On Dance
GRESKOVIC, ROBERT
OnDance DANCING ON ICE by robert greskovic o lympic and world medal figure-skating champion John Curry of Great Britain, being eager to carry his career on ice beyond competitive events, has been...
...Alter All does need the expanse of an arena to find its fullest expression, yet it revealed enough of the interconnections between skating moves and musical moods to state a poetic case for icechoreography...
...Donald Saddler's Palais de Glace (to Meyerbeer), on the other hand, was diffuse and thin...
...Martins has given Curry a flamenco-style solo to Stravinsky's "Tango...
...Skating is basically competitive, and its standards are those of competition...
...Starbuck then joins Curry in "Jalousie" and her irrepressible power combines with Curry's cool to create a steamy tango on ice...
...Moreover, Curry's artificially spotted tights resembled dirty pantyhose and did not contribute to the impression of physi-cality required...
...At the 1976 Innsbruck Winter Olympics the young Briton was compared with the Royal Ballet's Anthony Dow-ell...
...The other works offered by the troupe provided isolated glimpses...
...Tango-Tango, choreographed for Curry and Starbuck by New York City Ballet danseur Peter Martins, was considerably more effective...
...Next came Scoop, a work for four skaters and a sliding box drawn from a Paper Bag Players skit...
...How well is it executed...
...J^cemoves, by Jean Pierre Bonne-fous, of the New York City Ballet was also encouraging...
...Much of it, particularly when Curry caressed through the moves in phase with Debussy's dreamy airs, was thoughtful and theatrical...
...Certain of the moves in the opening duet (for Curry and Cathy Foulkes) do have a naive sweetness to them??the two take turns ducking under other's arabesque legs and leaning torsos...
...It is pseudo-Graham on ice and even the hardy Star-buck cannot give it interests...
...they sought to approximate dancers' moves without completely understanding the dynamics of skating...
...His momentum and the trumpeter's last breath run out together...
...in skating it is vaguely articulate at the ankle, but otherwise it is " frozen" into the boot of the skate...
...He has aroused the interest of other skaters in the effort and has coaxed various choreographers to work with his group...
...dancing, despite the attempt to minimize it, involves traction...
...It added a provocative dimension to IceDancing, the Curry production that recently completed an extended New York engagement...
...this bit has him contrast his vertical hauteur carriage with lowered eyelids, shifting shoulders, fancy hands and spragging feet (skates...
...Moon Dances (to Saint Saens "Carnaval des Animaux") uses six commedia dell' arte figures in duets and solos, and integrates them intermittently, into a coordinated ensemble...
...I suspect that skeptics from both the disciplines might be sufficiently encouraged by IceDancing to come forth and help strengthen the fledgling new species...
...The seemingly simple activity is based on the skater's school figure exercises, and although Tharp has added her sly loops and fanciful scratches, it acts simultaneously as an introduction of dancing to skating, of skater to choreography, of dance watchers to skating moves, and of skating fans to dancing's relationship to music...
...The second movement is livelier...
...Dance poses, at their finest, are concerned with "line...
...two for Curry (as a Prince) and one for Starbuck (as "another darling of Paris...
...Done in Florence Klotz' overly fussy, filmy period costumes (1912, according to the program), it comes off as a fashion parade routine with a few serviceable solos...
...Set to Berlioz' "Roman Carnival Overture," it employs a cast of eight in an effort to have the solos and duets separate from and then coordinated with ensemble groupings...
...The same cannot be said, though, for the other 11 members of the IceDancing company...
...Dressed in Santo Loquasto's costume of all-white, satiny slacks and a loose sweater, Curry nevertheless defined the essence of Tharp's vision...
...But there are also significant differences that must be dealt with...
...This is neither surprising nor unreasonable, given the elementary similarities between the methods of skaters and dancers: a concern for cantilevered balance, certain gravity-defying leaps, ease and harmony of position...
...Cohan's use of skating is limited to having the performers strike yearn and reach poses as they glide about...
...Still, Bonne-fous gets the cast into and out of sight with deft ease and timing, and a climactic build-up that has everyone spi-raling through scratch turns simultaneously acknowledges Berlioz' crescendo and forms a fitting climax to an ensemble piece...
