A Restrained Sequence of Manners

Arococo pavilion looked out onto a beaux arts-style garden in the scena frons of “Hommage a Marie Salle,” a program by the New York Baroque Dance Company, presented Friday evening inside Florence Gould Hall. Only footsteps away from Midtown, the painted backdrop plunged the audience in steep, nearly vertigo inducing perspective down a central garden path, around a mythological statue, and toward manicured hedgerows that narrowed to a vanishing point in the distance. The company’s performance produced a similar effect of trompe l’oeil, ctransporting us across the centuries for a look at that remote moment when theatrical dance was just beginning to emerge out of court entertainment as its own distinct art form.The 10-member troupe, led by Catherine Turocy, has steadily gained renown in the small world of historical dance for its reconstructions of 18th-century choreography, in particular the early masterpieces of the French school. The exquisite costumes (bodices and wide-hipped panniers for the women, breeches and hose for the men, wigs for both), and live musical accompaniment of period instruments help to give the dances an aura of their original noblesse.The four works on the program celebrate the 250th anniversary of the death of Marie Salle, the influential 18th-century choreographer and dancer. They reflect her dramatic range as it developed throughout her life: from her childhood roots in the physical humor of commedia dell’arte to her tenure at the Paris Opera, where she choreographed suites for herself in the works of Rameau and Handel.Before her, dance had largely held a subordinate position to drama and music, served up as either pageantry or diversionary interludes. At best, it gained a hyphenated status as balletopera or ballet-pantomime. Raised in a family of traveling performers (her uncle was a famous Harlequin, her brother and she shared the part of Pierrot), Salle first infused the codified steps with an expressive potential that placed the three disciplines on equal footing. In a word, she invented the ballet d’action (traditionally ascribed to her student Noverre), a term that encapsulates acting, dancing, and music in a coherent theatrical unity. Facial expressions replaced masks; nuance and wit trumped athletic spectacle. Because of her understatement, she was even dubbed the “muse of gracious, modest gesture.”Friday’s program began with a dance suite from Handel’s pastoral opera “Ariodante,” but the highlight was “Terpsicore,” a prologue to the opera “Il Pastor Fido.” In it, Apollo and Erato, both performed by vocal soloists, celebrate the joys of dance; the goddess, meanwhile, depicted the different states of love through movement. Caroline Copeland delivered a lovely performance in the role: She tottered self-consciously and twirled around excitedly on one heel, a finger at her lip (“Your every turn enchants the heart, and fills it with delight”). The Three Graces attending to her exhibited a fine delicacy: Their arms were slightly curved in elbow-length gloves, flicked straight accentually by their wrists. The arias include challenging runs of bright coloratura, and both countertenor Steven Rickards and soprano Ava Pine sang with splendid control and polish.“Les caracteres de la danse,” a drawing-room duet, illustrated different theatrical dances in dramatic situations. Ms. Turocy and Timothy Kasper were hilarious in their burlesque of conventional social roles. Mr. Kasper took his part as a cavalier literally, drawing his sword only to see it fended off by his partner’s fan and a batting of the eyelashes. A dropped kerchief brought attention to the complicated steps, as did Ms. Turocy’s power to elicit pity with a glance.In “Pygmalion,” a crowded studio enlivened the character dancing. Sarah Edgar assumed Salle’s famous role as the statue, in bodice-free white drapery and rouged cheeks, magically coming to life through the artfulness of her gestures. Meticulously orchestrated, she and the other performers strolled, demurred, insisted – always with the musical phrase.The dancing, of course, was less reminiscent of ballet as we have come to know it than of a restrained sequence of manners, many of them modeled on musical structures and social dances of the period – whether a double-time gavotte, a saraband in triple, or a contredanse finale. It was illuminating to see pantomime portrayed with such choreographic intent, modulated to emphasize the music, the mood, and formal balance. It occurred to me that, in our embrace of Balanchine’s plotless ballets, we sometimes forget that the relationship between story and dance does not have to be restrictive. In fact, the situation onstage can help bring out the darker, more human side of rather polite music (Rameau even referred to his compositions as “a physicomathematical science.”)Just as in musical recordings with period instruments, this kind of dance performance transforms work that is familiar in its modern incarnation into something strange and novel. It can be like looking at an object through the wrong end of a telescope: The jarring experience says much more about your habits of looking than the quality of the lens.Similarly, the evening was a lesson in perspective for anyone questioning dance’s relationship to the other arts. The company members are a smart group, and it came as no surprise to read that many of them lead double lives in classical ballet and modern dance. Much of the interaction between Apollo, Erato, and Terpsicore can even be seen to parallel the multimedia proponents of the raging tanztheater. But luckily this is only one reward.

A Restrained Sequence of Manners

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