JUNE 1996
BROADWAY TAKES SEED IN THE GARDEN STATE
To experience the full horror of The Trojan Women you probably have to
know Greek, though in the most celebrated version of our time the Rumanian
director Andrei Serban brought it home with the power of images and sounds.
(No one who saw it is likely to forget the humiliation of Helen--her hair
torn out, her skin smeared with feces, raped by a bear.) Tragedies like this
are not entertainment but ordeals we undergo to test the fabric of our souls,
and it is best to encounter them in exceptional circumstances. In past summers
the pioneering artists of New York's En Garde Arts have bridged the gap between
ancient times and the present with site-specific productions like the brand-new
J. P. Morgan Saves the Nation, performed outdoors against the backdrop
of Federal Hall on Wall Street, and the Euripides Orestes, adapted for
our times by Charles L. Mee Jr., mounted in the Penn Yards. This year Mee and
En Garde have at The Trojan Women, whose ferocity is apt to make the
blood run cold no matter how high the mercury. For tickets call 212-279-4200.
--A.B.
Orestes updated for New York
Photo: William Ravelli
As the first wave of Baby Boomers hits fifty, that
quintessential Boomer company Pilobolus Dance Theatre--founded as a collective
by a merry band of renegade Dartmouth dance students, with a debut in a cow
pasture--turns twenty-five, much of its original spirit intact. The company
celebrates at the 1996 American Dance Festival, its longtime annual host,
offering a new work dedicated to Charles L. and Stephanie Reinhart, that
venerable institution's co-directors (Duke University, June 10-11; Pilobolus
offers a different bill June 6-8). Early in his long and varied career in
service to dance Reinhart managed the Paul Taylor Dance Company (closing this
season's festival July 18-20) and many other troupes that he would later
present as an impresario in his own right. Reflecting on those years, Reinhart
says, "If I have a religion, it is modern dance." And if modern dance has a Mom
and Pop, they are Charlie and Stephanie Reinhart. Among the other companies on
the festival's schedule are Erick Hawkins (June 13-15), Merce Cunningham (June
20-22), Eiko & Koma (June 30-July 1), and Mark Morris (July 4-6). For
information call 919-684-4444.
--N.D.
Pilobolus shows its talents
Photo: Michael O'Neill
Can a virtually unknown choreographer break onto the American scene with a
company of his own? Given the economic climate today in the arts in general and
the diminished public funding for dance in particular, Leigh Witchel, the
founder, choreographer, and producer of Dance as Ever, has taken on a mission
improbable, and he knows it. "Musicality and intellect didn't get me far in
companies," he allows, "but I am committed to the form--to releasing the
possibilities implicit within the choreography, the music and the dancers
themselves." This is a man who does not discourage easily. Witness his latest
venture: a "rethinking" of Les Noces, the landmark Stravinsky score
first choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky's ballerina sibling, Bronislava
Nijinska. The Witchel version premieres this month at the Pace Downtown
Theater, tucked nearly beneath the Brooklyn Bridge in lower Manhattan (June
20-22, Schimmel Center for the Arts, at Pace University; 212-780-3413). Also on
the bill: Witchel's five-man Sauve Qui Peut: Every Man for Himself, and
a new early-music piece for four women. --N.D.
Les Noces
Photo: Nicholas Burnham