...Nonetheless, it has a feeling of incompleteness...
...skating, at its best, seeks simple "good form...
...dancing is primarily a means of expression??communication is the overriding concern...
...It reminded me of Martins' smouldering gypsy moves in Balan-chine's Tzigane...
...Unfortunately, some moves are ungainly ??in several lyrically posed lifts, the women's hanging feet looked like dead weights with skates on...
...Dancing alternates motion with movements of rest...
...Whether or not such essential differences are bridgable is the question, therefore, that has to be answered before the prospects for the successful development of a new performing art can be accurately gauged...
...Martins' duet inventions??borrowing from tango dancers' steps and skating pairs' stunts??are simple, familiar and extremely competent...
...With Curry as its formulating practitioner, dancing on ice stands a good chance of becoming an original hybrid instead of a mamage-manque...
...At Broadway's Minskoff Theater his strong, unexaggerated bearing, his easy, precise movement, and his long, supple line made the comparison meaningful...
...As a choreographer, Curry himself is perceptive and entertaining...
...he sets precarious lifts, too, that don't transfer safely to the ice...
...They lacked the dancer's control and concentration, the constant concern for the carriage of the head, arms and shoulders...
...Curry's other effort, Anything Goes (to Leonard Bernstein's "Candide Overture"), is notable for its vitality (the performers get to "let fly") and for its gusty inventions...
...some longer, some shorter??of the hybrid's possibilities...
...Of the 10 pieces that made up IceDancing, the richest was Twyla Tharp's After All (set to a portion of Tomasso Albinoni's Trumpet Concerto in BFlat...
...Dancers employ interconnected steps and positions to build phrases into performances...
...This performance was indeed watchable, but the turn-turn-turn logic of the dance is not especially compelling...
...It is composed of coiling turns and turning jumps that are interlaced with leaning and crossing limbs??all of it giving the normally straightforward carriage of the skater a newly designed character...
...The final movement, another adagio, is a sort of sustained diminuendo with Curry seamlessly gliding in long and wide paths...
...In fact, when Curry was center stage the contrary features of dancing and skating were sharply diminished, if not totally transcended...
...How difficult is the step...
...FeuxFollets, another Curry solo, is by England's Kenneth MacMillan...
...OnDance DANCING ON ICE by robert greskovic o lympic and world medal figure-skating champion John Curry of Great Britain, being eager to carry his career on ice beyond competitive events, has been devoting himself to the dance...
...skating not only accentuates travel, it often races at terrific speeds...
...Surface details similarly overwhelmed Robert Cohan's "Night and Day" pas de deux from Myth...
...skaters work to achieve isolated feats, then try to link them together as smoothly as possible...
...What we saw at the Minskoff was a reduced version, necessitated by the shrunken confines of a nonarena space...
...This was especially choreographed for Curry, and originally performed to great acclaim at an Olympic skating exhibition in the fall of '76...
...In the first of the solo's three movements, an adagio, he executed repeated long strokes, in continual arcs...
...Surely Curry's own "dance skating," would be appreciated by anyone sensitive to the poetry of the performing arts...
...It is a light, entr'acte item in primary colors and might appropriately be subtitled "Mondrian and Miro for the Masses...
...Afternoon of a Faun (to Debussy), by Norman Maen, is a duet for Curry and Foulkes...
...And since it is a vehicle for the company's only other star performer, Jo Jo Starbuck, one wished it was longer and went somewhere...
...In addition, most of the eight choreographers who contributed to the bill had no experience designing for skaters...
...While Patricia Dodd was far from relaxed or delicate enough with the epaule arabesques or fondu moves in her solo (to "The Swan"), Curry's design here is considerable and makes one hope that he will someday have a skater sufficiently supple to perform it as richly and subtly as it is shaped...
...Skating is basically a frictionless way of moving...
...One kept thinking of a link that had lost its chain...
...Set to a Liszt piano composition, the piece has Curry turning almost continually, from the moment he appears until his final arabesque glide off...
...Finally, in dancing the foot is pliant...
...and I found myself responding to him on skates as 1 would to an accomplished performer in slippers...
...But the histrionics of an animal-man intrigued by a fair jeunefille bathed the work in unnecessary arty lights...
Vol. 62 • January 1979 • No. 2
