Posts Tagged ‘Igor Stravinsky’

A Modern Man: Israel Galvan in “La Curva”

Thursday, March 20th, 2014

By Rachel Straus

The Flamenco dancer Israel Galván juts his hand up in the air and calls, “Taxi!” flicks his fingers against the underside of his teeth, and pounds white flour—all in volcanically dynamic rhythms. Far from being a traditionalist, Galván, who hails from a flamenco family in Seville, isn’t making waves internationally just because he distorts flamenco tradition. He’s a figure of admiration because his dance works push that tradition beyond its staid formulas, which include spectacle-like presentations featuring exoticism, tragic otherness, and hyper masculinity.

Photo by Kevin Yatarola

In “La Curva” (The Curve, 2011), seen March 16 at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, Galván transforms flamenco dancing’s noble male image. The experience is like watching a painter create a cubist portrait. Except in this case what Galván presents is not a fractured face, but a full-blooded person, with his androgynous, grotesque, buffoonish, and madman characteristics, as well as his regal, virile side.

On the wide stage reminiscent of a factory removed of its objects, Galván sallies between stage right, where the young, avant-garde pianist Sylvie Courvoisier plays prepared piano, and stage left, where the middle age musician El Bobote and singer Inés Bacán are seated at a table. El Bobote comes to represent the father as he raps his hands in counterpoint to Galván’s rhythms while shouting salvos of approval. Meanwhile Bacán could be understood as the mother figure: her voice is as all encompassing as her Venus of Willemdorf body.

Photo by Kevin Yatarola

Photo by Kevin Yatarola

In the middle of the 80-minute work, Galván hammers his feet atop the rickety table in front of his “parents” while Courvoiser plays the opening bars of Igor Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.” Undoubtedly, Galván is thinking of the dancer-choreographer (and rebel) Vaslav Nijinsky. He refused to employ ballets steps in his dance work to Stravinsky’s music. A kindred spirit for Galván, Nijinsky distorted the ballet dancers’ bodies into totem-esque shapes in “Rite” and critics railed at this grotesquery. “Rite” also caused a riot. In “La Curva,” the only real violence occurs when Galván topples, on four separate occasions, a stack of chairs. They crash to the ground, but none present seem to care. It’s hard to cause a scandal in the theater these days.

Photo by Kevin Yatarola

Photo by Kevin Yatarola

In the program notes, the great flamenco dancer Vicente Escudero (1892-1980) is mentioned as a source of inspiration for “La Curva.” Of particular interest to Galván, it says, was Escudero’s 1924 Paris performance, where the performer played a part of a banjo as if it was a cajón (the Afro-Peruvian instrument currently used in most flamenco performances). In a similar fashion, Galván hangs a folded chair over his chest and raps out a rhythm. The result is all too Duchamp. But the mention of Escudero in the program notes appears to have a far greater significance than this one lost 1924 performance. Most flamenco fans associate Escudero with his ten principles on male flamenco dancing. They are worth quoting:

Dance in a masculine style.

Sobriety.

Turn the wrist with the fingers closed.

Limited movement of the hips.

Dance in a calm manner, without vanity.

Harmony of feet, arms and head.

Be beautiful, flexible and honest.

Develop an individual style and emphasis.

Dance in traditional costume.

Keep a range of sounds in the mind, don’t put nails in the boots, dance on a simple stage and don’t use accessories.

In “La Curva,” Galván flouts every single principle of Escudero’s except the call to develop an individual style. Galván repeatedly juts his hips forward à la Michael Jackson. He dances in black stretch pants and a t-shirt. He is never calm. Instead his dancing is like a cyclone, where the most inner curve resembles warp speed. Rather than striving for harmony, Galván employs physical distortion and isolation.

