 Audiences
worldwide have been queuing up and around the block to see “The
Lion King,” for which Garth Fagan won the 1998 Tony Award
for Choreography. While the show, one of the longest running hits
on Broadway, has already had 2,928 performances (as of October 17)
with no stop in sight, an unadulterated dose of Fagan’s searing
originality and eclectic imagination will be available for eight
performances only when Garth Fagan Dance, Fagan’s own Rochester-based
company, performs at The Joyce Theater, November 16–21.
One of the season highlights is the
world premiere of Fagan’s “- - - - ing.” Set to
Johannes Brahms’s “Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet
in B minor, op. 115” and marking Fagan’s first use of
the composer’s music in a full work since his 1988 “Landscape
for 10,” “- - - - ing” is divided into three sections
with names that help demystify the dance’s title: “-
- - - ing gains;” “caring flames;” and “howling
pains loving gains.” In the piece, a work for twelve dancers,
Fagan imaginatively exposes and intensifies the beauty and formality
of Brahms by opposing 19th and 21st century musical textures and
rhythms.
While Brahms may be one of Fagan’s
favorite composers, the choreographer’s taste is not confined
to the traditional classics. Witness this season:
“Prelude–‘Discipline
is Freedom,’” a 1983 work that celebrates Fagan’s
unique vocabulary and the dancers’ command of his wit and
elegant technical intricacies, is set to Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar
Brand) and Max Roach.
Performed to music by Wynton Marsalis,
“Trips and Trysts” (2000) brims with dancers skittering,
scampering and spinning, their bodies taking positions balanced,
but often breathtakingly off-balanced with the greatest of ease.
The dance, suggesting the little alliances and dalliances that happen
between people during the trips they go on and go through, shimmers
with Fagan’s appreciation of Marsalis’s jazz score.
Set to music by “The Lion King”
composer Lebo M, “Woza,” which premiered in 1999 and
means come and also come celebrate in Zulu, is a series of suites
that move from allusions of the agony of a slave ship to a communal
outbreak of exuberant celebration.
“Translation Transition,”
first performed in 2002, conveys a sense of community, once again
revealing Fagan’s deep humanist streak. Like the Jazz Jamaica
All Stars score that accompanies “Translation Transition,”
the dance explores the similarities, differences and meeting points
between American jazz and the traditional music of Jamaica (ska,
reggae and mento).
And finally, there will be last year’s
hit, “DANCECOLLAGEFORROMIE,” set to music by Dmitri
Shostakovich, Villa-Lobos and Ferd “Jelly Roll” Morton.
The dance was inspired by and dedicated to one of Fagan’s
heroes, the great American visual artist Romare Bearden. Fagan honors
Bearden with choreography that draws upon the poignant spirit of
the painter, his juxtaposition of color, shape and pattern, his
love of humanity–qualities that Fagan shares.
Jamaican-born Garth Fagan began his
career in dance by touring Latin America with Ivy Baxter and her
Jamaican national dance company. Baxter, Lavinia Williams and Pearl
Primus, famed Caribbean dance teachers, strongly influenced Fagan’s
work, as did his later studies with Martha Graham, Mary Hinkson,
Alvin Ailey and José Limón. A graduate of Wayne State
University, Fagan became director of Detroit’s All-City Dance
Company and performed with and choreographed for the Dance Theatre
of Detroit and the Detroit Contemporary Dance Company. In 1970,
he moved to Rochester and founded Garth Fagan Dance, now in its
34th season. The company has appeared in many major venues and arts
festivals throughout the United States, as well as internationally
in France, Turkey, Switzerland, Israel, Germany, Australia and Africa.
In addition to the dances he creates
for his own company, Fagan has choreographed pieces for Judith Jamison,
Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and
Limón Dance Company. In May 1999, he created one section
of “Ellington Elation,” a trio of pieces commissioned
by New York City Ballet in honor of Duke Ellington’s centenary
and NYCB’s 50th anniversary.
For his choreography in Walt Disney’s
“The Lion King,” Fagan received the 1998 Tony Award,
the 1998 Drama Desk Award, the 1998 Outer Critics Circle Award,
the 1998 Astaire Award, the 2000 Laurence Olivier Award, the 2001
Ovation Award and the 2004 Helpmann Award. In 2001, Fagan received
the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award; that same year,
he was also the recipient of the Golden
Plate Award, was inducted into the American Academy of Achievement
and was presented with the Order of Distinction in the rank of Commander
by the Jamaican government. Fagan has also received a New York Dance
and Performance Award (Bessie), as have four other members of his
company: Norwood Pennewell, Steve Humphrey, Natalie Rogers and Sharon
Skepple.
Prior to the Joyce Theater season,
Garth Fagan Dance will perform at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles,
CA (October 23–24) and the Memorial Art Gallery (November
7) in Rochester, NY. The tour continues with stops at Nazareth College
Arts Center in Rochester, NY (November 30–December 5); Imperial
Theatre in Augusta, GA (January 21); University of Maine in Orono,
ME (January 27); Flynn Theatre for the Performing Arts in Burlington,
VT (February 5); and Blumenthal Performing Arts Center in Charlotte,
NC (February 12). The company will also perform at Paramount Theater
in Seattle, WA (April 9); The Egg in Albany, NY (April 22); Kennedy
Center in Washington, DC (April 24); and Paramount Theatre in Charlottesville,
VA (April 26).
The evening curtain at The Joyce Theater,
Tuesday through Saturday, is at 8pm; Sunday’s evening curtain
is at 7:30pm. There will also be 2pm matinees on Saturday and Sunday.
Tickets are $42 and are available at the box office, online at www.joyce.org
or by calling 212-242-0800. The Joyce Theater is located at 175
Eighth Avenue at 19th Street.
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Garth Fagan Dance is supported, in part, with public funds from
the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council
on the Arts. These performances are supported, in part, by the Anne
Hayden McQuay Arts and Cultural Fund and funds from the Mary W.
Clarke Estate.
The Garth Fagan Dance 2004-2005 season made possible, in part, by
the generous support of Altria Group, Inc., The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, Eastman Kodak Company, Gleason Foundation and The J.P.
Morgan Chase Foundation.
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