Reading about dance is never quite as satisfying as seeing it in person. I can tell you what I saw and how impressed I was, but trust me, you really had to be there.
That is even more accurate when attempting to describe the virtuoso performances of the Garth Fagan Dance company, who just concluded a fourteen show run at the Joyce Theater in New York City.
The internationally renowned Rochester, New York-based company, now in its 33rd season, danced pieces from their illustrious past and treated audiences to the World Premiere of a new work, DanceCollageForRomie, in tribute to visual artist Romare Bearden.
Members of the Fagan troupe include dancers who were there at the beginning as well as young up-and-comers just a year into their tenure. But all of them are extraordinarily gifted and grounded in the technical aspects of various dance forms, while able to translate the singularly unique and innovative style of Garth Fagan in profound and breathtaking ways.
Fagan draws heavily on Afro-Caribbean influences, in addition to ballet and modern, to create his own idiom, and it is a style that delights the senses.
The opening piece on the evening I saw them was from their repertory, Griot New York, which debuted in 1991 and has the company dancing to original music composed and arranged by Wynton Marsalis. The first of three segments to that piece, City Court Dance, was delightful and upbeat, colorful and rhythmic, featuring veteran member Norwood Pennewell and Nicolette Depass paired in a sort of recital-meets-dance-club set to a jazz beat, before being joined by the rest of the company. The two returned in the third set, Spring Yaounde, which was more subtle, graceful and physically demonstrative of traditional ballet.
DanceCollageForRomie evoked the feel and tone of the artist himself. Bearden worked mostly in collage and this dance was a patchwork of various images, sounds, and dance styles. In colorful costumes highlighted with quilt-like bits of fabric that collectively accented the lighting and dancers’ skin tones, they moved to music equally diverse, ranging from Dmitri Shostakovich to Villa-Lobos to “Jelly Roll” Morton. Tall and physically graceful Chris Morrison was memorable in Conjur Man, the third of three sets to the Bearden series.
The final dance, Translation Transition, first performed a year ago, gave several company members opportunity to shine. In the first of three sets to that piece, Guy Thorne, Pennewell and Depass dance. Against music by the Jazz Jamaica All Stars, Thorne, who is one of the newest members, is all swagger, sexiness and youthful bravado in modern movements. Pennewell follows with limber hips, shoulders, arms and legs that stretch in ways no one should be able but which he does with amazing dexterity. Lanky and supple Depass stretches her long arms and legs in fluid moves, reaching for the sky and holding positions for ungodly lengths of time. They were all amazing.
Garth Fagan Dance will continue to tour through the end of the year and into 2004.