April 23–30, 1998

review|dance

Col Legno/Company B

Pennsylvania Ballet, Merriam Theater, April 15-19

The Pennsylvania Ballet took a big chance last week. Departing from its recent practice of restaging classics or presenting more Balanchine, the company commissioned a ballet from Kevin O'Day, a choreographer who had made a great reputation in New York and elsewhere in the last few years but who was new to them, and then held its breath.

It is good to report that the venture was completely successful. O'Day's piece, Col Legno, was brilliant; some of it was as good as contemporary dance gets. Among its substantial merits were a knockout score for string quartet by John King; real dance wit combined with a broad emotional range that created good roles for each of the 12 dancers; and handsome costumes, and striking lighting and stage design, all of which together showed the company to great advantage. As if this was not enough, Col Legno was accompanied by Paul Taylor's Company B (1991), his affectionate salute to the '40s (along with Richard Tanner's derivative Skin & Steel, in which at least the adagio was good). The result was the best program that the PAB has offered in a long time.

"Col Legno" means "with the wood," referring to passages in which string players use the bow to tap the body of their instruments rather than play with the hair. The use of the term was no affectation: of the six movements, one entire section and part of another required just such percussive ensemble playing, and at great speed. Often it was hard to believe that only four musicians were producing the entire range and volume of the sounds we heard. King's score drew on an array of musical sources, ranging from contemporary dissonance to blues and jazz; as a result, this permitted O'Day to use an equally broad spectrum of movement styles, all of which added to the liveliness and sensuality of the piece.

Among the cornucopia of good things Col Legno offered, I would single out for special praise the terrific third section, which on opening night was danced by six men and the simultaneously slinky and imperious Anne White, and the long, smooth, sensual solo by David Krensing in the fourth movement. In these places, and elsewhere as well, O'Day seems to have worked on the way that these dancers, brought up as all ballet dancers are to finish one movement before moving to the next, change their pattern of "release." Whatever he's done, the greater fluidity he has achieved represents an effective fusion of traditional ballet and postmodern technique.

Finally, Company B raises once again the question of Paul Taylor's attitude toward the past. On the surface, his use of Andrews Sisters' hits and stylized versions of social dances like the lindy hop and polka seems to be little more than a nostalgic evocation of a simpler time. But the more transparent Taylor seems, the more is going on beneath, and this is no exception. The time in question is the end of the Depression and World War II, and the cheerfulness of the music even then was seen as a way of keeping the nation's spirits up. A darker subtext supplied by history is therefore available, and Taylor often makes use of it. Thus, while Patty, Maxine and LaVerne express the sadness of American women about the absence of their men in "I Can Dream, Can't I?" Taylor hints at something else: as they sing and Jodie Gates dances their yearning downstage, two men emerge upstage in silhouette. When one puts his hand on the other's shoulder, one suddenly realizes that maybe it wasn't only women who wanted the men home. Nothing is insisted upon; everything is implied. Through small shocks like this one, Taylor shows us what a master he is.

-Robert Ackerman