Bill T.
Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company
Lam Research
Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
October 12th,
2013
This year in
dance has been all about “The Rite of Spring”. With 2013 being its hundredth
anniversary, the ballet’s history has been the
topic of conversation. It still seems quite impossible that “The Rite of
Spring” premiered one hundred years ago. With its challenging narrative,
surprising score and dramatic movement, it could easily have been the
brainchild of one of today’s contemporary ballet choreographers, dance theater
directors or modern interdisciplinary artists.
What today’s
dancemakers have done this year is re-envision, re-create and re-think “The
Rite of Spring”. And as a result of their efforts, audiences have been treated
to version after version of this tragic ballet in the past ten months. “A
Rite”, co-produced and co-performed by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (Artistic
Director Bill T. Jones) and SITI Company (Artistic Director Anne Bogart), was
an epic performance adventure. Impeccably crafted and artfully designed, “A
Rite” was not only the best re-imagining of “The Rite of Spring” I have seen
this year, but perhaps one of the best dance works I have seen in the last five
years. With every moment, the entire sold-out audience brimmed with palpable anticipation
- we couldn’t wait to see what would happen next. Making the experience even
more special is that “A Rite” is part of a month-long celebration at Yerba
Buena Center for the Arts, marking the thirtieth anniversary of Bill T. Jones/Arnie
Zane Dance Company.
Jones, Bogart
and the cast have crafted a true character-study, and that is what makes “A Rite” a masterpiece. Through
dance, theater, text, humor, scenework, music and body percussion, here was a
comprehensive character examination (told with equal parts hilarity and
seriousness): the history of the original production, the story behind the
compositional score, the narrative of the real-life players, the psyche of the onstage
personas. “A Rite” is not just choreography, not just performance, not just
dance theater; it is the whole package.
"A Rite" Photo: Paul B. Goode |
The opening
moments were like watching an old Hollywood epic movie with the complex collage
of music, movement and lights. Right from the start, the notion of community
was key; the cast moving together in lines and in groups. Sometimes this
occurred with unison movement, while in other instances, the collective worked as
one (specifically the sequences with chairs and stools). In addition, there
were two large choir scenes, where cast members sang multiple different parts. When
combined, their individual voices created a very literal and figurative harmony.
Jones’
choreographic greatness glimmered throughout. The most notable instance happened
during a very short solo - a death-defying double attitude jump collapsed onto
the floor, and was followed by a stunning multiple turn in
parallel.
Approximately
two-thirds into “A Rite”, there was a long divertissement where three large
doorways were introduced. The cast wove in and out of these spaces and spiraled
around each other in the main part of the stage. Though the scene was mimicking
the polyphony in the score (where independent musical lines mix with other
additional voices, creating an equal interdependence), it really seemed like
the life-size physical architecture of a clock, and as such, a comment on time.
The character
study yielded important findings. More than any other iteration of “The Rite of
Spring”, this version really helped the audience understand the complicated
inner emotions of ‘the chosen one’. “A Rite” revealed the depth of this primary
character and the combination of heartbreak, sorrow, anxiety, expectancy, and
even at times, relief that is their experience. Also, Jones and Bogart have
envisioned a story where death is not the end, but resurrection. As the a
cappella group section returned, there was a slow but solid recapitulation –
the community was still kicking.
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