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[INDEX]
 The
Lincoln Center Festival’s major contemporary dance offering was the New
York debut of the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s latest major work, the
El Trilogy, a three-part, 90-minute show set to jazz music composed and
played live by Dave Douglas and his band.
This work by America’s queen of postmodern dance had all the earmarks
of a tight, busy, challenging work which had been polished over the last
two years in Belgium, DC, North Carolina, and Stanford.
I caught the show on July 21 at the La Guardia Concert Hall. The first
section - "Five Part Weather Invention" - set to Douglas's "Charms of
the Night Sky", introduced Brown’s use of everyday gesture and movement
from which she builds increasingly complex patterns and routines. Within
the context of her structured vision, the dancers seem to flirt with improvisation,
indirection, and non-efficient movement, establishing one of Brown’s basic
conflics - between order and disorder, centralised and centrifugal forces.
Watching her work reminds us of Martha Graham’s definition of a dancer’s
freedom as “discipline.”
The middle section is called “Rapture to Leon James” in homage to the
legendary 1930’s Lindy Hopper known as the King of the Savoy Ballroom.
Brown’s troupe followed the lead of company veteran Keith Thompson, who
rapidly ran through a vast Broadway / jazz dance vocabulary, then improvised
variations on the same moves. The follow-the-leader competition was mesmerizing,
as each action rippled from body to body down the line, though at times
the number seemed like a warm up exercise for a dance class. Thompson
deserves kudos as the lithest, loosest of Brown’s dancers, and at the
curtain, he got two well-deserved bouquests and a kiss.
"Groove and Countermove," the final section, further explored each body’s
capacity for weight shifting, sliding, bracing, and breaking, accompanied
by skittering hands and circling legs. The dancers relished the arduous
routines, smiling as they acted out Brown’s kinetic theories, ending with
a satisfying crescendo as they leaped into the wings.
The company’s twelve dancers were each dressed in one color of the rainbow
(red, orange, yellow, blue, green, purple, and pink), a living spectrum
that made a wonderful effect.
 The
three dances were separated by two new “Intervals” for solo dancer. Diane
Madden performed these little experiments while stage hands changed the
sets and other dancers stretched and warmed up in a corner. The first
solo involved anguished crawling, the second was a pas de deux with an
aluminum ladder. This odd juxtaposition of flesh and furniture got laughs
from dance insiders, critics, and the general audience.
The stage backdrop was painted with sober black on white doodles by Terry
Winters. Douglas’s music featured a range of exotic percussion and violin
sound effects (recently released on a BMG CD) and was arguably the most
interesting music heard during the entire Lincoln Center Festival.
The only downside to Brown’s dance work is that so much happens so fast,
it is impossible to take it all in. The dozen dancers move as fast as
they can, with limbs folding and swiveling. If you avert your eyes for
a second you risk missing important, delightful, and unexpected moves.
Such fertility is a tribute to Brown’s genius, though it makes for a fatiguing
show.
Critical response to the El Trilogy was mixed but respectful. The New
York Times was cooly appreciative. After the Stanford University show
last April, the San Francisco Chronicle was impressed but the San Jose
Mercury found it busy and empty.
Lincoln Center Festival continues through July 29.
> Lincoln Center Festival.
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