Research: DANCE; The Face Can Say As Much as the Legs
Project 03 Body and Experience
LEGS can slice like scissors; hips can sway alluringly; and arms can float like clouds. But the face of a dancer speaks volumes. Like a novel’s first paragraph, facial expressions give clues to the world taking shape on stage. Just as the eyes are the window to the soul, a face is the window into the dancer — and the dance.
Those of us who love dance are sometimes haunted by the memory of a particular face on stage. What force is it that, without close-ups to simulate intimacy or words to aid communication, imprints the dancers’ personalities into our consciousness? Do the thousands of hours of sweat and self-criticism that mold the dancer’s body also mold the face? Or is there an essential presence that is inborn? One thing sure is that the charismatic dance face is not achieved through a deliberate effort but mysteriously springs from some deep connection between mind and body.
Famous faces of the past include Maya Plisetskaya, whose jutting chin signalled a fiery determination, and Gelsey Kirkland, whose sad but brave visage could break your heart in one arabesque. José Limón’s face had a heroic resolve and at the same time a yearning quality that gave his choreography a suspended feeling. Katherine Dunham, the first American to incorporate African-based movement on the concert stage, possessed a sensual and glamorous face that helped popularize her culturally groundbreaking work.
We follow the dancers’ faces as we would a guide into foreign territory. And each guide invites us into his or her world in a different way. The wide-eyed Angel Corella, a Spaniard in American Ballet Theatre, dances with a celebratory air. He looks pumped, as though he were saying, ”I’m giving you a big show.” You’re ready and waiting for the pyrotechnics. The New York City Ballet principal Damian Woetzel has a sly poker face. In ”Stars and Stripes” he finishes his pirouettes with wildly virtuosic flourishes that leave the audience gasping, partly because his face never gave it away. Darci Kistler, also of City Ballet, brings a breezy momentum to Balanchine ballets. Her face impassioned, lips parted as though ready to swoon for the sheer love of dancing, she performs his choreography as an adventure rather than as a sequence of steps.
Russian dancers, like Russian novelists, tend to wrap themselves in suffering. The Ballet Theatre principal Vladimir Malakhov looks sensitive and troubled, which heightens the drama in ballets like ”Le Spectre de la Rose” but dims the luster of ”Sleeping Beauty.” Nina Ananiashvili, who dances with the Bolshoi Ballet and Ballet Theatre, carries the weight of the ages on her face, stirring us deeply in ”The Dying Swan.” But her tragic look detracts from the crystal-clear movement in Balanchine’s ”Symphony in C.”
Another Ballet Theater principal, Maxim Belotserkovsky, has a greater range. While he displays exuberance in ”Don Quixote,” he can be thrillingly solemn as the bereft Albrecht in ”Giselle.” In the second act, he crosses the stage to look for the grave — or the spirit — of his beloved. As he scans the audience, one sees the search for truth in his eyes, reminding us what Romanticism is all about.
Two faces that are emblematic of an era are Martha Graham’s and Merce Cunningham’s. Graham’s artistic aim was the stylization of human emotion. Her face, with angles and planes framing her all-knowing eyes, seemed to embody modernism. Mr. Cunningham, dismissing modernist drama and ushering in postmodernism, looked keenly alert when he danced. He could be listening to the song of distant birds or watching subsiding ripples in a lake.
In the 1960’s dancers associated with Judson Dance Theatre favoured a ”neutral” demeanour. The idea was to let the movement speak for itself and not depend on facial expression to endow the dancing with meaning. The Judson dancers focused on specific tasks rather than the larger-than-life mythologizing that made modern dance seem portentous.
But the wish for neutrality belied strong feelings. Yvonne Rainer’s deadpan did not conceal that, just below the surface, extreme emotions raged. When Trisha Brown dances, her relish for the movement makes her face radiant. Simone Forti brings a keenly focused concentration to her work that pulls the audience along for the ride. In the face of Lucinda Childs one sees a hint of agitation, a clue to her highly patterned, almost obsessive dances. Steve Paxton’s face is quizzical, stolid, existentially alone.
Current downtown artists are opening up after the supposed neutrality of earlier years and are allowing the face to become part of the act. The dancer and choreographer Vicky Shick’s face is voluptuous, enigmatic, with a touch of old-world sadness (she was born in Hungary), providing a contrast to her spare movement. The improviser DD Dorvillier, with her self-interrupting impulses, seems to travel to the edge of sanity, but the fierce clarity in her eyes reassures you that she won’t go over the edge. The dancer and choreographer Maia Claire Garrison’s face has a gritty defiance that seems to erupt into the fusion of hip-hop and modern and West African dance that is her signature.
One pair of dancers with faces worth taking note of are David Dorfman and Dan Froot. Mr. Dorfman is the kind of guy who is always saying that everything is going to turn out O.K.; his face is relaxed, assured. Mr. Froot is excitable; he’s pretty sure things won’t turn out O.K. In their sometimes hilarious skitlike duets, they play off each other’s faces the way more technical dancers play off each other’s virtuosity. (They give their final two performances in the Altogether Different series today at the Joyce Theatre in Manhattan.)
Outstanding dancers can illuminate the intention of a choreographer, thus helping all the pieces of a puzzle fall into place. Regina Advento in ”Masurca Fogo” (1998) epitomizes Pina Bausch’s surreal choreography and fantastical dreamlike vision. The opposing elements of irony and pleasure meet in Ms. Advento’s Cheshire cat grin.
Greg Zuccolo in Tere O’Connor’s ”Choke” (2000) carries his flickering mood into every movement. His mouth drops opens like a child’s, his eyes shift mischievously, his nose wrinkles. The constant sense of commotion on his face borders on a kind of sublime brattiness, which matches the dance.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre dancer Bahiyah Sayyed-Gaines’s face in ”Sweet Bitter Love” (2000) is tender, full of emotion. When she looks directly at the audience and then allows her large sloe eyes to close, you can feel the sweet sorrow on her eyelids. Her face recalls the sensuality, the profound womanliness of Carmen de Lavallade, who choreographed the piece.
Even when the face is barely in evidence, it has its effect. The tap dancer Savion Glover hunkers down, hiding his face, much like Gregory Hines before him. In doing so, he resists the baggage of early tap dance, which often expected black dancers to perform amiably for white audiences. Head down and dreadlocks flying, Mr. Glover sends out more rhythmic sparks than most tap dancers who perform ”for” us.
Kei Takei often holds her face skyward, so we hardly see it. And when her face becomes visible, it looks as impenetrable as a mask. But the intensity of that mask commands rapt attention.
For dancers, no less than actors, faces are part of the expressive equipment. But dancers rarely receive formal lessons in acting. Rather, their faces reflect what the whole body is feeling and doing. This kind of total involvement is what Ms. Forti calls ”the dance state.” The dance state is energetic, emotional or spiritual, depending on what zone the dancer has an affinity for. Once a dancer crosses over into that state, her or his face naturally takes on a new vitality. Each dancer enters a distinctive world of nonliteral meaning. For spectators, the face is a key to that meaning.