by Leigh Witchel
The New York season of Dance Theatre of Harlem was as important as a marker for the company as it was as a performance. Artistic Director Virginia Johnson made her farewell, passing the torch on to Robert Garland, who directs the company’s school.
Garland is also the company’s resident choreographer, and though the opening night performance didn’t have any of his ballets on it, it gave a good reading of the pulse of the company today, as well as where it might head.
The weakest performance was the shortest. Christopher Wheeldon’s “This Bitter Earth” makes sense in DTH’s repertory. It’s brief, it’s glamorous, it has vocals by Dinah Washington. But it’s also a ballet that was made for and on Wendy Whelan and it needs her.
Yinet Fernandez and Dylan Santos gave the ballet a technical, high gloss performance. But their axes stayed up and down without any of the distortion Whelan added. This distortion was part of Whelan’s vulnerability; instead we saw position to position to position. Wheeldon’s ballets rely on what the dancers bring to them, without that, they’re what we saw: an antiseptic collection of steps.
Opening night also offered a commission, premiered last year in Washington DC, “Sounds of Hazel.” Hazel Scott, the Trinidad born, American jazz pianist, had a life and accomplishments in the U.S. and in Paris, with more episodes than a soap opera.
“Sounds of Hazel” had a great reason to be, but not a great reason to be a ballet. Choreographed by Tiffany Rea-Fisher, with Erica Blunt creating the soundtrack, on opening night it was prefaced by a behind-the-scenes film feature. That was informative, but also didactic; it didn’t just tell us about Hazel Scott, it told us what we should think of her. Let us figure that out on our own.
The multimedia of the ballet was also illuminating, setting up a history lesson intercut with the voice of Scott’s son, Adam Clayton Powell III. “Trinidad was her center.” Powell’s words also located us. We always knew where we were, but that came at the expense of the dancing being anything but acting out a narrative.
The ballet itself began with water and tide noises, transitioning into a groove of African rhythms. Women in full skirts and head wraps danced, but did “Sounds of Hazel” want to be a dance or a lecture-demonstration?
Before long we were in Harlem, with the ensemble jitterbugging. Daphne Lee arrived in a spangled gown. She danced and did quick piano-playing movements to one of Scott’s best-known performances, Chopin’s Minute Waltz. Having one dancer stand in as a Scott figure was the path of least resistance. The correlation was obvious and again, didactic.
In a dignified and inspiring voice-over, Scott talked about civil rights and her pride in choosing to be American. It was a memorable speech that made the dances Rea-Fisher put on at the same time forgettable and unimportant. How to make someone’s life a ballet that stands on its own? Perhaps splash twenty Hazel Scotts across the stage?
Powell narrated, talking about Paris as five women in ball gowns made slow poses and “La Vie en Rose” played on a music box. But the chronology of Scott’s life was a dull way to structure a ballet. There needed to be more of a throughline than “And then this happened.”
A series of dances followed. The music moved into a jazz version of the same song with a quartet of women, then a quartet of men led by a woman, and a trio of men to faster jazz.
Lee returned for another piano-playing dance, first a solo, then with an ensemble. The men functioned like supporting musicians to Lee’s soloist. These were baby steps towards something that was more choreography and less danced accompaniment, but as choreography, the work was perfunctory, hitting the high points of Scott’s biography without developing as a dance. “Sounds of Hazel” succeeded in making you want to know more about Scott, but it suggested that Scott didn’t need a ballet about her. She needs a documentary.
Like much of his works now, William Forsythe’s “Blake Works IV (The Barre Project)” is a revisit. He created “The Barre Project (Blake Works II)” as a digital project during the pandemic, when dancers were trying to maintain their technique doing makeshift barres at home. This staged version was premiered by DTH at the beginning of the year in Philadelphia.
As befitting a work started in close quarters, it began sedately, with the dancers remaining upright on their axes. The first couple, in purple velvet leotards and soft slippers, did phrases including slow turns ending in attitude back on flat with Forsythe’s punchy and fragmented movement logic: start, walk to place, start something else. It was slow, sinuous, and fractured.
A faster, more distorted male duo followed where the men crossed one another on the barre. As the subtitle implied, the barre was a prop. But academic class work isn’t the subject of the ballet; there’s little reference to how dancers use the barre daily. Like Forsythe’s “Playlist,” this is about cutting loose, and showing off.
A woman stayed at the barre for a slow solo. That slid into a man’s allegro, then another man, a third and a fourth. The women arrived again and the work thumped towards a short finale, but the kind Forsythe does beautifully: dividing and interweaving by side, by sex and by line.
Like the other Forsythe pieces to James Blake, this was second tier: more glittery fireworks than substance. But the dancers easily made it into a star turn. Forsythe borrowed so much from urban club dancing that it made perfect sense to have DTH get their mitts on his work. With all its isolations, this is vernacular movement for many of them, and they looked great in it. The mix of classical and urban dance styles, when you put it on DTH, were reminiscent of the baroque/urban paintings of Kehinde Wiley. These dancers are in their element in both milieus.
“Allegro Brillante” is important to DTH both as a touchstone and temperature reading. Happily, it predicted good health. The only minor gripe was that it, like the rest of the evening, was danced to recorded music. But technically, Johnson was right in feeling the company could go on without her. All the women had footwork, turnout and line. The men were consistent as well. Leading the men, Kouadio Davis did strong beats and turns.
Amanda Smith was technically strong, sculpting the principal role in front of the four women. The unsupported pirouettes at the apex of the ballet are always a moment of drama, for both the ballerina and the audience. Smith’s first double turn was nervous, and she went jelly-legged at the end. But the rest went fine, and she never lost composure. All we saw were smiles and air of transport. Smith has ballerina smarts; she knows how to give a performance and can hold a stage. How you react, and get back on track, when things aren’t perfect is as important as when they are – and hasn’t that been DTH’s last decade in microcosm?
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Allegro Brillante,” “This Bitter Earth,” “Sounds of Hazel,” “Blake Works IV (The Barre Project)” – Dance Theatre of Harlem
New York City Center, New York, NY
April 19, 2023
Cover: Dance Theatre of Harlem in “Blake Works IV (The Barre Project).” Photo © Theik Smith.
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