Washington Ballet. - Eisenhower Theater, Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, Sept, 1994 by George Jackson

Transit, the first work acquired by Mary Day and Elvi Moore's company from its new choreographer in residence, Graham Lustig, is more than the sum of its politically correct parts. Movement is the ballet's topic, the dancers remain more or less themselves, and music is the main motive force. This never becomes mere formula, though, due to Lustig's inventiveness and wit.

The title is apt. No idea lingers long in Transit. Lustig introduces new notions at a rapid rate or, better yet, transforms the material with which he has just been playing. That he's built the musical score from eight brief compositions by Conlon Nancarrow (Toccata, Tango?, and six of the Studies for Player Piano) adds to the feeling of a transient world--though it is definitely one world and everything in it is stylistically light despite being intense.

The dancers intermingle three sorts of movement--ballet (their daily work), mundane behavior (walking or waiting, which gets them from one dance set to the next), and, on occasion, expressive response to personal interactions (some of these are the only things that don't ring true). The ballet vocabulary is of the Agon-and-after sort, with steps and poses looking like classical ones tapped with a hammer and reassembled from the resulting fragments. Sudden gear shifts, instant bondings, off-center holds, and what might be precarious slides were they not done so matter-of-factly, make the work's variations for one, two, or three dancers quite distinctive. In ensembles, such groupings as a straight-line phalanx or a circle facing in are casually organized and seem all the more surprising.

It would be hard to guess Lustig's range from the evidence of Transit, premiered last year by Introdans in the Netherlands. Without doubt, though, this British choreographer possesses skill, imagination, and humor. He energized WB, which, on the same bill, was stingy in a Balanchine and careful with a Goh.