Saturday, March 25, 2000
Garth Fagan Dance delights
BY CAROL NORRIS
Enquirer Contributor
On a short wish list of modern dance companies I'd like to see perform in Cincinnati are Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham — very big and expensive companies; it'll never happen.
Next are Chicago's Hubbard Street and Garth Fagan. I got one-fourth of the wish Friday with Garth Fagan Dance in the flesh at the Aronoff.
There are five reasons to thank the powers that made this happen — actually one enormous power in the person of Jefferson James of Contem porary Dance Theater, who brought the group to town.
• The company consists of 11 powerful performers who dance as though they invented movement. They don't hide their developed techniques, but they don't hide behind them either. They dance with a generous spirit.
• Garth Fagan, better known to many as the maker of Lion King dances on Broadway, puts it all together in a modern dance style that bears his stamp.
Most clearly seen in “Discipline is Freedom” there are bits of ballet, jazz, a couple of modern influences (namely Martha Graham and Lester Horton) and great big chunks of pure Fagan.
Jamaica-born, Mr. Fagan spices his works with Afro-Caribbean rhythms. A recurring theme is the incredibly long-held balance. Another is the powerful leap that hangs in the air.
• The music is real jazz, such as Max Roach and Tony Williams and, for a '20s sound, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
• Mr. Fagan isn't afraid to let us laugh. “Touring Jubilee 1924 (Profes sional)” is four couples jazzing it up on a '20s dance floor. It's silly and fun as the dancers Charleston and flirt and tear up the floor in groovy moves.
After mastering an incredible leg extension in “Woza,” while standing nearly on her head, Sharon Skepple winks at the audience before sauntering off, as if to say “Not bad, huh?”
• A serious side sits comfortably beside the frivolous, most evident in “Two Pieces of One: Green.” The dancers, looking like moving stained glass windows dance in shadows, the obtuse movements seemingly born in the shadows of Mr. Fagan's mind.
The most shrouded in personal vision, this piece looked more purely “modern” than the others.
In one section of “Woza”, the dancers' bodies are slave ships in a tortuous forced voyage; in another a couple dances a tender duet of committed love — different works, but they all bear the Fagan imprint of new ways of making movement happen.
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Garth Fagan Dance delights
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