Also this issue: Popular Mechanics Three artists work with simplicity at Vox Populi. -Robin Rice Etching for Glory Ursinus College shows off an impressive collection of Rembrandt’s etchings. -Susan Hagen Kick Out the Jams -Paul Burress National Showcase of New Plays -Debra Auspitz Dueling Media -Deni Kasrel

June 20-26, 2002

dance

Art of the Dance

tower and inferno: The company recreates Rodin's Gates of Hell.

by Janet Anderson

RodinJune 12-16, Pennsylvania Ballet at the Merriam Theatre

“Dancing with the French Impressionists” describes the Pennsylvania Ballet’s season finale program, which showcased two quite different sides of this popular art movement in Dancing with Monet and Rodin, Mis en Vie. Monet, newly created for PAB by Kirk Peterson, a former dancer and current ballet master with American Ballet Theatre, was as light and delicate as the beloved painter’s touch on his water lilies’ canvases. And Rodin? Well, Margo Sappington’s 1974 work, new to PAB, was dance writ large, as fiercely muscular and as emotionally wrought as any of Rodin’s work.

Peterson’s Monet dance, subtitled A Gathering at Argenteuil, was lovely, which sounds like pretty limp praise. The dance probably suffers from the same problem as impressionist art, which can seem too accessible. The soft pastels of the women’s ankle-length costumes swirl in watery blues, yellows and greens, suggesting the painter’s palette. Their gentlemen partners wear gray trousers and white shirts, looking like they’ve tossed their topcoats on the riverbank in order to dance with these ladies to the delicate Debussy piano music (well played by pianist Martha Koeneman). Five couples stroll, dance and flirt using moves as rippling as the piano chords. It’s visually entrancing, and may also be rich movement, but on opening night only Dede Barfield and Meredith Rainey’s duet stood out, and that might simply be because they had the good fortune to dance to “Clair de Lune,” music as familiar as Monet’s paintings.

Sappington’s Rodin was something else altogether. It’s in-your-face dance entertainment. Each variation began with dancers starkly lit on a blackened stage assuming the pose of a famous Rodin sculpture which immediately turned into dance -- so it wasn’t as much a game of living statues as might be thought. Like the statues evoked, however, the moves are muscular and oversize, also fast and dangerous. Driven by Michael Kamen’s propulsive original score, which sounded like movie music (and it turns out Kamen’s famous for movie scores, including Die Hard), the dance was not unlike watching some dangerous high-wire performance. The Pennsylvania dancers tackled it fearlessly, but Martha Chamberlain, dancing an undulating, acrobatic duet with Alexei Borovik, hit the floor opening night; injured, she scooted offstage. Meanwhile Borovik executed a few solo turns before flying off to join her. The recorded music continued playing while the audience waited quietly, apparently accepting the bare stage as simply a planned lull in the hyper-activity. Then the next variation emerged out of the dark and Francis Veyette and Jessica Gattinella picked up the frantic pace as though nothing had happened, and danced superbly. Veyette pulled off dare-devil lifts rarely seen off Russian stages. Christopher Rudd, guesting from Carolina Ballet (the company now headed by Robert Weiss, former PAB artistic director), took the muscular semi-contortions and made them dance! Tara Keating was wonderful in her “Torso of Adele” solo, and also in “The Kiss,” where she was well partnered by James Ihde. Of all the dancing statues, personally I liked “Burghers of Calais” best, where Sappington caught not only the look of the famous group, but their emotions as the stumbling, fearful Frenchmen turn over the keys of their city to the English.

Rodin ends with the entire stage turned into a tableau vivante recreating the sculptor’s Gates of Hell. A huge ladderlike structure is set before a silvery backdrop reflecting flickers of red and yellow light; this construction is filled from top to bottom with writhing, squirming and twisting human bodies. Yup: the Gates of Hell brought to life. At this point we are more into gangbusters stagecraft, and pre-Lloyd Webber, than dance. Talk about mood-swamping movement. The audience, however, was electrified, and responded with an ovation that sounded like one accidentally left over from a Sixers’ victory. Rodin’s not a subtle dance, and it’s pretty hokey in parts, but it is theatrical -- and happily for PAB sent them into summer hiatus on shouts of approval.