Portraits of Butler

Choreographer John Butler, who lived between 1918 and 1993, turned to choreography after dancing with Martha Graham between 1945 and 1955, a period during which Graham’s work became incrementally more balletic. The ways in which Butler synthesized Graham’s technique and classical ballet in his own choreography were evident Tuesday night at the Joyce Theater, when “John Butler: An American Master” opened its weeklong run.The program, presented by the John Butler Foundation as a collaboration by different companies, included Butler’s “Portrait of Billie” (1960), “After Eden” (1966), and “Carmina Burana” (1959), works that will be rotated during the week, with the addition of Butler’s “Othello” (1976) over the weekend. Revived and rehearsed by original cast members, the performances were sharp and the repertory demonstrated that Butler’s best works are well worth revisiting.“Portrait of Billie,” which opened the program, had been revived by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater during its City Center season last December, and was again danced Tuesday night by the Ailey company’s Asha Thomas and Clifton Brown. Here it registered stronger than it had before. The work is performed to a soundtrack of Billie Holiday recordings captured throughout her career.As excellent as Ms. Thomas and Mr. Brown were at City Center, they were even better Tuesday night. Ms. Thomas danced with more beauty and more complex, detailed projection. Child, woman, star —all were present at every moment in her impersonation. Mr. Brown avoided what might be called the potential for “Superfly” cliché in his loutish lover/pusher/manager. The construction and dissolution of psychological defenses is central to this piece, but Ms. Thomas’s absorbing, torrid duet with Mr. Brown found her temporarily stripped of defense: both rapacious and completely vulnerable.“After Eden” was an effective contrast to the Holiday portrait, performed by Desmond Richardson and the Richmond Ballet’s Anne Sidney Davenport. The music by Lee Hoiby is often squawky, but the piece is melancholic rather than searing. Butler shows the presumed Adam and Eve in their individual disaffection and mutual discord after the fall, and there is the poignancy of a great unraveling taking place. In “After Eden,” he also seems to be finding the common ground of an individual relationship as a symbol for a collective shift in awareness: the arrival of shame and self-consciousness. The partnering is intricate but not gratuitously so, and Ms. Davenport and Mr. Richardson performed it sensitively.Following the intermission came “Carmina Burana,” performed by the Richmond Ballet, at which Butler revived the piece shortly before he died. “Carmina Burana.” is set to Carl Off’s choral setting of 13th-century poems and songs discovered in the library of a Medieval Bavarian monastery. According to the program note, the texts were composed by minstrels and monks “who had freed themselves of monastic discipline,” and this piece contains a vibrant dialectic between psychic constriction and release. It addresses the cycles and spectrum of life; Christian theology is ever-present, but so is the persistence of pagan culture. The rough and the smooth, the sacred and the profane — all are present, as are love sentiments alternately chivalric and bawdy. Four soloists, danced Tuesday night by Danaë Carter, Valerie Tellman, Igor Antonov, and Justin McMillan, led a 12-member ensemble that was well-rehearsed and fully committed to the work.Until April 15 (175 Eighth Ave. at 19th Street, 212-691-9740).

Portraits of Butler

Portraits of Butler

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