An iconoclast, Galván is one that thankfully has a cause. He refuses to be imprisoned by the noble, male, flamenco dancing image. While it was carefully erected to celebrate the dignity of the gypsy, he sees no reason for keeping it. Those awkwardly stacked chairs, which crash to the floor with a swift pull in “La Curva,” symbolize Galván’s thinking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Music and Dance Partnerships

Wednesday, September 26th, 2012

By Rachel Straus

At the most recent Guggenheim Museum Works & Process (September 23), I couldn’t help but think of Monte Carlo in 1928. In that city and year, the 24-year-old George Balanchine created his bedrock neo-classical ballet to Stravinsky’s Apollon musagète. For the next four decades, the partnership between the young Russian choreographer and older Russian composer flourished.

At Sunday’s moderated talk and dance exhibition, the subject was a new ballet-music partnership—that of the 25-year-old American choreographer Justin Peck and American indie rocker Sufjan Stevens. Peck is a current New York City Ballet corps member who has been making work since 2009. Stevens has several award winning albums under his belt. Moderator Ellen Bar mentioned that Stevens has a “cult following.” The hope is that his music will bring in a new, young audience to New York City Ballet. On October 3 the Peck-Stevens work, Year of the Rabbit, will premiere at the former New York State Theater.

What’s odd about this new collaboration is that Stevens’s 2001 electronica album Enjoy Your Rabbit is getting a complete classical music makeover. In fact, Rabbit has been through not one but two iterations since its inception. Classical music arranger Michael Atkinson turned it into a string quartet in 2007. For the City Ballet commission, Atkinson and Stevens expanded the quartet into a full orchestral score. Instead of electronic acoustics and club beats, Atkinson inserted clacking sounds for the violin and a fare amount of percussion. Stevens’s original work, heard in excerpted form over the PA system, captures the cosmic sensibility of The Chinese Zodiac, which served as Stevens’s original inspiration. The orchestral version, also heard in excerpted form, sounds less celestial.

When Peck began reading up on Chinese astrology, he confessed to feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the subject. When asked about the challenges of making Year of the Rabbit, Peck said that it has been easy sailing, partially because NYCB Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins gave his work priority and the pick of the company’s dancers. Only Alexei Ratmansky might have gotten this treatment at City Ballet. But that is the very point. Ratmansky is gone; he took an Artist in Residence position at American Ballet Theatre in 2007. Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon left City Ballet in 2008 to start his own company. Martins is looking for a new wunderkind. Peck has fluency formulating movement based on academic ballet steps. He is the great new hope.

Four excerpts showcased Peck’s choreographic talent, energy, and ambition. His work is fast, virtuosic and not as angular as Balanchine’s style. But the softer arm work often rides on top of Peck’s hyper-kinetic foot work (and sometimes lyricism gets lost). When City Ballet principal Tiler Peck (no relation) danced an excerpt from “Year of the Ox,” it was the most exciting moment of the evening. Having learned the part 48 hours prior, Peck was filling in for an injured Ashley Bouder. Becoming the Ox, she pawed the ground. Her legs and arms yoked in one direction, and then another. She pushed back with flying limbs that syncopated against the music and responded to the violins’ high notes.

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Another event that featured music as much as dance was the September 17 Alice Tully Hall performance of the Simón Bolivar National Youth Choir and the José Limón Dance Company. The highlight of the one-night only occasion in celebration of Venezuala’s El Sistema was Missa Brevis. With a score by Zoltan Kodaly, a choir of more than 65 young singers, and a cast of 18 dancers, the 1958 Limón work has never looked better.

In the age of irony, it’s not easy to dance Missa Brevis. The work was inspired by Limón’s trip to Poland, where he witnessed the people’s poverty and dignity under Soviet Union rule. Despite this big subject, Missa Brevis came across Monday night not as an ideological sermon, but as a prayer. In their Lincoln Center debut, the Limón dancers performed Limón’s landmark work without an ounce of sanctimony.

Like a religious icon above the heads of the worshippers, Missa began with Kathyrn Alter raised out and aloft of a mass of men and women. Hovering above the organist, played by Vincent Heitzer, Alter’s face shone like a Madonna. Francisco Ruvalcaba danced Missa‘s Christ figure. Ruvalcaba is the outsider who dances alone and prostates himself on the floor in the sign of the cross. Angels also appear: three men men lift three women; they float through the air; their arms reach upwards; their limbs sing to the heavens.

