"seamless, original, and fresh"

July 23, 2005 performance, reviewed by Connell McGrath

Garth Fagan is one of the most masterful, brilliant, balanced and mature choreographers working in American dance today. He graced the stage at Jacob's Pillow with three long works, all of them from his recent repertoire and all of them excellent. He combines a number of dance styles and vernaculars, but his work never looks like a hybrid. It is seamless, original and fresh. There is balance in all aspects of the work, and it's both enjoyable and profound.

Fagan began his performance with DanceCollageForRomie (November 2003). This was truly a collage. Music selections were Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor, Opus 35, Heitor Villa-Lobos' Bachainas Brasileiras No. 5, and Ferd "Jelly Roll" Morton's Jungle Blues, three very different kinds of music. Fagan set a different dance on each musical piece, each dance about 10 minutes long. The only drawback to this piece is that it barrages the audience with so much creative information that it becomes hard to take in and integrate as a single work. He uses a crew of six in the first piece, the whole company in last piece while the middle piece is a duet.

The piece is dedicated to Romare Bearden (1911 - 1988), celebrated African-American painter and champion of young minority artists. Toward the end of his career, Bearden became well known for his visual collages. He also collaborated with choreographers such as Alvin Ailey. The dedication reads "with thanks, love and nuff respect," then a footnote explains that "Nuff is Jamaican for abundant, abundant, abundant." So many of Fagan's dances are like that; abundant of movement, abundant of ideas, abundant of evocation. They are so deeply satisfying. Fagan is also a master at balancing the emotional content of his work; Collage evokes humor, sadness, celebration, gratitude and anger. There is some social commentary here, especially in the middle piece Detail: Down Home Also, but as with other aspects of is work this is not heavy-handed.

The next piece was -----ING (November 2004). Again, this piece is divided into three parts though it is all made on Johannes Brahms' Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet in B Minor, Opus 115. The music here is lush, peaceful and beautiful and the dance matches it, though Fagan sometimes uses the dance to oppose instead of express it. Essentially, the dance is soothing and intriguing. He borrows a lot of the movement from ballet, but often breaks the grace of the balletic movements having the dancers go slack. This work again shows a masterful balance of abstract dance and movement that is evocative of some meaning that can't quite be grasped. Again there is humor and poignancy by turns.

The performance ends with a very satisfying and entertaining piece called Translation Transition (November 2002) to three pieces of music by the Jazz Jamaica All-Stars. The predominant style here is jazz dance, though Fagan still combines and borrows from other sources such as African movement, modern and ballet. Translation Transition is very much an entertainment, but it seems that Fagan cannot make a dance that isn't thoughtful and doesn't move his audience. Here, the dancers really let loose and some of them seemed to enjoy themselves greatly. I would say that the only weakness in the company is a tendency towards presenting their work with too much focus on dignity rather than enjoyment.

It is my fervent hope that the powers-that-be at Jacob's Pillow can advocate strongly for the return of Garth Fagan Dance to the Ted Shawn Theater on a more regular basis.

Garth Fagan Dance
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