"...deft and accomplished, graceful and full..."

7/14/04 performance at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, reviewed by Jocelyn McGrath

Susan Shields & Lane Sayles dancing
"So In Love"photo: Lois Greenfield

Lar Lubovitch Dance Company's performance at Jacob's Pillow was part of a yearlong itinerary of events in celebration of its 35th anniversary. A mainstay choreographer in the dance world, Lar Lubovitch has created dance for Broadway, Hollywood, and most unusually, for the field of ice dancing, as well as for the world's premier dance companies, both modern and ballet. It is no wonder that this evening's dance was deft and accomplished, graceful and full, the clear expression of a choreographer and a company in the full control of their powers.

Three couples performed the first piece of the evening, "Smile With My Heart". These romantic pas de deux ranged from exuberant to distressed to sensual. Love lends itself to large physical gestures, as in the denouement of the second tale, which ends literally with the man at the woman's feet, having landed there after flying across the stage. There was an audible sigh from the audience as she turned and walked away. Other motifs include open-armed lifts, the man reaching forward under the woman's arms, and at other times lifts in which the woman seems to run through the air. Unabashedly romantic, these love stories are precise in both physical and emotional nuance.

Lar Lubovitch
photo: Jack Mitchell

The second half of the evening's piece "Men's Stories" performed by nine men, had a satisfying resonance with the Pillow's founding company, Ted Shawn and his Men Dancers. Costumed in gold trimmed black velvet jackets, the initial image is formal, courtly and elaborate. And yet the soundscape sets the scene in a double historical context-Beethoven and the sound of an airplane taking off-and throughout the piece the tension between the "man in the suit" and the code of man's behavior is contrasted and set against modern gesture and wild, continuous, voluptuous motion. As the piece continues the jackets come off, and at a particularly interesting turning point, a "fake ending" subtly shifts into a dream state. In full view the jackets are carried off and the sleeves are rolled up. The next passage contains a series of tableaux, mysterious and solemn, graceful encircling arms rippling, each man's body lifted for a moment and then sinking down into the group again, smooth as an underwater garden.

For Lubovitch, movement is the thing, much of it deriving from the classical ballet repertory and from earlier pioneers like Jose Limon. Yet he extends the limits of these beginnings to new and innovative boundaries. The work he treated Jacob's Pillow to this season is both accessible to the general public and throught-provoking. He successfully blends the avant garde with the mainstream.