October 1997 - Dance and Theater

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Arts & Entertainment Preview - October 1997

B Y N A N C Y D A L V A & J O H N I S T E L

New Work From an Old Master

In his sixtieth year of performing, Merce Cunningham still takes to the stage with his customary relish. He will stand stock still and then, in a great flurry, mark up the air with rapid yet precise gestures of hand, elbow, eyebrow. Just as in the days when he could fly like a bird, he leaves phosphorescent trails behind--strange tracers, gleaming afterimages. This month finds him landing in one of his customary haunts: the Brooklyn Academy of Music. There he will perform, one expects, in excerpts from repertory cunningly called BAMEvents, flexible affairs that change from evening to evening, depending on--as it is ever with this, our grandest, our clearest-minded, our most visionary choreographer--his whim. From night to night the BAMEvents scenery will change too, offering a chance to see historic decor by Andy Warhol (magical floating silver pillows), Jasper Johns (a transcendently wonderful set that deconstructs Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even), Robert Rauschenberg (whose antic spirit has long enlivened Cunningham's stages), and William Anastasi (whose cryptic means match the choreographer's own), among others. All this is in addition to a repertory that offers three local premieres and one brand-new work. This last, called Scenario, will have decor by the Japanese couturier Rei Kawakubo. Takehisa Kosugi, whose recent work with Cunningham involved a set of glass bells, quite lovely and eerie, will do the score. Installations is a complex, technically oriented work incorporating multiple video monitors. The other dances are Rondo, which changes from performance to performance, depending on last-minute casting choices made, and the luminous Windows, named for the computer program, and making use of the same opportunities for spacing, overlapping, sizing, and such. The dance contains a brief, buoyant solo for Tom Caley that looks like youth itself in all its springtime glory. What else would one now expect from Cunningham, golden in years, young as tomorrow? (October 14-19; 718-636-4100.) --N.D.

Material Girl

Imagine if the turn-of-the-century impresario David Belasco produced Jackie. Instead his name simply adorns the Broadway theater into which Gip Hoppe's comedy careens on October 18. Infatuated

with using real stuff onstage, Belasco famously imported Carolina mud for one production. The opening scene of Hoppe's satire on the life and times of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is set at the recent Sotheby's auction of Jackie's household goods--and those props would have depleted Belas-co's fortune. Luckily, Hoppe knows the value of fake pearls. His barbed burlesque, produced to acclaim in Boston last year, employs an octet of actors--along with a phalanx of puppets and cardboard cutouts--to portray more than 100 characters. Reviewers seemed relieved to find that when the curtain descended on the comic chaos, the former First Lady's reputation hadn't been lowered as well. Hoppe saved his sharpest satire for Jackie's Kennedy in-laws, Marilyn Monroe, other assorted hangers-on, and us Jackie-obsessed observers. "She paid an enormous price for her fame," the playwright told one interviewer. "Now it's somebody else's turn to pay for it." All Jackie Onassis idolizers should recognize their cue and line up for tickets (212-239-6200). --J.I.

The Wizard and Mr. Wilder

America's cultural Age of Innocence reached its zenith in the late 1930s with two artistic bonbons: MGM's technicolor treatment of The Wizard of Oz and Thornton Wilder's more haunting voicing of the mantra "no place like home," Our Town. This month Kentucky's renowned Actors Theatre of Louisville (502-584-1205) re-examines each of these cultural icons in a festival of symposia, exhibitions, documentary screenings, and performances. ATL has declared October 18 "Oz Day" in conjunction with its musical production of The Wizard of Oz (sans Roseanne, alas). Then, starting on October 29, the company makes Wilder the subject of its annual "Classics in Context" festival, coinciding with the centenary of his birth. The centerpiece will be the debut of four never-before-produced Wilder one-acts, directed by Tazewell Thompson.

Hats off to the new Wilder one-acts

In these playlets--which languished among Wilder's uncompleted manuscripts until recently, when they were published by Theatre Communications Group--the dark shadow that was so easy to sentimentalize in the author's earlier work flutters closer. Wilder's optimism has waned; his irony is bared. But his characters are still preoccupied with the getting of wisdom. In Youth, Gulliver, at the ripe age of forty-six, is cast ashore amid islanders who kill anyone over thirty. You can hear the author's voice when the character concludes, "Humanity is the last thing that will be learned by man; it will not be learned from the young." Small jewels, the plays offer a rare chance to hear anew from an American literary elder. --J.I.

Nancy Dalva is the author of Dance Ink: The Photographs.

John Istel is a senior editor at Stagebill.

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