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Heights
of Calm
By
Mae G. Banner
White
Oak Dance Project
Jacob’s
Pillow, June 20
The White Oak Dance Project, led by Mikhail Baryshnikov as
first among equals, opened the summer season at Jacob’s Pillow
with a time-bending program of beautiful new works that fulfilled
the most enduring values of American modern dance.
The eight-member ensemble danced works by Erick Hawkins and
Lucinda Childs that flowed across the stage in elegant, measured
rhythms, carving patterns in space that made me think of the
raked lines in the sand of a Zen garden. The dancing was pure,
flawless and effortless, performed with an inward calm that
embraced the audience.
For inspired contrast, they jumped and spun through The
Experts (2002), a divinely nutty piece by Sarah Michelson
for which the stage was covered in plastic bubble wrap that
popped with every deliberately hard landing.
Baryshnikov generously appeared in all four dances, beginning
with a solo, Largo (2001), made by Childs to the “Concerto
Grossi Op. 6” of Arcangelo Corelli. Childs, an original member
of the Judson Dance Theater that changed the face of modern
dancing in the 1960s, first danced Largo last summer
as part of White Oak’s PAST Forward program, for which Baryshnikov
invited Judson’s legendary choreographers to revive an old
dance, and make a new one.
In Largo, Baryshnikov proved several points: that this
solo, with its whirlpool turns and brushed steps, is beyond
gender; that his body in motion remains thrilling to watch,
even when his gestures are muted, even when he simply walks
toward the footlight; and that Childs’ aesthetic is not timebound,
but classic.
The closing work, Childs’ Chacony (2002), to movements
from string quartets by Benjamin Britten, was a reprise of
Largo writ large. The ensemble of four men and four
women in black pants and jewel- colored velvet vests did sweeping
turns that often began with a single dancer and then flowed
into unison work by three or four. They sometimes smiled at
each other as they passed, but rarely touched, so that when
a dancer finally did take another’s hand, my happiness was
magnified. I thought of the line from the Leonard Cohen song:
“She’s touched your perfect body with her mind.”
Hawkins’ 1961 work Early Floating, restaged for White
Oak by former Hawkins dancer Katherine Duke to pleasantly
odd percussive music by Lucia Dlugoszewski, was Olympian in
the purest sense. The dancers, in black tank suits marked
with slices of green, red or yellow, seemed to swim and dive
through the space. Floating is perfectly suited to
the small Pillow stage. We see these incomparably beautiful
bodies at close range, yet with enough distance to appreciate
their fluid, eddying trails as they travel on the current
of the music.
White Oak is a pickup company of ever-changing members that
was founded in 1990 by Baryshnikov and Mark Morris. They are
good pickers. The group has acquired a repertory of more than
25 existing works by the great moderns and more than 40 new
works commissioned from Morris, Childs and emerging choreographers.
At the Pillow, the dancers included Emily Coates, a happy
runaway from New York City Ballet, whose theatrical flair
lit up the formal madness of The Experts and Rosalynde
LeBlanc, late of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company,
whose cool sensuality and eloquent technique were hypnotic
in Floating and Chacony. Among the men, Roger
C. Jeffrey, an alum of several modern dance companies, and
Miguel Anaya, from Jones/Zane, displayed controlled athleticism
and a fine understanding of White Oak’s shared way of moving.
When he landed in the United States in 1974, Baryshnikov made
everyone a ballet fan. Now, he’s showing us that modern dance
is worlds beyond flash and clash. With White Oak, he rises
to new, calm plateaus.
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