The Lion King's Garth Fagan brings his company to the Joyce - Joyce Theater, New York City, Nov. 10-22, 1998

Dance Magazine, Nov, 1998 by Kate Mattingly

NEW YORK CITY--If seats for Garth Fagan Dance performances at the Joyce Theater sell like those for his choreography on Broadway, the theater will have to turn away 1,300 people for each show. Tony Award-winning choreographer Fagan, who created the movement for the perennially sold-out Broadway musical The Lion King at the New Amsterdam Theatre (capacity 1,775), is ecstatic about his season at the Joyce (capacity: 472), November 10 to 22.

Fagan says that after working on Broadway he "yearns and longs to work with a company of dancers that I've known and nourished for years, and who know me and my idiosyncratic moves and ideas." During the creation of The Lion King, Fagan maintained his own company by "flying around a lot, because I take my job as artistic director of Garth Fagan Dance very seriously. I want to sit in the audience and make sure the lighting is just right and the spacing is appropriate for each venue that we play." He admits that the juggling act was very difficult. "But it's in the past," he adds with a laugh.

This attention to detail caught the attention of Disney scouts, who announced in November 1996 that Fagan would choreograph the musical. Michael D. Eisner, chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, said the cast of creators was "a creative team with backgrounds in theater, opera, puppetry, and dance, [who would] bring bold new dimension to the source material." Fagan's choreography shares the stage with costumes designed by Julie Taymor and the mesmerizing puppets by Taymor and Michael Curry. Fagan praises his Broadway dancers as "fearless." Four hundred auditionees--from companies like Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Alley American Dance Theater, and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company--showed up for The Lion King casting call. Fagan integrates the dancers' movement with the puppets and costumes brilliantly, although his choreography is restricted by their complexities. In one scene the dancers carry eight-foot shields.

In musical theater movement is just one of many elements--costumes, music, lyrics, scenery, and set design--that describe the characters, illustrate the story, and further the plot. For his Joyce season, Fagan looks forward to being able "to work on a clear, open space without trapdoors and scenery and all those things that I had to contend with in Lion King, as fabulous as they are." He also relishes holding the reins: "I determine the time frame. I choose the music. I can keep developing the piece, abstracting movement, doing retrograde. Whatever I want to do. Just choreographing in the truest sense of the word, as opposed to being set on a five-minute time frame or a two-minute time frame."

His work on the musical made it impossible for Garth Fagan Dance to perform at the Joyce in 1997, but traces of The Lion King accompany the troupe there this month. Lebo M, choral director for the show, is composing the music for Fagan's world premiere. Fagan calls Lebo M--who in August traveled home to South Africa to create a score for Nelson Mandela's eightieth birthday--"an extraordinary talent. We worked very well together in The Lion King." The score will be "very sophisticated music with extraordinary choral work," he adds.

Nkanyit, one of two New York premieres during the Joyce run, takes its title from a Samburu word that means "an all-encompassing respect for life, elders, and each other instilled early in childhood." In The Lion King, discipline and respect for life are recurring themes, although Fagan says he created Nkanyit several years ago during "a rash of madnesses of mothers driving their babies into lakes, of kids murdering babies at proms, kids shooting up kids. Across the boards: racially, urban, suburban." Fagan believes these horrifying incidents stem from "the loss of attention to family. My company is a family. We're not related by blood, but we might as well be. You can create family as you need it, but it's a place where there are no holds barred. But underneath all the criticism, there's support. When my father said no, it was No?"

Set to music by Betty Carter, Curtis Lundy, and the National Percussion Group of Kenya, Nkanyit premiered in 1997 at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Saxophonist Gray Mayfield will play onstage during the Joyce performances. Norwood Pennewell, Natalie Rodgers and Sharon Skepple will portray the family, which Fagan considers "the heart of the piece." The choreography describes "a very curious, inquisitive daughter, like I had, leading the family around," says Fagan. "Both parents being attentive to the child, but setting limits. Children have to be disciplined. Some parents think that if they say no to a child, that's going to cow them and wreck their lives forever. Nonsense."

Fagan knows discipline: he founded Garth Fagan Dance in Rochester, New York, twenty-eight years ago and has worked himself up from the bottom of fame's ladder. For this upcoming season, he was able, once again, to work with his Bessie-winning dancers. His season at the Joyce features his "movement more stripped down," freed from the costumes and puppets that create such dazzling effects on Broadway. The other New York premiere, Of Eight, showcases his troupe. It's "for eight of my dancers exploring time and space with eight, in eights, to a Toni Williams score," says the choreographer.