Garth Fagan Dance
As always, Garth Fagan’s energetic company, with his strong musical and dramatic imprint, never fails to astound and inspire an audience. In their Joyce Theater season, November 6-11, his company presented two programs, excerpts from his 37 seasons and a world premiere, “Edge/Joy” to music of Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon and performed by the Eastman School of Music Ensemble. Fagan’s 12 current dancers, who have been trained in his Fagan Technique developed in 1970, are based in State University of New York at Brockport, where he is now Distinguished Professor Emeritus.
All his awards and achievements may sound too distinguished for his having produced both a world-renown dance company as well as path-breaking choreography for Walt Disney’s “The Lion King.” But they are both still running. And the awards keep coming.
Jamaican-born Fagan studied with Martha Graham, José Limón and Alvin Ailey, and others to achieve a solid modern dance background. Yet his choreography cannot be considered strictly modern dance since it contains a mix of Afro-Caribbean and Brazilian movements interlarded with his masterful craft.
"Senku" with Nicolette Depass, Steve Humphrey, Micha Scott, Norwood Pennewell photo by Steven Schreiber
“Discipline is Freedom” from his 1983 “Prelude,” almost a standard warm-up, opened the New York season for his company. To music by Wynton Marsalis, in an except from “Griot New York” (1991), there was an unforgettable pas de deux for Norwood Pennewell, who is the company rehearsal director and assistant to Fagan. It was performed with lithesome Nicolette Depass. They create a mesmerizing feat of balances as Depass rests on her partner’s shoulders and continues into forms scarcely touching the floor except with a toe or finger. It is as breathtaking as watching a high-wire artist balancing across a wire. But there is no circus exploit here. It is pure dance.
Pennewell, in “Senku” (2006), dances a moving but not histrionic interpretation of “Deep River” in the excerpt “Feel/Think” to the beautiful spiritual by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor of the same name. Fagan shows restraint in a statement-development-resolution form in the best tradition of solo works. Again in the same work, “Talk: Ms/Mrs.” Depass and Annique Roberts express comfort, understanding and sympathy for each other in an unexpected emotional side of Fagan.
The world premiere of “Edge/Joy” resembled the classic ballet, “Rite of Spring,” yet maintains a “ring-shot” African format: a dancer makes a statement, the group concurs, the ritual progresses as leader and congregation reach a heady conclusion.
Fagan is under appreciated despite the honors. A master-choreographer, he is the most humanistic, musical and inventive second to no other.
The Fagan company tours extensively. Be sure not to miss them. Contact: www.garthfagandance.org.