Shirley Mordine choreographs with a physical poetry that harks back to an earlier age of modern dance. Her work is modern in the sense of the great modern movement of the 20th century in art, and contemporary in that it still speaks and still educates and is performed by strong, young dancers. Capturing the primitivism within the modern movement in bold strokes, she produces movement with an intentional rough edge, performed by dancers who are not quite characters yet make up a miniature society. There are not a whole lot of choreographers left who make dances this way. Mordine is also a mature artist who’s created over time a style that’s technically difficult by today’s demanding standards but retains a certain early-20th-century quality of fearful awakening to the modern era. The choreography of a person who’s content, it’s thoughtful but not challenging, pleasant and full of craft.
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Essentially Mordine is of the school of 20th-century academic expressionist choreography, which originated in “primitive” approaches to the modern era. In the early decades of this century a ballet was created in Italy–Excelsior–about the advent of electricity. Wide-eyed and heavy-thighed, the dancers performed what was no less than a 20th-century fire dance, exhibiting their awe before this mighty unknown power. Other dancers in America, notably Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, sought to exalt dance by making exotic or grand gestures, appealing to an epic sense of history–and hence respectability. Martha Graham rose out of this school, and along with Kurt Jooss and Mary Wigman in Germany led the crusade for dance as a serious intellectual art no longer about decoration or court ritual. It was these codifiers too, in America, Germany, and in London (where the German-born Rudolf von Laban worked), who developed curricula for higher education, programs of study respectable enough to stand alongside philosophy and mathematics departments. Mordine bears the mantle of this approach. And she does it well, albeit without any surprises.
Of late, the nearest thing in tone to what Mordine has done in Animare is Jerome Robbins’s new full-evening work for the New York City Ballet. Both pieces are set to Bach–the Brandenburg concerti for Robbins, the Three-Part Inventions for Mordine. Neither choreographer is trying to prove anything but rather draws on a personal palette to create a composed and thoughtful evening to favorite music, providing a window on general themes explored in greater depth by others. But where Robbins’s palette includes heavy doses of Balanchinean formalism and more than a splash of Broadway, Mordine remains true to her vision: nothing here is showy, tricky, or too abstract for its own sake.
Sappington’s section is the sexiest, capturing on a large scale the sexual ambiguity of Prince himself. “Slide” opens with the lesbian banter of Prince’s cronies Wendy and Lisa, as two women dance evocatively. A team of men enter, their erotic group dancing perched somewhere between the locker room and the pyrrhic dances of ancient Greece. The women defeat them, metaphysically and physically trampling them since they don’t need men. It’s a sapphic ode for the 90s.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Uncredited Photos of Mordine & Company Dance Theatre and Joffrey Ballet.
