Dance Theatre of Harlem
at the Shubert Theatre, May 15-18
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Johnson, a charter member of DTH, was the world’s first black Giselle. She achieved her status as a prima ballerina the same way Leontyne Price achieved her status as a prima donna: by performing classical repertory with extraordinary grace and technical command. She secured her role in American history not by bringing street cred or tribal movements to dance but through her artistry. In The Moor’s Pavane, Jose Limon’s masterpiece based on the story of Othello, Johnson brought an elegance to Desdemona that, like the choreography, transcended time. It was inconsequential that everyone in this Moor’s Pavane was black. Inconsequential too was the choreographic basis of the piece: baroque dance, born in what may be the most politically incorrect epoch ever. But the baroque patterns find expanded expression in Limon’s balletic early-modern choreography. In early modern dance, from Louis Horst and Martha Graham to Limon and others, preclassic dance forms had a liberating influence: elemental patterns inflected by Western steps allowed for continual evolution. That fact coupled with Shakespeare’s insight, the released sense of freedom in Limon’s movement, and the stately passionate dancing gave DTH a universal, timeless essence.
Adrian (Angel on Earth)–his most recent creation, mounted on DTH earlier this spring–shows Alleyne in a more enriched and lyrical dimension, refining the edgy elegance of his earlier extreme use of ballet into a dialogue between spiritual beings. A change of direction in the torso is reiterated in larger patterns of movement flashing from the individual to the group, an impulse blossoming as the choreography becomes faster and more complex. DTH performs the piece in a studied, not yet extreme way. But the dancers have clearly mastered the style at a technical level. With more performances they will assuredly be dancing with more boldness: I’d like to see them perform this piece again in a year.
Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago offered an exuberant, erudite evening of authentic African ritual dances theatricalized and presented as concert dance. Like other ancient and non-Western forms, such as Middle Eastern and Indian classical dancing, that were never intended to be theatrical, African dance is finding an expanded life as it moves from ritual to art.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Dance Theater of Harlem; “Rites and Rituals” (Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago).
