When the Joffrey Ballet was one of the top ballet companies in the United States, from the 1960s through the ’80s, Gerald Arpino (1923-2008) was its resident choreographer. Since the troupe moved to Chicago in 1995, though, his works have seldom been performed in New York. During 25 years as a dance critic here, I had never seen one — until last week.
I attended the two-week Arpino Dance Festival at the Joyce Theater with curiosity. (It runs through Sunday.) This was a choreographer who had been both popular and mocked. Arlene Croce, The New Yorker’s dance critic of that era, wrote that watching an Arpino ballet was “like getting a love letter from an illiterate, all in capitals.”
From that perspective, the seven works spread across two programs were a little disappointing. Largely missing were the turned-on, Age of Aquarius, fourth-dimension pieces that made Arpino’s name. Without them, the festival was a bit mystifying, a celebration of mediocrity and a time capsule for a vision of ballet even more dated than I had anticipated.
Some of the pieces were truly terrible. “Valentine” (1971) is a joke ballet without humor. A man (the tall Fabrice Calmels) and a woman (the tiny Emily Speed) face off as if in a boxing match, while a double bassist (Kebra-Seyoun Charles) vocalizes and plucks sound effects. The woman is presented as a pathetic weakling whom the beefy man spins overhead. Repeatedly, she jiggles like a bobblehead figure after sliding splat into splits.
The earliest work, “Sea Shadow” (1962), is a fantasy duet. A man puts his ear to a shell and is visited by a woman who might represent the titular shadow. She lies on his prone body and they make swimming gestures with extreme literalness. Even as performed with strength and grace by members of Dance Theater of Harlem, the work is so lacking in dance impulse and continuity that it makes its Ravel score sound flimsy, all fluff.
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The post Gerald Arpino, Minus His Groovy Fourth Dimension appeared first on New York Times.
