by Leigh Witchel
The “Icons” mixed bill that Paul Taylor Dance Company presented during their first Lincoln Center season in three years was truly mixed, but kept to truth in advertising: it was all Icons. It’s hard to go wrong with a classic Taylor work, a masterpiece by Kurt Jooss and for a change of pace, a piano suite by Philip Glass.
Taylor’s “Arden Court,” from 1981, is from the line of his work including “Aureole” and “Airs,” that uses Baroque music that an audience thinks of as “balletic.” The works were popular, “Arden Court” was no exception.
Besides the tuneful symphonies by William Boyce, the dance has another time-tested gimmick: six bare-chested men. Taylor tended to hire men who were built, and “Arden Court” is a manly-men-with-manly-chests dance. Gender stereotypes and all, it also takes the measure of the current male crop.
Devon Louis stepped into Elie Chaib’s role, entering in a slow walk as the others danced round him. This was Taylor’s analogue for the ground bass in the music. Madelyn Ho entered to dance a duet that began with her perched on his shoulder like a familiar. She crawled under and round his legs to finish cradled in his arms.
Eran Bugge took up the bass line from Louis in a duet with Kenny Corrigan. He has only been with the company since the Joyce season last June, but he’s a ball of energy and in everything. He threaded round Bugge and whirled on his knees under her extended leg.
Austin Kelly, who’s also one of the newest men, and Alex Clayton danced the antic duet originally done by Christopher Gillis and Daniel Ezralow. Doing an allegro once, doing it again only faster, sneaking glances at one another to keep in sync as they flew. Clayton has a jump like fireworks, but all the men are good jumpers. It’s as necessary to do Taylor as a manly chest.
Lee Duveneck, with Louis, is one of the tall men; he and Maria Ambrose, who is an elongated Brancusi type, revolved around one another. The men slowly took the women round, suspended in frozen leaps. John Harnage, who rounded out the cast, is a bantam who already took his place in the repertory for his line and his quicksilver speed.
Taylor gave all six men an adagio: the better to see them with, my dear. They paired up and slowly cartwheeled off. The full cast finale was like a clock with magical gears; in trios with a woman and two men, the women flipped over in somersaults while the men held them.
“Arden Court” has more to recommend it than scantily clad men. Boyce’s symphonies and the dappled, verdant landscape the work imagined for us connected the green world and the music of the spheres.
Instead of a dance, the company raised the Orchestra of St. Luke’s – literally – to audience level. The orchestra is billed right below the company itself on the program. The hydraulics in the pit went silently into action and led by David LaMarche, the orchestra performed the “Suite from ‘The Hours’” by Glass. Glass composed music for the 2002 for the film; sections were arranged the following year by pianist Michael Riesman into a three movement concerto. The piano soloists’ job wasn’t technical fireworks, but interpretation. Margaret Kampmeier found a contemplative mood in the arpeggios.
It’s the bug and feature of minimalism that its variety is limited. Most of Glass’ scores sound similar – those who are cynical might say alike. But it’s not a bad similarity: broad expansive melodies with lush orchestration. There are ballets that share a common aspect with this suite: they aren’t about the pieces themselves, but the opportunities for the performers to make something of them. Still, biggest surprise was when LaMarche gestured out into the audience and Glass stood to take a bow.
Kampmeier returned with Blair McMillen to play the two-piano score by F.A. Cohen for Kurt Jooss’ 1932 work “The Green Table.” Perhaps sadly, it’s still a more effective and relevant anti-war statement than almost anything made since.
The piece was staged by the usual team responsible, Jeanette Vondersaar and Claudio Schellino. Vondersaar was the assistant of Jooss’ daughter, Anna Markard, and the ballet was passed down to her.
The score opened with pounding chords and a sinister march that trickled off into a habanera for diplomats wearing full head masks and cutaway jackets. They argued ever so politely; it was repetitious, courtly and ineffectual. They bowed, aimed revolvers into the air, and fired. From here, it was Death’s game.
The cast made us care. The inevitable harvest, first soldiers, then the old, then those who resisted, finally those who profited, was hard to take, even when you knew you were watching an archetype.
Posing and marching in his iconic costume as a warrior, Shawn Lesniak did justice to Jooss’ original role. He held the stage and made Death into a force outside of morality who looked at us blankly when the worst occurred. He crouched in silence waiting for Ambrose as the old woman, and seemed to comfort her, but when Kristin Draucker, as a partisan, died before a firing squad he raised his nose in silence. Die a hero, die a villain, die defiant, die resigned. Death is not cruel. The world is.
Corrigan was well cast as the Standard Bearer, soaring in with clean eloquent jetés. Taylor men don’t always have line; that’s not what Taylor is about. Neither is “The Green Table,” but the Standard Bearer is. Pure lines reinforce his representation of the flower of youth and ideals. It added to the heartbreak, and the pathos you heard in Cohen’s themes for him.
As Clayton, Kelly, and Jake Vincent joined Corrigan as soldiers, all the time Death watched from behind. The acting was strong; the moment when Louis, as another soldier, bid farewell to Jada Pearman as the Young Girl was heart-wrenching.
The futility escalated to the unforgettable totentanz where Death takes his last two victims, Corrigan and Harnage as the Profiteer. We’re not so certain about the Profiteer; he runs offstage, but that may be mostly logistics – he needs to change back into one of the Gentlemen in Black. The diplomats dance once again, their dance and numbers unaffected by suffering, as the curtain fell.
The work looked great on the company. They didn’t need to fight their training to give it weight. Jooss’ choreography also links to the Taylor repertory: Death’s mechanical motions as he faces us were echoed decades later in Taylor’s “Big Bertha.”
“The Green Table” is now 90 years old, still theatrical, still great in repertory, still sadly relevant. It isn’t subtle, it’s propaganda. But it’s great, gut-wrenching propaganda. Jooss’ ability to see what would engulf the world wasn’t prophecy: these things had happened only a bit more than a decade prior. Peace was only a tense pause.
Also, at 90, isn’t “The Green Table” five years away from entering into public domain? Earlier 20th century masterworks, such as “The Rite of Spring,” are in reconstructions that would move forward the lapse of copyright. Even early Balanchine, such as “Apollo,” is done in versions from at earliest 1957. Will public domain look any different for these icons?
copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Arden Court,” Suite from “The Hours,” “The Green Table” – Paul Taylor Dance Company
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
November 10, 2022
Cover: Shawn Lesniak in “The Green Table.” Photo credit © Ron Thiele.
Got something to say about this? Sound off here
[Don’t miss a thing! We’ll send you a notification of every article we post if you sign up with your email. (The signup is right below, scroll down). We promise you won’t be deluged and we won’t spam you either.]
