by Leigh Witchel
Cherylyn Lavagnino’s choreography has the quiet intimacy of a watercolor, and the feeling that a part of it was missing. She showed two works, one in excerpt and one in full, yet both felt like fragments. Still, like Sappho’s poetry that survived by being quoted or inscribed on potsherds, a fragment can be tantalizing.
First on the bill was three scenes from last year’s “Tales of Hopper.” The most powerful aspect of Hopper’s work that Lavagnino carried to the stage was the electricity of empty space. In the three scenes on view from “Tales of Hopper,” it’s a force so palpable yet invisible, it’s almost another character.
To the dissonant piano chords in Martin Bresnick’s recorded score, Justin Faircloth entered, wearing an approximation of the anonymous uniform of a man in the 1930’s: vest, shirt and tie, pants. He sat facing away from us at a table representing a cafeteria counter, smoked a cigarette, drank coffee.
Claire Westby entered to sit down at a small table; Faircloth returned the glove she dropped. He smoked, she looked at her hands and crossed her legs. Right before the scene blacked out, she handed him a small, tightly folded triangle of green paper: was it money (it seemed too dark in color) or a letter? As in Hopper’s work, ambiguity was an important part of the encounter.
The lights came up on Faircloth and Corinne Hart, sitting tensely at a table. He was looking at her, she was looking out towards us. Westby reentered, and she and Hart moved in a tug of war for Faircloth. There was more movement and partnering, and the folded green paper also made an enigmatic reappearance. Westby went to the floor and Faircloth and Hart circled her. Just as Hart moved her hand to strike Faircloth, the scene went to black.
The action was more of a tableau vivant than a dance, but how would you translate Hopper’s paintings into a dance, especially if you’re not trying to make a 30’s period piece like “Filling Station?” But the disorienting quiet sometimes read as flaccid.
The lights came up on Westby at her little table. The focused tension as she fidgeted with her glove and downed her coffee escalated the piece from tableau to theater. Her movement increased, she returned to the ground and rolled tightly across the stage. She came to a stop with her leg raised, and then reached away as if her dreams had abandoned her for adventures of their own. Running her hand through her hair, she was left to her thoughts as the lights dimmed.
Both Lavagnino and Bresnick worked with the understated delicacy of miniaturists. They’ve taken a logical approach, but it’s still hard to approximate onstage the visual effect of a Hopper painting. Period costuming is easy enough, but the colors didn’t feel saturated the way they are in Hopper’s oil paintings. To get the vivid incandescence of the Hopper’s lighting, even in night scenes, would require either a theater with a more sophisticated light plot and a larger budget, or a really motivated lighting designer.
“Mythologies” looked at ancient Greek myths in the same episodic way. The evocative score was composed by the performers, Scott Killian at the piano, Jacob Lawson on violin and Carol Lipnik singing. Lawson also created the sound design, including echoing and distorting Lipnik’s voice for additional effect. Unlike the music, the minimal production designs of the evening seemed bare, but that was most likely a budget question.
Lavagnino looked at three mythological groups: Sirens, Amazons and Thebans. The work began with a trio of Sirens on the ground, lounging like odalisques. Lavagnino’s choreography for them was again as interested in stillness and legato as much as movement. In an echo of Ashton’s “Ondine,” these sea creatures had the same signature port de bras, crossing their wrists above their heads like a fishtail. They lipsynched what Lipnik was singing: literally a siren song.
The four Thebans were pulled from the wing and and rolled onstage, again in slow motion as if coming ashore on a quiet day. At their best, Lavagnino’s ideas resonated. Lipnik sang of the yearning of the sailors, and Lavagnino echoed it in a flowing male quartet.
But not all the men flowed. Lavagnino’s dancers were variable in ability. Particularly in unison work, that was in plain sight and was never finessed. Several in the cast had feet that didn’t really point, and trouble completing their leg lines. That wouldn’t be a problem in other forms, but Lavagnino was using ballet, and asking for pointe work from some of the women.
A trio for two Amazons on pointe and a man was largely soutenus and arabesques, steps that could be done in soft slippers with much the same look. Was it worth the shoe? Some of her dancers seemed clotted on pointe. A seduction duet where Noah Wang carried Erin Gallagher gave a clearer sense of the cleaner lines and fluid movement Lavagnino seemed to be aiming for.
Later on Lavagnino gave the Amazons shivering bourrées, but avoided allegro vocabulary: no jumps, no beats. It might have made her Amazons more distinct from the Sirens than the clenched fist she gave them as their signature port de bras. After a group dance for the Amazons, the stage brightened and went to black, ending this sketchbook as if the myths had come down to us as fragmented as a lost ode.
copyright © 2021 by Leigh Witchel
Excerpts from “Tales of Hopper,” “Mythologies” – Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance
Paul Taylor Dance Company, New York, NY
November 28, 2021
Cover: (L to R) Justin Faircloth, Claire Westby and Corinne Hart in “Tales of Hopper.” Photo credit © Charles Roussel.
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.]
