Metroland Online

All the glories displayed in nGarth Fagan’s newest dances are laid out for the audience in Prelude— Discipline is Freedom (1981), which opened the company’s transcendent program last Friday at the Egg.

Prelude works as a primer for the audience and a stamina-builder for Fagan’s 13 ravishing dancers, filled as it is with an increasingly textured set of signature moves: heads moving side to side, arms whirring like winches, bends, contractions, balances on one leg, visibly rippling vertebrae, cakewalk promenades with high-arched chests followed by gazelle-like jetes.

Solo phrases build to unison progressions, set to the piano jazz of Abdullah Ibrahim and the intelligent drumming of Max Roach. Dancers change on the instant from gravity-bound Afro-Caribbean steps to long-limbed ballet stretches and back again. The structure is clear and always exciting.

Fagan’s vocabulary is like no other. In 1970, he envisioned a company that would dance his velvety choreography composed of torso-centered modern dance energy, rooted traditional moves, and balletic lines that are breathtakingly soaring, but deliberately skewed. His dancers work in a studio with no mirrors. They create shapes from the inside out.

Fagan doesn’t alter this vocabulary—why would he?—but, he experiments by applying it to longer, sometimes programmatic works that are inspired by unusual music or the work of visual artists he admires. The major pieces in Friday’s generous program were two three-part suites: DancecollageforRomie (2003), a kinetic response to the collages of Romare Bearden, and Translation Transition (2002), an exuberant party to music by Jazz Jamaica All Stars.

Like the dance, the music for Romie is a collage. Part One, an intentionally disconnected display of the materials to be used, has dancers crouching or spinning to the circusy music of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Each dancer enacts his or her own phrase, like a circus troupe warming up before showtime. Dancers make elaborate bows with their ankles crossed in front and their arms crossed behind. Steve Humphrey (at 52, an original company member) threads through, carrying a green balloon shaped like a snake. Two women make a push-me, pull-you creature as the trumpets flare.

The amorous music of Villa-Lobos suffuses the duet by Norwood Pennewell and Keisha Clarke that follows, called Detail:Down Home. Also, it mirrors images from Bearden’s work. Clarke jumps straight up into Pennewell’s arms and then somehow fastens onto his back with one leg straight up and the other jutting out at a stunning angle. These two are flamingoes or giraffes, or gods who touch foreheads in love and mutual respect, then lie down together.

Part Three, Conjur Man, to Jelly Roll Morton’s “Jungle Blues” (performed by Branford Marsalis on his recorded tribute to Bearden) recapitulates the moves and props introduced in the opening part. Now Pennewell is a trickster in a ringmaster’s red jacket, moving across the stage, legs twittering to the nasty sound of a trombone. All Fagan’s favorite moves combine into new and startling group shapes that split off and recombine in three face-forward chunks, the bright-colored parts reproducing segments of Bearden’s collage.

On a smaller scale, Nicolette Depass danced a pleading solo, Dance Psalmody 69 (1985) to the singing of countertenor Alfred Deller. In total contrast, Clarke, Bill Ferguson, and Sharon Skepple led the company in Touring Jubilee 1924 (Professional) (1982), in which all the women are sassy, all the men know how to shimmy, and the mood is purely exuberant. Music by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band is a perfect accompaniment to the cakewalks and Charlestons of these flirty couples.

The closing dance, Translation Transition shows the essence of Fagan’s aesthetic. The dancers take each move and play it out as far as it will go, and then further. They develop arm and leg extensions slowly, smoothly, intently, elastically, culminating in extravagant balances. They may look off-center, but it’s clear they are centered in themselves.

Fast and slow, high and low moves butt up against each other. Groovy hip action goes with slackly swinging arms. The power of unison passages blows through the group like a windstorm in a wheatfield. It’s a demanding workout and an unabashed good time—so good, the audience gave the troupe a standing ovation and demanded and got a reprise of the last swinging section as an encore.

Note: Fagan’s dancers, like no other troupe I’ve seen, always come out to the lobby to meet the audience one-on-one. Dancers come up and shake your hand, introduce themselves by name, and ask where you’re from. Their graciousness, part of Fagan’s training, has made friends of audiences worldwide. As if their dancing weren’t enough.

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