sarma

When I told Jeff Duncan that I wanted to write an article on his style - in honor of his Brooklyn Academy concerts - he said lightly, "If you figure out what it is, let me know." I thought later that very few contemporary choreographers start out with any idea of an individual style. They know what interests them, and the style follows.

Duncan is interested in people, singly and in humanity-hordes. This is probably why some years ago he chose to work with Anna Sokolow and why in certain of his own dances (particularly the humanity ones) her influence is visible.

His movement is partially a spin-off from his own tall, columnar body. He enjoys the feel of verticality - body pulled straight and high, arms hanging at the sides - and also the plunging away from it into fails and crouches. Sometimes the verticality is re-stated by alert drops to one knee or shoulder-stands. Thus the ground becomes charged in his dances: in his nature pieces, it is benevolent, magical; in his violent or unhappy pieces, it often appears to be jolting or shifting.

He tends to steer away from what might look gimmicky. Arms are unusually neutral - hanging down straight or maybe held out to the sideuntil they are needed for hanging on to something or, very occasionally, for a specific dramatic gesture. In most of his group dances he seems to avoid complex phrases of movement in favor of repeating chains (leaps, piques, turns) punctuated by encounters between dancers or single contrasting moments.

Before I ever performed in his dances, I was most impressed by a sensitivity he has for the flow of group energy. It has something to do with musicality too, I suppose. In his group works (Statement is one that appeared on the Brooklyn program), the changes in the flow and direction of energy are handled very sensitively and very theatrically as well. just recently I noticed an interesting point: this energy is almost always the same for everyone within the group. They all feel it. Even though specific movements may be different, it is as if the same tide has them in its grip. This, I think, is what gives the humanity-hordes effect - a metaphor for the human condition that we all share.

To me, some of his most effective movement as movement has come in those dances in which he was concerned with the individual or with a very specific situation. For instance, in his Winesburg Portraits, which I saw in 1964 and performed in in 1970, the movement for each of the character vignettes arises out of character and situation. Elmer Cowley, the kid who is considered "strange," performs stiff, twisting motions of his whole torso on a stationary base that expresses his locked-in feelings. The minister uses his fingers wriggling at his mouth as a desperate sermon. A lonely wife clenches and reclenches her hands with a sharp, dry noise. In Resonances (1969), Duncan also achieved some memorable movement. The dance is a suite of delicate, gentle little pieces-mostly solos. They seem designed to capture some quality of the dancers who first performed them. One section takes advantage of Lenore Latimer's long legs, the odd vulnerability of her knee and ankle joints. Another is made for Aaron Osborne's soft kind of strength and alert spine. And so on.

Diminishing Landscape, which I have always been in and never seen, has a first section that feels very distinctive because the movement arises out of a specific motivation-four people marching, covering ground together, with bodies poised for action and eyes focused on something outside them and all around them. Duncan's newest work, The Glade, also owes some very beautiful moments to movement that arises from a specific situation. (The dance may be some sort of landmark: the first male love duet, the first homosexual dance with a happy ending.) The dance begins in near darkness, a huddle of bodies just visible in the center. One of Olivier Messaien's Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jésus is played (and beautifully, by Ilene Furman) in its entirety before any movement takes place. This prelude is stormy; then the music becomes very delicate, and the two men (Ross Parkes and Daniel Maloney) make their first gestures. Still tangled together, slow and trusting, they stretch their arms to clasp hands. One leans over the other; the first to rise gently tumbles the other over his back so that they stand up together. The two men are nearly naked, dressed in skillfully designed (by Leor C. Warner) scraps of leather that give the effect of outlining some of their muscles. I found this whole opening very beautiful to watch. The dance is brief-an idealized pas de deux of male love in the way that a ballet pas de deux is of a particular sort of male-female relationship. The Glade even emphasizes parts of the body that might be considered beautiful in such an affair - the curve of the buttocks or the muscles of the shoulders. The two men seem to have some doubts and occasionally dance as if the world is holding them at bay. At the end, a slide of a starry sky is projected on the backdrop, suggesting that they are embarking on a kind of cosmic voyage.

This article is a kind of first too. Although I am obliged much of the time to write about the work of friends, colleagues, and even people who taught me how to dance, this is the first time I've tried to write anything about a choreographer right after a concert of his in which I appeared as a performer. There are certain things I can't talk about. For instance, in Vinculum, I feel a new spontaneity in Duncan's work, but I have no idea whether the work really appears free. Oh, well, I've always felt that this column should be called Inside Dance.