Search

Any new, off-beat, odd-ball or otherwise unusual happening in the theatre, funny or sad, is absurd. In dance, the most orphaned of theatre arts, enough zany and incomprehensible, but enjoyable, performances have now taken place and grown sufficiently popular that dancers need a catch phrase. New dancers have been appearing more or less regularly, but only recently has word spread to any extent. As a result audiences have increased and though the general bafflement remains steadfast, discerning spectators are becoming noticeably hoarser in their approval.

Focuses on a dance production by Twyla Tharp titled 'Deuce Coupe II,' a shortened version of 'Deuce Coupe,' which introduced the Joffrey Ballet's spring season in February 1975. Mannerisms of social dancing; Use of montage in the dance; Ways in which Tharp makes the ballet segments intrinsic to the work as a whole; Performance of dancer Erika Goodman.

Focuses on several dance performances staged at Harkness Theater in 1974. "Sebastian," choreographed by Vicente Nebrada; "The Lottery," choreographed by Brian Macdonald; "Souvenirs," choreographed by Todd Bolender.

Palm Springs, California with its Indian reservation is a hundred and twenty miles away from Hollywood, on a road through the mountains. A full moon deepens the folds, in the hills, the palm shadows. But from here one can see the beacon light that is flashed at Hollywood premieres. At the edge of the canyon, the crowd stands looking across the gorge, across the heavy stream. Their faces are lit blue and orange. The moon is unimportant, for five terrific spotlights are turned on the clearing, seen in miniature very far below. They were dancing a hoop-dance under the lights, stepping through the wooden ring, left foot, right foot, swinging it over the head and down in a cylinder around the body.

Spanish civilization has, of course, been a dominant force in Mexican life and consequently, in the Mexican dance. Three other influences, though of infinitely lesser impact, must also -be noted, the French, the Negro and more recently the American. The French influence, which was introduced in the middle-nineteenth century, was of brief duration and since the forms of national aesthetic expression had already crystallized, effected few changes. These appear mostly in the furniture and architecture of urban homes of the middle and upper classes and in the literature produced by these same groups. In the dance, modifications are shown in costuming and in the introduction of French soldiers in some of the religious war dances and carnival dances.

Focuses on dance performance "Clytemnestra" by Martha Graham, being staged in New York City. Endowment of dancing with ecstatic soul by Graham; Usage of mythic stories in her dance performances; Highlights of the scene depicting murder of the character of Agamemnon.

Presents a brief information on the ballet "Dances at a Gathering," directed by Jerome Robbins and produced by Royal Ballet; Dancing style of performers in the ballet; Theme of the ballet; Characters portrayed by dancers in the ballet; Technical aspects of the ballet.

This article focuses on the book "Mark Morris," by Joan Acocella. Acocella's penetrating and lively study of choreographer Mark Morris not only traces a life and analyzes a body of work but also, by its very appearance, wrestles with the question of where a critical portrait ends and a full-fledged biography begins. Yet because Acocella is so smart and lyrical a writer, so well informed about both dance and music theory, and so measured in her assessments, she convinces us to accept her invitation to the dance and even to feel privileged for having been asked.

The article focuses on the state of traditional theatrical dancing at present. This is the era of the symphonic ballet. The symphonic ballet is a danced work arranged to underscore or illustrate a fairly familiar piece of symphonic music. Russian composer Peter Tchaikovsky, and other pictorial romantic composers have been assailed and captured by the symphonic choreographers. This idea is scarcely an innovation, but the scale on which the Basil company operates calls for a special consideration.

In four brief summers Bennington, Vermont, has become an American center nationally known. The Bennington College School of the Dance, with which the author is concerned, in its festival of August 12 to 14, 1937 assembled an audience from Ohio, Utah, California and intermediate points; and will send out 160 new students and teachers this season as far west as Hawaii. Four dancers who were and still are the most Important in the U.S. were chosen to head the teaching staff. They are: Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Hanya Hoim and Charles Weidman. In 1935 the Theater Workshop was added to the general program and in 1936 a department of choreography and one in music for the dance.

This article presents information about the book "Africa Dances," by Geoffrey Gorer. A young Englishman with a habit of wandering and an African American dancer, a gifted young man of Senegal, met in Paris, France and planned to see West Africa together. They had set out to see West African dances, and they necessarily chose back roads and villages off the main highways. Gorer has vividly set down the record of their journey. Unfortunately dances, even the strange dances of the Ivory Coast, are hard to render in words. The book sets a high level in travel books.

