"...exhilarating and uplifting"

July 6, 2005 performance, reviewed by Connell McGrath

Ronald K. Brown recently told Karen Campbell of the Boston Globe "If I could figure out a way to go to seminary and run a dance company at the same time, I would." Instead of trying to serve two mistresses, he combines these desires by making a spiritual dance, and to serving his community through his art. Certainly, modern dance—in particular African-American dance—is no stranger to spirituality, but Brown makes some welcome variations to what's come before. This season, Ronald K. Brown and his company, Evidence, came to Jacob's Pillow to perform the now well-known and highly acclaimed work that he first choreographed in 1999 for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Grace. Additionally, he showed a world premiere of Blueprint Of A Lady: The Once And Future Life Of Billie Holiday. The first was a great experience and the second was a major disappointment.

Grace is a near-perfect expression of African dance traditions and African influenced American music combined in the service of a uniquely American art work. While the dance vocabulary that Brown uses in this piece is clearly African, the end result is absolutely American. Part of the effect of this is to demonstrate how deeply embedded in the American culture African dance has become. The work is structured and may be thoroughly choreographed, but the dancers are given freedom to interpret each movement in their own way (as often seen in African dance). This gives the work an improvisational feeling. African movement most evident in the arms flung wide, body close to earth, stomping flat footed, knees deeply bent. One of the many achievements of this piece is that it doesn't seem like a cultural excursion to another place. Also, Grace is a masterpiece of subtly and abstractly expressing feelings such as anger, grief, and joy. It is never overdone and uses small gestures rather than big ones; it avoids melodrama. Brown seems to strive in this piece to resolve the trauma and injustice of the past while celebrating the present. Many of his movements are imbued with power, and of course it's a very graceful work.

Much of this dance occurs at the edges of the stage suggesting how the black community has been routinely marginalized in the American culture. Also, Brown seems to consciously disregard the stage space that he has to work with. The dancers cluster in certain parts of the stage, rarely claiming the center and rarely forming group configurations that use the whole space. This disregard for the space may not be intentional but it increases the feeling of improvisation, that the dancers are simply joining and exiting on their own whim. The dramatic effect of this staged improvisation is that it increases the feeling of spontaneity, immediacy, and living ritual.

Grace is set to five songs starting with the classic Jimmy McPhail interpretation of Duke Ellington's "Come Sunday," segueing into two pieces that sound like House music from a night club by Roy Davis, Jr. Then there's "Shakara" by Fela Anikulapo Kuti, and the piece ends on a newer version of "Come Sunday" sung by Nnenna Freelon. Brown re-titles these to suit his own agenda: "God Coming Down," "Angels Coming Down," "God Leading the Way," "Worldly Walk," "Return to Heaven."

Grace is a performance that contains more elements of ritual than entertainment. While not entertainment, it is still exhilarating and uplifting to watch. The dancers rarely "address" the audience by facing them squarely and looking out into the theater. They often dance to the wings or face front but "cheat" to the sides. This reinforces the idea that they're not there to entertain but for some other reason. While Grace focuses on the African-American experience, its tribulations and joys, Brown has a universal message of healing and celebration to share.

Then the misguided and unfortunate World Premiere of Blueprint of a Lady: The Once and Future Life of Billie Holiday. This is a short jazz set for quartet fronted by the able singer Nnenna Freelon interpreting some of Billie Holiday's most important songs. This work is much less successful than Grace because the artists make the primary focus a socio-political message and they make that message too explicit. Dance is an afterthought to this piece and that makes it a mismatch for Jacob's Pillow. What Brown is able to do with mastery in Grace becomes heavy-handed and embarassing in this work, with its bathos and melodramatic methods.

There is no doubt that Nnenna Freelon is an accomplished jazz vocalist and the group that she fronts was excellent. She is a skillful interpreter of the Billie Holiday standards, however, she doesn't let the music speak for itself in expressing its message. She devoted a considerable amount of time to explaining the tribulations of Billie Holiday and her community between the songs, and then she used the songs to exemplify her spoken message.

Freelon has great stage presence of her own, and the Evidence dancers seemed at a loss to know what to do. There was no clear sense of why dance was part of the work, no real reason for it to be there. The best example of this is early on in the piece when Freelon is singing "I Didn't Know What Time It Was." The women of Evidence are clustered at her feet seeming to enjoy her performance, and then they drift off stage one at a time. The last one to leave flutters between the stage and the wings seemingly unsure of what to do. It was at once embarrassing and indicative of how the overall work misfires. What's ironic is that everything that Brown/Freelon are trying to express here was done 50 years ago by Billie Holiday herself in her lilting, at times disembodied, and mysterious voice.

Essentially, this was a Nnenna Freelon show with bits and pieces of other things tacked on for no apparent reason. The elements had no central cohesion. After the power, subtlety, and mastery of Grace, it was a startling anticlimax. Ronald K. Brown and Nnenna Freelon are both excellent artists in their own right, and they even had a really good idea. But somehow, the idea went flat on the way to the stage.

Ronald K. Brown/Evidence
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