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On the Aisle

 

[INDEX]


Lincoln Center Festival: Trisha Brown's El Trilogy

By Philip Anson / July 21, 2001
On the Aisle

BrownThe 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.

Briwn elThe 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.



[INDEX]

(c) La Scena Musicale 2001 and Philip Anson