Dance Theatre of Harlem. - New York State Theater, New York, NY - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, July, 1994 by Rose Anne Thom

It's probably better not to try and figure out how a company decides repertory for a twenty-fifth anniversary. But Dance Theatre of Harlem's choices for this special season demands some explanation. It's easy to understand why Valerie Bettis's Streetcar Named Desire was chosen: It's a superb vehicle for Virginia Johnson, the company's reigning ballerina and an original member of the company. In her sensitive portrayal of Blanche DuBois vulnerability and arrogance coexist in heightened confusion. The rest of the cast, led by Hugues Magen as the churlish Stanley Kowalski, rose to Johnson's level in the synthesis of powerful acting and dancing that the ballet demands. There seemed much less reason for reviving Domy Reiter-Soffer's Equus which, like Streetcar, was first done by DTH back in 1982. A ponderous, yet almost silly, rendering of the Peter Shaffer play, Equus confirms that psychological babble is not the stuff of which ballets are made no matter how determined or talented the dancers are, in this case, Ronald Perry, Calvin Shawn Landers and Tai Jimenez.

DTH also revived two of artistic director Arthur Mitchell's works. Fete Noire, created in 1971, when the troupe was very young, looks like a graduation exercise that the company has outgrown. When you have dancers capable of commanding the full stage in a pas de deux, why have two couples mickey-mousing each other, and all but ignoring the power of the piano in the Shostakovich concerto? Lorraine Graves, who, with Patrick Johnson, led the opening and closing movements, lacked energy, holding her upper body almost immobile and stepping safely where the choreography demanded risk. Mitchell's John Henry created in 1988 is most notable for the vibrant singing of the title song by Leon Bibb. The dance weakly interprets the lyrics, then ends in a simplistic, if lively, folk dance. It taxes neither the dancers, with Johnson as John Henry, nor the audience.

The one company premiere was Ron Cunningham's Etosha, named for a park in Africa and set to Alberto Ginastera's Concerto for Harp. With the male dancers representing predatory animals hugging the ground, their torsos contracted and their arms locked in territorial battle, and the females soaring like swans across the stage, the ballet depicted the uneasy balance between various forms of wildlife. The vocabulary that defined these creatures in the initial moments, however, failed to develop significantly as the ballet progressed. The emotional core of the work was a dramatic pas de deux, beautifully danced, for predator Augustus van Heerden and Jimenez, his prey. As he swept her through a series of acrobatic lifts, the nervous gestures of her head, hands, and feet predicted her fatal destiny. What complicated matters was the presence of Felicity de Jager as a dominating female, who seemed to initiate Jimenez's demise. Was she Myrtha to Jimenez's Giselle? In any event, she got hers in the end, too.

Mitchell's programming choices this season indicated a preference for dramatic and pseudomodern unitard ballets like Etosha. While these make certain demands on dancers, they do not challenge them as do the classical and neoclassical works on which Mitchell built the company. (Where was the Balanchine?) In three programs, a dancer as formidable as Christina Johnson did not have a chance to show that dimension of her talent. it was missed, although she distinguished herself with fluid, articulate dancing in the "Lake" section of The River, by Alvin Ailey, and Dialogues, by Glen Tetley. Other dancers radiated specific charms in spite of an uninspired context: Magen's presence in Billy Wilson's cliched Ginastera was matched by the luscious landings of Cedric Rouse, Luis Dominguez, Robert Garland and Fabian Barnes in their brief allegro quartet in the same work; Tassia Hooks's powerful limbs tackled the space in The River; Lisa Attles performed with clarity in everything she did; and Patrick Johnson danced with mastery and partnered with supreme care. There seems to be abundant talent within DTH. This anniversary season, an imbalance in repertory choices prevented the full exposition of it.