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 Multi-Media Dance Theater Comes To Town With The Margaret Jenkins Dance Co. By Margaret Regan A GRANDFATHER FLIES to his death from a moving train in the old country, and a family perishes almost en masse in a car crash in the new.
The piece premiered just three weeks ago in Chicago and braved the New York critics in a week-long run at the Joyce Theater that ended Tuesday, April 6. Anna Kisselgoff, the tough New York Times dance writer, described the dancing as "clean in its angular shapes, spiraling torsos and swinging arms." And she lauded its combination of dance and drama, calling the work "compelling theatre" with a "polished mix of speech and movement."
The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company celebrates its 25th anniversary with this tour. The troupe is based in San Francisco, but Jenkins developed her dance aesthetic in the fertile New York dance world of the 1960s. She studied at the Juilliard School of Music with José Limón and Martha Graham, and danced with such luminaries as Viola Farber and Twyla Tharp. In those days in New York, the new forms of modern dance were working themselves out in whatever alternative spaces were available, and the movement took its name--Judson Church--from its most frequent venue. Jenkins danced every week for 10 years at the city's Dance Theater Workshop, and later joined modern great Merce Cunningham. For a 12-year stretch she taught in Cunningham's school and assisted him in restaging his works.
The encounter between the two women was pivotal in several ways for Breathe Normally. The pair had long conversations about the second half of women's lives ("It was wonderful talking with an older woman about what she was investigating at this time of her life," Jenkins told Rita Felciano of the San Francisco Bay Guardian); and Dukakis told the tale of her family tragedies. The play also gave Jenkins the opportunity to observe actors' working methods, which she found quite distinct from dancers'. In Breathe Normally, she constructed a piece that meshed the methods of each, and explored the dual themes of memory and aging. Author Rinde Eckert wrote the text, based on Dukakis' memories, and Dukakis' voice and image are on the projected videos. Tom Bonauro designed the elaborate set; Jay Cloidt composed the music. Ellie Klopp, the company associate artistic director, directs. The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company performs Breathe Normally at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 10, at UA Centennial Hall. Tickets are $16, $22 and $28, half-price for kids 18 and under and students with ID, and 20 percent off for UA faculty and staff. Tickets are available at the Centennial box office (621-3341).
UA modern dance prof Amy Ernst delivers a free, pre-concert
lecture at 7:15 p.m. Saturday, April 10, in Room 102 of the Center
for English as a Second Language, north of Centennial Hall at
1100 E. North Campus Drive. Margaret Jenkins and company members
give a free, pre-performance discussion of their work at 7:30
p.m. Thursday, April 8, also in Room 102 of the CESL building.
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These two singular events, retold by descendants and repeatedly
reconfigured by shifting memory, are the linchpins for Breathe
Normally, a multi-media dance/theatre work coming to Centennial
Hall this Saturday night. A brand-new evening length piece by
modern dance choreographer Margaret Jenkins, Breathe Normally
interprets the family memories of Jenkins' friend and collaborator,
actress Olympia Dukakis, and projects them onto the stage through
video, spoken word, dance movement and music.
Two actors join five dancers onstage for the work, which is even
less "dance-y" than Jenkins' other dance-theater works
of recent years. Jenkins herself, who has returned to the stage
for the first time in seven years to perform in Breathe Normally,
was unavailable for an interview during the intensive Joyce run.
But she sent along a comment about the new work, saying that the
human body, as it grows older, "shifts, matures, experiences
loss and gains knowledge," and lends itself to both a "linear
story and a charged physical environment." Jenkins is now
in her 50s, and her other performers range in age from 32 to 72.
Actor Jerry Hiken, the 72-year-old, plays both the elderly grandfather
and the elderly Everyman.
When she started her own company in the 1970s in San Francisco,
another crucible for modern dance, she won the typical grant awards--a
Guggenheim, two Isadora Duncans, and so on. She's always been
known for her collaborations, allowing her dancers a strong voice
in shaping the pieces, and in recent years she's moved further
into multi-media work in conjunction with other artists. She met
Dukakis in 1995, when she choreographed the chorus for a theatre
production of Hecuba in which Dukakis was acting.
