Art N' About

Author: JOYCE MAN

Dance, and dance of all kinds is very happening. US television audiences have been getting their fair load of salsa, jive, hip-hop and even krumping with Fox Network's "So You Think You Can Dance" competitions and ABC's summer hit series "Dancing With the Stars." Last week on Oct. 26, Zeitgeist Films released Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine's spot-on documentary on the revolutionary twentieth-century Ballet Russes. Here at Middlebury on a completely different spectrum, dance hypes up next week as we play host to artist-in-residence Bill Young of Bill Young and Dancers from New York City.

And from now until mid-November, what's happening in dance will be very happening in the Netherlands - at The Hague to be precise. The Holland Dance Festival is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a full bill of programs under the grand, if slightly over bearing, banner of "Dance Approved." Their task, as Samuel Wuersten, Artistic and Managing Director of the festival announced, is to reassure the pessimists that dance is not dead, that it is "not going anywhere, neither to the museum, nor to the morgue, but right onto the illuminated stages of our beautiful venues."

Judging from the examples mentioned above, such a theme seems well-timed. Perhaps we really have run into a high tide of confusion in dance. In a world where ballroom mixes with reality TV and classical ballet is pirouetting into contemporary movement, where are we placing definitions of dance and how are we siphoning the talent from the pretenders? Mr. Wuersten says that "moderates... claim with ninety-nine point nine percent certainly that no ground-breaking creative talent in dance can be expected anytime soon." That is dire news indeed for an art form so dynamic and enthusiastically received by popular audiences today.

The Hague, of all places, is not where one expects this debate to find closure. London, New York and Moscow are the more pronounced movers and shakers, if you will, of dance discussion. Nevertheless, the Holland Dance Festival is moving ahead full-steam, and brings up two great reasons to watch.

Who better to open the three-week festival but the Nederlands Dans Theater Two (NDR II) with choreography by Prague-born master of dance Jirí Kylián, who studied with the Royal Ballet School in London and the Stuttgart Ballet. The NDR II has become known over the years as a premier dance company, pushing the erotic movement of dance and bending the art form without departing from its core values. As a gem of the Netherlands' national pride and a strong provocative company of fine contemporary dance that is continuously provoking redefinition of dance, NDR II served as an approvable start to "Dance Approved."

In a collection of works by Russell Maliphant on Oct. 31, the festival spotlighted Sylvie Guillem, that much-celebrated, much-critiqued ballet gem of London's Royal Ballet, whose fame got her voted as one of Time Magazine's European heroes. Known for her gymnastic approach to ballet and extreme elasticity in movement and extension, she has for the past fifteen years thrived in the coveted ranks of The Royal Ballet's principal dancers.

In tandem with these openers that hone in on the festival's theme are over 70 workshops for everyone from children to advanced dancers, as well as a much-anticipated dance parade, which took place five days ago, on Oct. 30. No matter what happens at "Dance Approved," the constant movement of dance today prevents its definition. However, Mr. Wuersten is correct that dance is alive and well. For the noble attempt to disprove that "crisis in dance," we fully approve.