Second in a series.
This has been the century of American dominance in dance. From Isadora Duncan to Mark Morris, jazz-tap to hip-hop, dance on film, television, and computers and on the Broadway stage, America led the way through most of the 1900s. No other country is even in contention. Russian ballet may have ruled as the century opened, but less than three decades into it, Russian ballet moved to America, with George Balanchine.
The greatest classical choreographer of the century, Balanchine started his career in St. Petersburg and then brought his talents to Paris. But he spent nearly 50 years, the bulk of his career, making ballets in New York. His transplant was prompted not just by a job offer from Filene's heir Lincoln Kirstein: He wanted, he said, to come to a country where all the girls looked like Ginger Rogers.
In 20th-century modern dance, Germany played a key role, through such important choreographers as Mary Wigman and Kurt Jooss. Jooss's 1932 ''The Green Table,'' produced between the two World Wars, still stands as the greatest antiwar ballet of the century. But the rise of the Nazis either stifled Germany's most creative voices or sent them into exile. It was American modern dancers, from Duncan to Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, and the Judson Dance Theater, who wrote the script DANCE, Page N8
for the rest of the world.
Classical dance, like modern, has seen important choreographers outside the United States in this century, starting with the Russians. Mikhail Fokine, creator of ''Les Sylphides,'' ''Petrouchka,'' and ''The Firebird,'' was even more significant as a reformer: His ''Five Principles,'' published in a 1914 letter to the London Times, argued passionately for a new movement vocabulary for each new ballet, ''instead of merely giving combinations of ready-made and established steps,'' he wrote. This was, in a way, the antithesis of the Balanchinian delight in manipulating those established steps. It was a modern dance credo. ''Modern'' also describes the few works Vaslav Nijinsky made before insanity silenced him, including the 1913 ''Rite of Spring,'' the century's most scandalous ballet.
Britain and its outposts produced great storytellers in dance: Frederick Ashton, John Cranko, Kenneth MacMillan, all masters of the narrative in a century when abstraction came to the fore. Every so often, a gifted ballet maker would pop up in some other country: Birgit Cullberg in Sweden, say, or Jiri Kylian in the Netherlands. Many would include French-born Maurice Bejart on that select list. (I wouldn't.)
But the action was, in the main, in the United States. Balanchine dominated, his supremacy reinforced by the Ford Foundation's unprecedented $7.75 million grant to American dance in 1963, which went mainly to Balanchine satellites, establishing his style and repertory across the country. His fellow New York City Ballet choreographer Jerome Robbins also ranks as one of the century's greats. So does London-born Antony Tudor, who moved to New York in 1939 and created a small body of brooding psychological dramas for City Ballet's great rival, American Ballet Theatre. If I had to pick a single performance from my decades of dance watching to see again on my deathbed, it would be Gelsey Kirkland in Tudor's heartbreaking 1975 ''The Leaves Are Fading,'' in which the protagonist recalls the love of her youth.
Diaghilev's influence
The defining moment of 20th-century Western theatrical dance was the May 19, 1909, Paris premiere of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. In his 20 years of presenting performances in the West, Diaghilev offered a world of spectacle, surprise, and virtuosity. He, and his dancers, had a global influence. They toured tirelessly: Anna Pavlova, after she left Diaghilev's troupe, became the greatest ambassador ballet has ever seen. Ballets Russes spinoffs survived through most of the century. In the 1950s and '60s, when I was growing up in Worcester, a Ballets Russes descendant still came to town every year. The troupe's annual visits to small American cities sparked many future balletomanes' interest, mine included.
The Ballets Russes was an early case of dance going global, a phenomenon furthered by film and television. Diaghilev also championed collaboration. Choreographers, composers, and designers had always worked together, of course, but Diaghilev pushed the idea that they were equals. Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Poulenc were among the composers he commissioned; Picasso, Rouault, and Matisse numbered among the designers. The notion of a team of titans continued through the century, in, for instance, Martha Graham's historic 1944 ''Appalachian Spring,'' with decor by the great sculptor Isamu Noguchi and a score that would become one of Aaron Copland's signatures. Later, there were Merce Cunningham's collaborations with John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg.
The modern dance that developed at the turn of the century rebelled against the stale conventions of European ballet and the even more pallid pre-Balanchine classicism that had survived the trip across the Atlantic. But the battle between ballet and modern dance is more in the minds of the media, and the public, than the choreographers'. Fokine's reforms, for instance, were linked to Duncan's ideas about unfettered expression. Balanchine collaborated with Martha Graham in the 1950s. In 1973, Twyla Tharp created ''Deuce Coupe,'' which was performed by her own company and the dancers of the Joffrey Ballet, together on the same stage. ''Deuce Coupe'' was also notable for its score, by the Beach Boys, an example of the 20th-century fondness for blending ''high'' and ''low'' culture.
In the last decades of the century, few great choreographers of strictly classical lineage emerged, and the ''crossover'' ballet was born. Modern choreographers were tapped to create works for ballet companies, and it turned out they weren't just filling gaps: Tharp, Paul Taylor, Mark Morris, and other modern dancers have made some of the best works that ballet companies now perform.
Morris gets my vote as the preeminent choreographer at century's end, either modern or classical. He can work in both idioms, creating for his own troupe or for a top classical company. What links him both to Duncan and to Balanchine, and distinguishes him from his peers, is his intense musicality, whether he's choreographing to trashy Thai pop songs or the Baroque scores for which he has a special affinity. In the late '80s, Morris and his company were in residence at the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels; they were, in effect, the national ballet company. In Belgium, Morris made works including his magisterial 1988 ''L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato.'' A European opera house gave him the stability virtually all American choreographers lack. We may boast the world's best dance makers, but there's no boasting to be done about our shameful lack of official support for them.
