by Leigh Witchel
A simple question: Is “West Side Story” better, or even as good, without the story?
For the 35th anniversary season of Doug Varone and Dancers, the company reprised “Somewhere,” an abstract dance made in 2019 that took Leonard Bernstein’s score and narrowed its brief from driving the narrative to providing an accompaniment.
If you were going to try this anywhere, you might as well try it at The Joyce. With simple, effective lighting by Derek Van Heel, the stage was stripped, and the brick wall and alcove at the back was visible. It brought in the urban associations of “West Side Story” while still feeling abstract.
Varone stuck to instrumental sections of the score. “Somewhere,” started, as the film does, with distant whistling. Varone set a slow female solo for Aya Wilson to it. Some abstractions worked. A solo to a reprise of “Maria” matched the contemplative pizzicato music. But more suffered from the loss of meaning or context. A male solo for Holliss Bartlett to “Cool” wasn’t cool. A duet to the “Dance at the Gym” couldn’t provide the excitement of the original. Varone’s vocabulary didn’t seem geared to sharp movement. When the dancers did move sharply it felt forced.
The eponymous “Somewhere,” was done with the light approaching twilight. The dancers walked, reached and exited until only Brad Beakes and Ryan Yamauchi were left. Groping, they reached, but not to one another. There was no place for “us.” Even towards the end the two got right next to one another but didn’t touch, until finally one flipped the other over his shoulder and lifted him to exit.
The piece is music visualization; the dancers were dancing to the music; reacting to it and its dynamics. When the speed in the music picked up, so did the speed of the phrases; the cast spun faster and jumped higher. But “Somewhere” didn’t feel abstracted as much as removed from its context. There is a tension in Bernstein’s music that feels impossible to ignore, but that’s what the dancers did.
The dance slowed to “I Have a Love” and everyone left the stage, leaving the lights to provide some kind of ending. They all snapped on for the curtain. Varone took music that Bernstein had composed with a structural arc, broke it apart and rearranged it. But he didn’t add his own structure to replace it.
Two short works were sandwiched between the two larger dances. “Short Story,” (2001) a duet for Wilson and Beakes, was danced inside a square of light. The couple hugged and lifted to portentous romantic chords. It had the feel of a domestic spat; she moved from him and as the music pounded they collapsed to the ground. He touched her, she rejected him. They embraced, she threw him off, moved and reached forward. He tried to take her hand. She walked off but in a conclusion of tentative hope he followed her.
The square of light became a circle for a 2017 solo “Nocturne,” danced by Varone. Wearing a black hoodie, he traced the light’s outline. As nice as it was to see that after 35 years, Varone still moved well, it was also important to see how he moved. The timing in this soliloquy of frustration built with subtle dynamics that intimated he actually did want movement that was both loose and sharp. Varone clutched his face, and released it to end.
We traveled back to 1993 for “Rise,” Varone’s work to John Adams’ “Fearful Symmetries.” There are many dances to this 1988 score, including Peter Martins’ version for New York City Ballet from 1990, and Ashley Page’s for the Royal Ballet in 1994; no one dance can claim ownership. Like the music, the piece was as much about build as drive. For long stretches “Rise” just kept going and going. And that was the point.
Bartlett, now in blue, performed the opening solo and its dynamics tracked the shifting saxophone line. Yamauchi entered. Occasionally the two men intersected but mainly it was two solos on the same stage.
Varone was working very much on the music. When someone exited, another came in. Each of the next dancers, dressed in loose, simple garb in saturated colors, entered exactly with each turn in the score. Varone deployed different permutations: blue men, green women, purple and red couples. It was welcome, though, when Bartlett reentered and that didn’t happen right when the music changed.
Like the other works, the vocabulary and partnering were loose, rolling phrases that whipped and dove without stopping, rising to a central part with everyone onstage, lifting, whipping, and flailing. An interlude for Wilson and Daeyana Moss ticked away the notes, as they balanced one another in the smoke.
The music paused and the stage plunged to black, to be lit once again with a circle of light. Solo and in pairs, the dancers moved into it for a deceleration. They all stood still as the music came to stasis at the end. Like Martins and Page, Varone was going for music visualization, only the release technique version. It wasn’t bad; context wasn’t ever a question here.
Varone’s loose, looping phrases looked as if they it feel good to dance; they even seem less about how they look than how they feel. It makes sense that the list of company alumni in the program contained familiar names: Faye Driscoll, David Neumann, Netta Yerushalmy. Varone’s three and a half decades are as much about his body of work as the dancers he influenced, and the context they provided as they struck out on their own.
copyright ©2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Somewhere,” “Short Story,” “Nocturne,” “Rise” – Doug Varone and Dancers
The Joyce Theater, New York, NY
June 1, 2022
Cover: Hollis Bartlett and Ryan Yamauchi in “Rise.” Photo credit © Joe Gato.
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