section, set against Helene Blumenfeld's 35-foot-long "Earth Mother," a huge seven-segment white sculpture that the children disassembled and reassembled to suggest an abstract reclining woman, a line of cliffs, or a grotto. One of the winning dances of this prologue was the cuckoo pas de deux, performed with fluttering hands and spritely hops by Erin Manning and Jeffrey Moore. Kevin Vaughan was the suitably haughty Faerie King, who dispatched his servants to the human world to bring back the enchanted child when it was born.
In the world, we are introduced to the hugely pregnant Queen Mother, Natasha Honore, and the King of the Celts, Jhonasttan Regaldo, with his bodyguards. The latter are New York City police officers in their official blue uniforms adorned with Celtic leggings and long shaggy white wigs. The Celtic tribe is celebrating on the eve of the New Year with a clumping clog dance that has the awkward charm of a primitive ritual. A Druid, dramatically charged with apprehension, is beautifully mimed by Shaun O'Brien of New York City Ballet. It is only through his swift action that the newborn child is saved from abduction, and he appoints himself its guardian.
The action seesaws throughout the first act, with the Druid pitting his skills against the faerie kidnappers to prevent the abduction. His main defense is a circle of prickly holly-costumed children who roll and recoil, thwarting the mischievous faeries until they are finally overcome and the child is spirited
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