14 The Tar Heel Thursday, July 6, 1978
American Dance Festival
N.C. Dance Theatre shows varied talents
by Beth Lueck
Dance Critic
The American Dance Festival could
hardly be held at Duke University
without featuring the state's own North
Carolina Dance Theater, now in its
seventh year. This past Friday evening ,
the troupe performed a selection from its
repertoire of largely modern dance pieces
to a highly receptive and enthusiastic
audience.
"The Grey Goose of Silence," a ballet
conceived especially for North Carolina
Dance Theater by internationally known
Canadian choreographer Norbert Vesak,
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a different
set of jaws.
was clearly the audience's favorite, and
perhaps appropriately so. Taking an
Appalachian folktale as its theme, the
ballet dramatizes in dance the story of a
young woman, married to an old, cruel
man, who falls in love with a blind boy.
More than this, "The Grey Goose"
attempts to evoke the oppressive silence
and conformity seen as stifling the
Appalachian community. The number
combines elements of classical, modern,
jazz, and folk dance, using the latter to
develop the Appalachian theme with
touches of clog-type dancing.
The strong, inspired dancing of Svea
Eklof and Michel Rahn dominated the
number. Miss Eklof performed admirably
in a highly demanding role as the young
wife, executing some of the more difficult
choreography faultlessly and fluidly.
Unfortunately, her partner through
much of the piece, Edward Campbell,
portraying her sadistic husband, was not
at all equal to her performance; he seemed
bored and lifeless, as if he were merely
walking through the role at a rehearsal.
Miss Eklof deserves much better
partnering to match her fine dancing
ability. She found a more technically
accomplished partner in Michel Rahn,
who danced the part of her young lover.
Both gave strong performances which
were largely responsible for the ballet's
success, for the rest of the company did
not appear to be working very hard to
support them.
The evening opened with aBalanchine
ballet, "Allegro Brilliante," set to the
music of Tchaikovsky's third piano
concerto. One can't go wrong with
Balanchine, at least with his simpler,
classically styled ballets, and the North
Carolina company fared pretty well. The
number began a bit roughly, with most of
the dancers either nervous or unsure of
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themselves, but as the music gathered
momentum, so did the company, and the
piece closed with the cast in good form
and apparently more confident. Most of
the partnering in this number was shaky,
as it was throughout the evening.
"Sun Flowers", choreographed by
Anthony Tudor, featured women in
white Edwardian dresses flirting with
their hoped-for beaus. Although some
could enjoy the mood evoked by the
costuming and scant plot, the dancing was
not outstanding, flawed in part once again
by weak partnering.
The mood of the dancers leaped into
joyful, confident pleasure in the final
number, "Bach: Brandenburg Three,"
choreographed by Charles Czarny several
years ago for the company. Its clean,
muscular choreography nicely suits the
company's youthful tenor. The piece is a
group of dances in which dancers bounce
around like happy acrobats and athletes,
enjoying movement and fun for their own
sake. Large, helium-filled balloons and
five doors were the only props needed to
make for a bit of dead-pan clowning that
the audience enjoyed. The unexpected
mixing of Bach and balloons revealed
Czarny's wild sense of humor, and the
company revelled in it.
A program obviously intended to show
off the North Carolina Dance Theater's
widely varied talents did just that, for
they acquitted themselves fairly well as a
whole. But unfortunately it also pointed
up weaknesses which very much need
attention. Lack of confidence, on the one
hand, and poor partnering, on the other,
combine to weaken the effect of good
dance training and a fair acquirement of
technical skills. Yet the Dance Theater
remains a significant sign of North
Carolina's increasingly encouraging
response to dance, as demonstrated by the
enthusiastic audiences for the American
Dance Festival so far this summer.
Performance by Eliot Feld Ballet
provides dance a touch of class.
All ABC
Permits
by Gary Parks
Dance Critic
So much praise has been heaped so
quickly on choreographer Eliot Feld that
people sometimes wonder, "How good is
he?"
Artistic backlash is often the result of
such enthusiasm: not wishing to be seen
jumping on the newest bandwagon,
people hang back, distrustful of all the
hoopla. But for Feld all that hoopla, and a
whole lot more, is deserved. In an age of
hokum, Feld is the genuine original.
The Consort (1970), a suite of dances with
a late medieval feel, is a good example of
Feld's skill at building up a work's coloring
throughout its length. The ballet starts
with well-bred courtiers performing a
strict pavanne; by the finish, peasants
drunk with the sensation of their not-yet-civilized
strength are in the midst of a
debauch. Despite this contrast, or rather
because of it, the work is a feverish from
beginning to end.
When the courtiers hold center stage,
the seething fever is tightly controlled,
expressed only by the dagger-like
precision of the dancers' steps. By the
time the peasants take over, this frenzy
has furiously erupted to the surface. The
ballet's final image women being
thrown in sexual ecstacy feet-first
straight up over their partners' heads,
staying there, and then divebombing back
toward another embrace is enthralling.
Humor is a difficult thing to handle in
dance. Some choreographers, constrained
by lack of words, play pratfalls and other
visual gags for their broad appeal. Clever
jokesters like Feld can get laughs with
much more subtle effects.
A shepherd, alone on a hilltop, begins to
dance wistfully with his crook in A Footstep
of Air (1977). A gentle smile lights his
beatific face. With great care, he propels
himself skyward by pushing away the
ground with his staff. The audience sits
entranced by this vision. Suddenly, the
shepherd finds himself absurdly astride
the staff, and the eight-foot pole turns
from partner to embarassing appendage.
The audience, caught by surprise in Feld's
trap of a joke, laughs as much at itself as at
the shepherd's awkward pose.
What compounds the humor is that
Feld sets the same trap time after time in
the piece, and we, the viewers, willingly
fall into it every chance we get. A
swordfighter, danced by Feld himself,
advances on an invisible enemy. As he
parries and thrusts his way through the
battle we realize that at least 50 per cent
of the time he's holding his rapier by the
point, brandishing a bobbing handle at his
opponent. The audience doesn't believe
the rapier's rapid change in direction even
as it sees them. But, like always, we've
been so captured by Feld's skill, we're
ready to accept anything.
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