Ironically, it's been the Russians who have occasionally come to the rescue of American modern dance in this century. Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, the most celebrated of the dancer-defectors and the men who revitalized male dancing in the West, left Russia partly in search of the liberty to perform something other than a Communist-dictated repertory. Their desire to dance the works of Graham, Taylor, and Morris, and the willingness of the public to pay almost anything to see the Russian stars in their prime, at times helped keep American modern dance companies financially afloat.
Who can dance? Who can make dances? The 20th century has broadened the answers to both questions. Early modern dance, for instance, was a matriarchy. When European opera houses had a lock on serious theatrical dance, women choreographers didn't stand a chance. American women - Duncan, Loie Fuller, Ruth St. Denis, and others - made their chance, along with a freer form of movement. While men have caught up, modern dance has remained a field where women have never occupied a secondary position.
A secondary position was what black ballet dancers occupied until New York City Ballet star Arthur Mitchell, the first African-American to make it big in ballet, started the Dance Theatre of Harlem in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination. Black dancers had been expected to dance black material, as they did in the company of Alvin Ailey, whose 1960 ''Revelations,'' set to spirituals, is a 20th-century touchstone. Mitchell's point was that classical ballet was everyone's heritage, that a black ballerina could dance ''Giselle.''
His company helped unravel traditional hierarchies. Taylor had done that, too, by choosing dancers for their differences rather than their cookie-cutter uniformity. Choreographers including Meredith Monk and Bill T. Jones began using heavy-set dancers. Liz Lerman formed a company that included senior citizens. There are now enough wheelchair dance troupes to stage wheelchair dance festivals. These developments aren't merely PC: They go along with a genuine interest in diversity because it's interesting, not just good for you.
Dance that was once ''ethnic'' is now ''art.'' African dance turns up in mainstream theaters, on concert series with major ballet and modern companies, and there's growing awareness that the term ''African'' encompasses a great many styles of dance. It's a big continent. There's also new awareness that traditional forms aren't all that non-Western countries have to offer, that, say, Japanese dance didn't stop with kabuki. Japan's haunting postwar butoh dance won a wide public in the West - and a loyal one. Butoh has outlived fad status.
American jazz-tap dance was revived in recent decades, as its greatest practitioners were dying off - but in time for young dancers like Savion Glover to benefit from contact with the legends. Native American dance was reformulated for the proscenium stage, where it earned an enthusiastic audience. Vernacular modes from other countries - including Argentina's tango - have earned virtual cult status.
The definition of dance in the 20th century grew to include choreography on trapezes, underwater, and on ice. Ice dancing has been around in one way or another since ice skates, but in the late 20th century it became a respected form rather than a novelty. I treasure the memory, now more than a decade old, of John Curry appearing between the parted curtains at the rear of the Metropolitan Opera House and skating straight downstage in one serene gesture, moving and still at the same time. Just as Balanchine made ballet ever more athletic - bigger, higher, faster - Curry and others made a form of athletics into art.
Furthering drama
Among Fokine's reforms was a call for dance to further drama rather than interrupt it. In the 18th century, the composer-choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre had fought for pretty much the same thing. In the mid-20th century, so did Agnes De Mille, in a string of Broadway hits that included ''Oklahoma!,'' ''Carousel,'' and ''Brigadoon.''
The Broadway musical became the forum for some of the great dance of the century, starting with Balanchine's 1936 ''On Your Toes,'' with its sizzling ''Slaughter on Tenth Avenue'' number. Robbins's ''West Side Story'' is the zenith of dance as the very heart of the musical, with choreographer doubling as director, a practice continued in Michael Bennett's 1975 ''A Chorus Line.''
The movies brought dance to audiences of unprecedented size, who lined up to watch James Cagney, Gene Kelly, and other greats. Busby Berkeley was the early master of the cinematic dance spectacle; Fred Astaire, of dance intimacy on-screen. Astaire and Rogers rank as one of the great 20th-century dance partnerships, right up there with Nureyev and the incandescent Margot Fonteyn.
The film with dance as its raison d'etre took root: The Gregory Hines-Mikhail Baryshnikov ''White Nights'' is a good example of recent vintage. Television, from Ed Sullivan to PBS's ''Great Performances'' series, has brought serious dance into millions of homes. But television has in general disappointed dance fans. Rarely has it responded to excellence in choreography with respectful camera work and full-length, not fractured, presentations.
Legions of film and video folk have experimented with dance, sometimes with stellar results - which tend to be shown in art cinemas or university auditoriums rather than mass-market venues. Film and video have also been invaluable in documenting dance, which is rightly called the most ephemeral art. While there have been efforts to notate and preserve it since the Renaissance, it's only in the 20th century that effective systems like Labanotation, a symbol-language arranged on a vertical staff, have been developed.
New technology can also prolong the life of a dance. Consider something called ''motion capture,'' in which reflective markers are attached to the dancer, their movements recorded by a dozen cameras surrounding the stage, then channeled into a single file that can drive a simulated 3-D figure on a computer.
Motion capture is used to preserve choreography, which became an even more urgent matter in the age of AIDS, a plague that has decimated the dance world. Motion capture is also used to create work. A superb example is ''Ghostcatching,'' a recent collaboration between choreographer-dancer Bill T. Jones and digital artists Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar. In this ''virtual dance installation'' you watch the lines of Jones's body and the path where he's been; you watch him multiply and divide. You marvel at the poetry of the piece, at how far beyond technical gimmickry it goes. You remember that preservation is particularly pressing to Jones, who has been HIV-positive for over a decade. You witness what may well be the future of the art.