The groupings of dancers in response to Kodaly’s choric mass created sonic-visual achitecture. Its architectural correlative is the great cathedral, one that possesses a high golden altar and low simple benches. Limón learned from his mentor Doris Humphrey that contrast is key to choreography. Consequently, Missa doesn’t focus solely on darkness and sorrow. Of the 12 sections, almost half of them speak of hope.

Under the artistic direction of Carla Maxwell, the Limón Company is now in its 65th year. The company’s executive director is the Venezuelan-born Gabriela Poler-Buzali. Since her appointment in 2009, Poler-Buzali has been forging alliances with Latin American arts organizations, presenters and choreographers. The company is increasingly touring Latin America. Today Limón is being rediscovered as a Latino artist. The majority of the audience at Alice Tully were there to listen to the Simón Bolivar National Youth Choir. Hopefully, they will seek out the José Limón Dance Company after this first, magnificent introduction.

A New Apollo: Chase Finlay of New York City Ballet

Monday, May 9th, 2011

By Rachel Straus

There is no better way to anoint a rising City Ballet male star than to award him the title role in Balanchine’s “Apollo.” On May 5 corps dancer Chase Finlay hit the big time, receiving curtain calls and roars of applause. The 21-year-old looked like a young Nordic god (much the way Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins did when he first appeared as “Apollo” in 1967). With a Martins-style majesty, Finlay subsumed his new role. Seated and gazing at his dancing Muses—Terpsichore (Sterling Hyltin), Polyhymnia (Tiler Peck) and Calliope (Ana Sophia Scheller)—Finlay captivated in stillness as much as in his boldly vigorous movements.

Beyond Finlay’s debut, Thursday’s programming felt celestial. Beginning the night were the Balanchine-Stravinsky masterworks “Monumentum Pro Gesualdo” (1960) and “Movements for Piano and Orchestra” (1963). Though these short ballets were made three years apart, they became side-by-side companion pieces. While “Monumentum” features choreographic lyricism and equilibrium, “Movements” traffics in cubist asymmetries. In the latter work, the building blocks of classical vocabulary (plie, tendu, fifth position) are interrupted in transit. Spiral movements are forced into right angles. Despite a lack of narrative, principals Maria Kowroski and Sébastian Marcovici plied a psychologically complex relationship. Neither intimates nor strangers, they danced like two people in a coolly impassioned debate. With hands flexed, they seemed to end their conversation at an impasse.

Photo: Paul Kolnick

But getting back to Finlay. More should be said about this “Apollo,” which appeared second on the program. In Balanchine’s 1928 ballet, the young god’s moment of benediction comes when his muses perform a unison triple handclap. Then the women open their palms for Apollo to rest his head. When Finlay stood and laid his brow, he looked absolutely relieved, having passed through the work’s most iconic moments. They include the instance when Finlay extends his arms skyward like Michelangelo’s “Vitruvian-Man,” echoing the string instruments’ sonic force. Performing this gesture convincingly requires a Nietzsche-like approach to the self. (“The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!”)

Hopefully, Finlay’s ability to embody youthful absolutism will be confined to the stage. Recently French Vogue featured Finlay half naked in Bruce Webber’s photos. Of equal interest, but of a less salacious sort, is the dancing of principal Sterling Hyltin. Her musical responsiveness and love of moving make her appear triple her size. As Terpsichore, Hyltin was bodily electric.

Another hair-on-arm raising experience were the performances of Balanchine’s “Four Temperaments.” (1946). Seen on May 5 and May 7, the casting was powerfully good. Jennie Somogyi’s dancing in “Sanguinic” possessed a boxer’s controlled strike and the elegance of a leopard in full lope. Gonzalo Garcia’s solo in “Melancholic” was velvety phrased and gravely projected.

With 11 Balanchine works selected for opening week, the choreographer’s triple passion for movement abstraction, minimalist costuming, and modernist music was revealed. Called “Black and White,” the series was not a bit monochromatic. Like a spring awakening, the dancers bloomed with color and energy.