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Going Dutch treat? You can’t do it better
than the Nederlands Dans Theater.
Although Jiri Kylian, whose Black Cake was a high point of
San Francisco Ballet’s opening program, recently bowed out after almost a quarter
century as artistic director, his innovative choreography lives on in the company for
which he created more than 70 works. Kylian, 53, plans to stick around as artistic advisor
but it is hard to conceive that this good-looking, well-disciplined troupe is going to
need a whole lot of advice. They are about as good as you can find anywhere and so attuned
to Kylian’s choreography it’s hard to separate the dancer from the dance.
Kylian, who claims to get his inspiration, not only from the music, but
from painting and sculpture, creates patterns of movement that intertwine bodies, bend
backs and fling the arms wide. It is ballet – often en pointe – but it’s
not. It’s modern dance, but much more, well, balletic. It’s a bridge between the
two and very exciting to watch.
Forgotten Land, set to Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da
Requiem takes off from a painting by Edvard Munch. On a shore, against the sound of
wind, women arch their backs and stretch their arms like seagulls. A couple, clad in
black, seems to personify exile, as if in mourning for a lost homeland, the woman
stretching her arms longingly toward the sea. Another couple, the woman in flaming red,
dance a staccato pas de deux, only to be replaced by a third pair, in white, in a lyrical
passage that is like the calm after a storm. There is an ecstatic ensemble dance and then
the women are left alone on the shore, stretching their arms again like birds that cannot
take flight.
Wings of Wax, purporting to derive from the myth of Daedalus
who flew too near the sun is based on another painting, this time by Breughel. But, if you
didn’t have the program notes, you might not have a clue. The curtain rises on the
stunning image of an upside-down tree, hanging in the air. A large spotlight ceaselessly
circles it on an overhead track. I guess that’s the sun but it’s as close as
you’ll get to a literal interpretation. The black clad dancers move into the
spotlight and then retreat, to be absorbed into the black of the background. The second
section features marvelous, quick males, against a background of women in slow motion. In
a series of four pas de deux, Kylian seems to be exploring the language of movement to the
utmost as bodies bend, lace, separate. You become mesmerized by the flutter of a hand, the
bend of an ankle. The music changes from a 17th Century passacaglia to John
Cage and Philip Glass and back in time to Bach while that spotlight keeps circling the
stage.
Sarabande, also set to Bach (in addition to a succession of
howls, wailing and ghostly sounds at the beginning) is an all-male dance that begins as a
nightmare and ends as a kind of joke. Prone dancers shudder as monsters hover over them.
The lights come up and we see that the “monsters” really are ornate women’s
ball gowns. As the men dance, they take off first their shirts then their pants and one
begins to suspect this is an exploration of gender. But they never do put on the gowns
and, as they dress again they – literally – have the last laugh.
Kylian is no proponent of silent ballet. In Black Cake his
dancers engage in animated cocktail party chatter. In Sarabande they laugh out
loud. Clapping hands and slapped thighs often accompany his movements.
Sound is what Falling Angels,
the final work on the program, is all about. Specifically the sound of drums. Set to Steve
Reich’s powerful Drumming, which is masterfully performed live by four
musicians at the side of the stage, it gave the women of the company a chance to shine.
Eight female dancers, moving to the accelerating drumbeats of the score, are all over the
stage. They seem to fight, make friends. There is much covering of faces and mouths with
the hands. Paired as it was with Sarabande, with no break in between, it might be
taken as a continuation of the gender theme.
Or not. Wonderful dancing
speaks for itself and, like most of Kylian’s work; this made for wonderful dancing.
Berkeley, CA, February 20, 2001 - Suzanne Weiss
