BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE & CO.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Co. brought to a brilliant close the Dance Center’s series on the African American tradition in modern dance. Jones is black, but there’s not much that’s overtly African American in his dances. Like the works of other groups who appeared in the series, they are just unquenchably alive.
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Zane, who died of AIDS in 1988, was white. His work was represented on this program by The Gift/No God Logic (1987), the last dance he choreographed. It is austere, dry, very quiet and measured. Some of it is performed to arias from Verdi’s La forza del destino, but much of it–and all of the last section–is performed in silence. This highly formal quartet makes eloquent use of the stage space with simple patterns, simple poses and gestures, and unusual partnering. Jones’s Forsythia (1989), also on this program, seems to take some of its character from Zane’s work: it’s almost idiosyncratically personal, performed mostly in silence or to Zane’s recorded reading of texts describing two dreams.
You can’t believe Lawrence Goldhuber is a dancer when you first see him onstage. He’s fat and balding and has a schlumpy look that makes it seem far more likely he’ll break into a comedian’s patter than into dance. But dance he does, and with a remarkable poise, buoyancy, and musical power. Watching him perform is the sheerest fun–when he went offstage now and again during the first section, I found myself hoping he wouldn’t play only a cameo role. And Jones uses him with a madman’s prescience. Sometimes Goldhuber’s great height and bulk are employed straightforwardly, as when he stands at the center of a quartet of dancers who adopt stiff, upright poses. One by one each of the four topples in a different pose and is caught by Goldhuber, who receives each of them effortlessly but carefully, as if rescuing statues from shattering were his life’s work. When he topples, all four of them catch him. At other times Jones choreographs against Goldhuber’s type: Goldhuber takes his turn, for instance, at moving swiftly across the floor with a partner and twirling gracefully beneath that dancer’s arm.
