Saltimbanques Inspire Picasso and Lubovitch

Picasso's Les Saltimbanques, 1905

What inspires an artist to create a new work, especially after 44 years of making dances? Lar Lubovitch found inspiration in Picasso's painting of a circus troupe, Les Saltimbanques, paired with Debussy's String Quartet in G Minor performed live by the Bryant Park Quartet. The result—Transparent Things, which premiered in the company's run at Florence Gould Hall on November 14—fits snugly within Lubovitch's oeuvre of lushly romantic, lyrical dances. Also on the gala bill were his sharper, frenetic 2011 work, Crisis Variations, featuring the dynamic Katarzyna Skarpetowska, and the aromatic Little Rhapsodies, a virtuosic 2007 male trio.

Leg lines a-resonating. Photo: Rose Eichenbaum

Attila Joey Csiki, as the lead tumbler in Transparent Things, wears the money-shot costume—a pastel hued, diamond-print, well-fitting tunic, created by Reed Barthelme. Portrayed as a bit of an outsider, Csiki gamboled with the ensemble and then danced alone in a melancholic funk. The troupe included two couples: Skarpetowska with Reed Luplau, and Clifton Brown with Laura Rutledge, along with Brian McGinnis. Lubovitch works with a complete stage picture in mind—curving legs aloft resonate between pairs, or the group snaps, seemingly spontaneously, into one of his signature tableaux.

Attila Joey Csiki wearing The Costume. Photo: Steven Schreiber

The costumes were obviously key, patterned directly after the color schemes laid out by Picasso. But the gap between the resulting designs for the men and the women were like day and night. It seems that all of Barthelme's energy went toward the mens' tunics (other than Brown's white leotard and high-waisted grey pants that were somehow unflattering to this most Apollonian of dancers). The women, Rutledge in particular, looked like someone had grabbed the lost and found box and pulled out whatever would remotely fit, at least within Picasso's palette.

It's not news, but Lubovitch attracts first-rate dancers. Brown, long a star with Ailey, here favors the subdued facet of his onstage persona and melts into the ensemble even as he inevitably does a lion's share of lifting and guy stuff. Luplau's dancing, particularly his allegro passages in Rhapsodies, reminds me a little of the effervescence and precision of Sean Curran in his prime, no small task. And Skarpetowska, against the odds in this troupe of male peacocks (that's a compliment), has become a  locus, with her completely fearless approach, both emotionally and physically.

Toward the end, the dancers crawled among the string quartets' legs and instruments, underscoring the pleasures of having live music (although some technical problems with mic noise were a distraction). It felt like the end but wasn't. That came when the troupe formed a line, arms linked behind backs, and collectively descended into splits, a final reminder of the nature of these troubadors.

Faustin Linyekula's Le Cargo

Faustin Linyekula in Le Cargo. Photo: Agathe Poupeney

Le Cargo, Faustin Linyekula's solo performance at Florence Gould Hall, part of FIAF's thought-provoking Crossing the Line festival, began last Tuesday night during a deluge that required wading ankle-deep through white caps on Madison Avenue. The audience, soggy to a soul, commiserated with one another for having to endure the inclemency. Then Linyekula took the stage, clutching books and a little anthropomorphic stool, and began telling stories (despite declaring that he had come not to tell stories, just to dance).

"War, crisis, war, crisis..., " he repeated numerous times of his homeland, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. By now, our collective self-pity had abated, attention diverted appropriately to the stage and his stories, or non-stories. He spoke of the incredible effort of taking the train from the city to Obilo, his hometown 82 miles away. Apparently it runs infrequently enough so that the foliage grows over the tracks; people with machetes have to hack a clearing for the train, making for glacial progress. So Linyekula wound up riding a motorbike with his father ("father, father, my dad-dee," as he repeated regularly in his entrancing sing-song voice), needing only a few hours. 

He began explaining why he dances and wiggling his fingers. Contrary to an expected politically correct explanation along the lines of preserving and passing along his heritage, he simply explained that he gets paid, and he supports his extended family by doing so. He makes a living taking his storytelling and dance all over the world. It is a frankness that we're not used to hearing, or if we do, it's usually to plead poverty.

In due time, Linyekula did start to dance with his whole body. It's a peculiar style, the movement seemingly generated from his gut outward, shuffling his feet or kicking them sideways, upper body fairly contained and tight, arms extending on occasion. The performance was in sharp contrast to last year's spectacularly showy more, more, more... at the Kitchen, when composer/musician Flamme Kapaya's rock band performed (he also composed music for Le Cargo), and Linyekula and a couple of other dancers wore ruffled costumes resembling car wash brushes. 

Le Cargo did underscore the divide between sources such as dance circles, in which individual expression is framed within a communal context, and a somewhat sterile stage in Manhattan, where Linyekula was surrounded onstage by spotlights instead of other dancers. He has carved out an intriguing niche with his blend of there and here.