`Art isn`t easy,” goes the ironic Stephen Sondheim lyric.
He`s talking, actually, about funding art, not painting it. And financial woes are only part of the struggle. Three dance companies about to perform here do so in an atmosphere that is anything but easy thanks to the doldrums afoot in the world of serious dance.
The Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre (in its first appearance here in two years) is an established national troupe with a multiracial identity and a history as a repository for national minority choreographers. The Joseph Holmes Dance Theatre is similarly multiracial, but with an explicitly Chicago look and Chicago personnel, both on and off stage. And the new David Parsons Company is a small but highly promising troupe, about to make its third appearance in our area.
The leaders of all three are haunted, Judith Jamison of Ailey and Randy Duncan of Holmes by specters of the late founders of their troupes, and Parsons by time lost to a serious injury.
Only two years have passed since Alvin Ailey`s death and Judith Jamison`s official ascendancy to head of his company, but Jamison, perhaps because it fits with her robust personality, is flying high and confident.
”I`m trying to continue the same tradition, to look back and forward at the same time,” she says.
To date she`s doing that by blending Ailey`s longtime approach, and dancers, with new works, new people and new ideas. She`s keeping a truckload of Ailey favorites, including ”Revelations” (”an American classic,” she says). She has even revived a piece the company hadn`t performed in years,
”Hidden Rites”; it`s full of stylistic surprises, she says.
The works of Ulysses Dove, Donald McKayle, Talley Beatty and other names long familiar to Ailey fans remain in the repertoire of the troupe, set for an engagement March 7-10 at the Civic Opera House. But Jamison has her touches, too, including ”Forgotten Time,” a 1989 work she staged to music by the Bulgarian women`s chorus Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares; a short piece by Kris World, ”Read Matthew 11:28,” set to Bobby McFerrin, ”a tiny jewel of a piece”; and ”North Star,” set to Philip Glass, a favorite in the repertoire of choreographer Lar Lubovitch. Jamison calls Lubovitch`s style ”a silky, long ribbon of movement” and deliberately highlights its distinctiveness in the company`s repertoire by plopping it in otherwise all-Ailey concerts.
Jamison has plenty of Ailey veterans among her dancers, including Dudley Williams, now in his 27th year. A ”veteran with a capital `V,` he reinvents himself on stage every night,” Jamison says. But she also brought in seven
”youngsters” from her own Jamison Project, the dance troupe she managed before Ailey took ill and she came on board to help.
Financial times are tough, with cuts in arts grants a daily threat (New York Gov. Mario Cuomo`s proposed state budget includes a 56 percent cut in arts funding). ”We`re surviving, and we`re trying to be responsible with the funds we have,” increasing outreach programs and signing on Baltimore recently as a second home city, she says.
Of course, the ever-elegant Jamison, who starred on Broadway in
”Sophisticated Ladies,” might boost box office by dancing herself, but
”if I were dancing in Chicago, I wouldn`t publicize it. This is the company`s time, and I really want to drive that home right now.”
The times are no less trying for Randy Duncan and his Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theatre. Last fall, things were looking up. The troupe was all set to spend December on a profitable international tour.
Unfortunately, the tour was for Israel. By November, it was off.
That, plus a delay in expected funds, brought on a financial crisis. Instead of a tour, the dancers spent the month of December in a surprise layoff.
”That tour was in the making for two years,” Duncan says with regret.
Things now look a little brighter as troupe gets ready for its March 1-2 engagement at the Opera House. Delayed grants are coming in, easing the cash- flow crunch, and Oprah Winfrey-a longtime fan-stepped in with a $25,000 grant to fund the troupe`s opening-night benefit. (”Let`s hope it opens others` eyes,” says an eager Duncan.)
Meanwhile, Duncan, who took over the company several years ago after the death of founder Joseph Holmes, is putting his own distinctive stamp on the troupe. In Chicago he`ll unveil two new works, including a trio, ”Copland Motets,” set to music the American composer wrote while in France. It`s
”cathedral-like, Gregorian and spiritual” in sound, Duncan says.
Duncan will also introduce ”Sparring Partners,” a new piece for five dancers with an all-Chicago flavor; it features music by local composer Tom Kast (who composed the score for Duncan`s ”Women`s Work”) and costumes by the fashion department of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Just prior to playing at home, the troupe is finishing a cross-country tour that takes it to Salt Lake City, Raleigh and Chapel Hill, N.C., and Northern Illinois University. Meetings are under way to re-examine the budget next season and possibly cut the dancers back to 10-month from 12-month contracts.
”But our dancers are loyal and they understand the situation,” Duncan says. ”This is happening all over the country.”
Life hasn`t exactly been a bed of roses for David Parsons, either. Not long ago, he was laid up by a knee injury that required surgery. It put him out of commission for about eight months, causing him to miss an important tour of his own eight-member, four-year-old troupe.
But he`s back now, reprising his incomparable now-you-see-him, now-you-don`t strobe solo in ”Caught” as part of his troupe`s appearance March 1 Centre East in Skokie.
His classic ”The Envelope” features unearthly creatures hooded in black cavorting about in some mysterious cloak-and-dagger pursuit of the title object. It reveals a choreographer who a combination of sci-fi buff, spy novelist, surreal painter and comic buffoon. That this impish, cerebral choreographer is boyish and all-American in appearance only adds to the intrigue.
Recently, he also has appeared with the New York City Ballet in a special work by Peter Martins and with Mikhail Baryshnikov and his White Oak Dance Project. Prior to coming to Chicago, his troupe will finish an important stint at New York`s City Center.
Parsons` captivating, almost magical works have only been seen in our area during brief company runs at the Dance Center of Columbia College and at Triton College (along with versions done by the Eliot Feld Ballet and Hubbard Street). Centre East is Parsons` biggest venue in this area to date, and he`ll be showing off signature pieces such as ”The Envelope” along with a new work to music by Brazilian composer Milton Nascimento.
He doesn`t dance in the new piece. ”I`m . . . trying to focus on choreography all by itself, without the added burden of having to be one of the performers,” he says.
Like Jamison and the Ailey troupe, Parsons faces budget cuts. He is an optimist. ”You`re going to see a lot of people go under,” he admits. ”But we`re here for the long term and aren`t going anywhere.”
