Saturday November 19, 2011 - Tonight's programme presented by the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company at the Baryshnikov Arts Center opened with a revival of MEN'S STORIES and also featured CRISIS VARIATIONS, the latest Lar Lubovitch creation which is performed with live music. In the above rehearsal photo by Kokyat, dancer Attila Joey Csiki who appeared in both works tonight. Click on the image to enlarge.
Attila could be said to epitomize the Lubovitch style which calls for extraordinary fluidity of motion, an innate sense of lyricism, and a great depth of personal commitment as well as vast reserves of sheer physical energy. Having watched this dancer in both solo and Company rehearsals and in master-classes where he passes his passion for and knowledge of the choreographer's iconic 'look' on to receptive young dancers, I've come to admire him greatly.
In MEN'S STORIES, Attila takes on a central role; but in fact this piece calls for an ensemble of nine spectacular male dancers and that is exactly what the Company delivered tonight.
MEN'S STORIES is subtitled 'A Concerto in Ruin'; composer Scott Marshall has crafted an audio collage which combines his own original music with various 'echoes' of fragments of older pop songs and spoken narrative; this sonic template is then laid over familiar passages from the Beethoven piano concerto #5 and the resulting 40-minute sound-tapestry sets the stage for the dance which veers from ecstatic to sarcastic, from vanity to uncertainty, from camaraderie to solitude. Male primping, staking out territory, passing attractions, revealing insecurities, boasting, jiving, celebrating and just plain dancing...all of this and more play into the work while voices tell of boys-to-men rites of passage, the birds and the bees, a sultry woman looking for the man of the moment.
Clad at first in black tail-coats, the dancers in MEN'S STORIES have an after-hours elegance about them. The lighting is infernally dark, and there's something vampiric about these nocturnal animals. In the course of the work, each dancer will have his opportunity to step out from the ensemble and 'speak' to us one-on-one. Aside from Attila's flourishing radiance, we have the imperial Clifton Brown and the punky intensity of Jason McDole. We have the manly self-assurance of Brian McGinnis and the boyish appeal of Reed Luplau. We have the tall, long-striding, bright-eyed Milan Misko and the flashing classical dazzle of Carlos Lopez. We have the poetic beauty of Nathan Madden and the mercurial moods and vibrant moves of Jonathan Alsberry. Both as dancers and as personalities, these men keep us engaged and curious: do their stage personas reflect their real-life characteristics? That is a question which I have often pondered while watching dance.
While Ransom Wilson's chamber ensemble Le Train Bleu delivered another fascinating performance of the score for CRISIS VARIATIONS (composer Yevgeniy Sharlat channelling Liszt) I was tonight better placed to concentrate on the dancing. This is another dark dream, with moments when the dancers slump into heaps of slumberers only to rise again and move haltingly into the light, bedazzled. Nicole Corea, Laura Rutledge, Jason McDole, Attila Joey Csiki and Reed Luplau at times burst into wild combinations which border on the manic, but then subside again as the central couple - Kate Skarpetowska and Brian McGinnis - continue an on-going pas de deux that veers from jagged passion to statue-like stillness. At the end of CRISIS VARIATIONS, Kate lies trapped under a pile of spent dancers; she reaches out to us imploringly but then is suddenly sucked into the gloom, vanishing from sight.
Kokyat was photographing during the performance; some of his images will appear here soon.
Tonight's performance played to yet another sold-out house; Lubovitch fans and admirers of his super-dancers will be glad to know that the Company will be at Manhattan Movements and Arts Center from February 10th thru 12th, 2012.