Christmas stamps - Starting Here - Rockettes, Savion Glover, Ballet Folklorico de Mexico - Editorial

Dance Magazine, Dec, 2002 by K.C. Patrick

IF YOU THINK THAT WHAT YOU HEAR ARE JINGLE TAPS ALONG WITH JINGLE BELLS THIS YEAR, YOU ARE ABSOL. UTELY CORRECT. THE RADIO CITY ROCKETTES SHOW THEIR HIGH-STEPPING STYLE OF KICKS AND CLICKS AT TEN DIFFERENT CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR VENUES across the country. Savion Glover brings back a look at black tap history in a world tour of Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk, and the one-and-only Tommy Tune is back on Broadway. Well, actually, Off-Broadway, at the new Little Shubert Theatre on West 42nd Street. Tommy Tune: White Tie and Tails sets the world's tallest Texan to singing and dancing again with the Manhattan Rhythm Kings. Ah, nostalgia.

By rights, the Rockettes ought to own Radio City Music Hall; it was the statuesque high kickers and their powerful alumni association that helped save the Music Hall from the wrecker's ball not too many years ago. The now historic, modernist building that houses the magnificent, futuristic theater was built by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in desperation when the bottom dropped out of the financial market in 1929, recounts his youngest son, David Rockefeller, in his Memoirs (2002), and for the first fifty years the family received almost no return on its investment. But it was also a tribute to hope and faith in New York City and America's ability to recover from the worldwide Depression of the early 1930s--and the project kept hundreds of men off the bread lines.

Once, it was home to Radio City Music Hall Ballet, the only resident U.S. company to perform fifty-two weeks a year, directed by Florence Rogge, then Margaret Sande, then Marc Platt (Marc Platoff when he was with the Ballets Russes). And Russell Markert's Missouri Rockets cum Roxyettes--real dancers, not just Ziegfeld showgirls--moved uptown from the Roxy to Rockefeller Center for a run of more than seventy years. (See page 56 for more information.)

All things change, of course. The ballet company is long gone. Rockefeller Center was sold in 2000, long after the family's interest moved to construction of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers. And in August 2002, a new labor agreement severed any tenure that members of the statuesque precision-dance team might have had. After next year, all dancers for Radio City Entertainment will audition anew every season--economic cutbacks have forced the change from a continuing company of dancers to solo gypsies looking for work. It's history.

Savion Glover is concerned with history, he says, and so he has started a world tour of the 1996 hit Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk, a panorama of black history in dance and song. Now, at 29, Glover bears the burden of his own history and that of all early successes--that many in his audiences still expect to see the tap dance kid on stage. Not the critics, though; they're clappin' and stampin' for him and his current cast and show. (Read more on page 50.)

Like Noise/Funk, the traditional Mexican son jarocho draws no borders between music and dance. At a fandango, a party that features the music and dance of the son jarocho, the percussive foot rhythms are an integral part of the entertainment. At a recent concert celebrating Mexican Independence Day, Grupo Mono Blanco, Son de Madera, Los Cenzontles, and guests finished their second encore as all the performers took to the platform in a lengthy challenge of cascades and crescendos of polyrhythms, sans instruments other than their shoes. The applause, and the audience's smiles, lingered long after the dancers had left the stage.

Two years after Amalia Hernandez's death, the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico remains true to its founder's vision. But these days, it is a sleeker, more polished company, a compelling and colorful entertainment. Less concerned with history per se than with the cultural context of the costumes, music, and dance, the performers nonetheless maintain their individuality of characterization. They are people dancing, playing, living--not just lines of movement.

Particularly impressive was the entrance of twenty, yes twenty, male dancers, elaborately garbed as native warriors cappe'd with three-foot-high headdresses, which would have made them look like giants to any would-be invaders. It was easy to remember that much tribal dancing was aerobic exercise intended to demonstrate and maintain strength and agility. They shook and shuffled, pounced and postured, stomping their sandaled feet in close formation and patterns. For a moment I imagined how simple it would be if we today could only stamp our little huarached feet and frighten away all our enemies.

In this holiday season, I make to you this wish, salute, and charge: Peace on earth and goodwill to all humankind.

K.C. Patrick is editor-in-chief of Dance Magazine.