One of the most interesting developments in American dancing is the rise of the Workers' Dance groups into something like a producing entity. Made up largely of girls trained either in the New York Wigman School or by Martha Graham for her group, they have created a great deal of favorable interest among dance partisans. Their programs bear the names of various revolutionary abstractions, which are demonstrated in the danced arrangements. It is perhaps inevitable, at the beginning, that very often the titles seem to be interchangeable, that the weight of the two techniques from which they stem is hard to support, and that the main attraction is the earnestness and belief in themselves of the dancers and their hopeful audiences. The New School for Social Research is organizing a valuable series of evenings whereby dancers without reputations can show to a good public the results of their labor.

The article focuses on jazz, the industrialized folk-music. The folk-songs of the Continental peoples were the deposited sediment of centuries of submerged folk-life. Many of them served the same purpose as the more modern jazz; they were accompaniments to dances. But into their lyrics entered an altogether different element-rusticity. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the only Massemensch was the great, silent, subject, agricultural population. Their music was a music of out-of-doors, instrumentally based on the human voice or the simplest of stringed and wind instruments, a music of physical merrymaking, a music that looked away from weary body-labor, yet ever reflected its shadow through the wildest abandon.

George Balanchine's "Apollo" as it is performed by the New York City ballet company is like a great painting after it has been cleaned the accumulated obscuting grime removed. The grime on the "Apollo" presented by Ballet theater in recent years was, to begin with, the excessively fast tempos of the Stravinsky music that provides the foundation for the dancing, the consequent hurrying and cramping of the movements, and the inaccuracies of dancers who forgot between the infrequent performances what they had barely learned in the insufficient rehearsals.

The author says that an event of first importance to the dance was the inauguration this month of a season of dance repertory by the Humphrey-Weidman Co. at their new studio-theater at 108 West Sixteenth Street, New York. On the stage of this theater, which is as large as the seating space and has full lighting and production facilities, they will present a program of new and old dances every Saturday and Sunday evening till June. Repertory scheme was adopted after a ten-year trail of every possible channel for bringing dance to the public, not only by dancers Charles Weidman and Doris Humphrey but also by most of the other leading modern dancers.

The article focuses on the dance performance "American Document," choreographed by Martha Graham at the Bennington Festival in Bennington, Vermont. "American Document" is conceived on the basic skeletal structure of a minstrel show. It opens and closes with a parade of participants, using gestures borrowed from minstrel strut and cakewalk. Its episodes are linked by drum rolls and fanfares of acrobatic movement. Its solo numbers are projected against a choral background. Its episodes commenced with an introductory duet, a preamble for a grave circus, a kind of annunciatory dominant chord of motion from which the rest of the symphony was to be amplified.

The article presents the author's comments on choreographer George Balanchine. The author says that Balanchine's ballets are like composer W.A. Mozart's piano concertos on the creative mind and imagination and personality, the language and style in which these express themselves, are always the same, the completed forms are consistently new and fascinating. This is true of "Concerto Barocco," Balanchine's classic ballet to the three movements of composer J. Bach's minor Concerto for violins, which the Monte Carlo artist Ballet Russe has added to its repertory. The two Allegros lead to and away from an Andante in which the familiar Balanchine materials are used in a sequence of dance-movement.

Focuses on imitation of western dance by the Europeans. Psyche of European dance; Information on The Netherlands Dance Theatre; Americanization of European theatre.

This article presents information about two books. These books are: "Correspondence of Thomas Gray," edited by Paget Toynbee and Leonard Whibley, and "Tom," by E.E. Cummings. In an age of great letter-writers Thomas Gray ranked very high. The book "Correspondence of Thomas Gray" is a work for scholars primarily, or rather, considering its price, for university libraries. The book "Tom," a scenario for a ballet version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is written in Cummings's poetic prose, which is especially well adapted to suggesting the involutions of the dance.

The article presents information related to Indian dance. On an Indian reservation recently at dance for white people was in progress. Suddenly the orchestra stopped short in the middle of a tune. Through the door glided a sleek dark body of an Indian boy of 18, naked except for a loin-cloth, his face daubed fantastically with lampblack. On investigation it was found that for several weeks, in the homes of some of the older Indians, the annual Chinook dances have been in progress. At these dances the weird medicine-making performances of olden days are still indulged in. There are many preparations for the medicine dances and they are religiously performed. "Fire-water" not permitted, as the Good Spirit will not work with it in the room or tent where the dance is carried on.

This article presents information on the artistic brilliance of Josephine Pr´mice, a Haitian singer and dancer. She recently appeared in a program along with Hadassah and Pearl Primus at the Times Hall Theater. Her work has been compared with that of Carmen Amaya. It is opined that Prémice's gestures has an effortless authority which hits the audience straight and is as immediately invigorating as a blood transfusion. The carnival and voodoo songs which form the basis of her performance combine the sophistication and naivete which characterize Prémice herself.