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Paul Taylor Dance Company.
Best Dance 1999
By Christine Temin
In no particular order
1. Mark Morris Dance Group and Yo-Yo Ma with Mikhail Baryshnikov at the Wang Theatre
2. Hugo & Ines at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Lee
3. Batoto Yetu at Jacob's Pillow
4. Bridget Murnane's film "Four Dancers" at Green Street Studios, Cambridge
5. Carol Somer's choreography in the East-West Dance Project at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, and Green Street Studios
6. David Parson's "Caught," in the International Festival of Aerial Dance at Emerson Majestic Theatre.
7. Heidi Latsky and Lawrence Goldhuber in "Meet the Artist" at the Dance/Performance Space at Concord Academy
8. Paul Taylor Dance Company at Jacob's Pillow
9. Trisha Brown Company at Jacob's Pillow
10. Fred Strickler's "Tacit Understanding" at the Museum of Our National Hertiage, Lexington
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he dance year started dismally - with the January announcement that Dance Umbrella, for 18 seasons Boston's leading presenter of contemporary and culturally diverse dance, was suspending operations. The crisis didn't last long. Emergency funding of $250,000 was quickly raised. Two weeks later, the Umbrella was back in business - leaving some cynics speculating that the announcement was just a dramatic fund-raising ploy. The resuscitated Umbrella went on with the show - including its impressive Aerial Dance Festival, with David Parsons's signature solo ''Caught'' one of the highlights.
Even scarier than the Umbrella's situation is what happened this year at Boston Ballet, the region's biggest dance troupe. No, the company didn't come close to going under. But no Boston Ballet performance made the list of the year's ''Bests'' compiled by the four critics regularly covering dance for the Globe. There were occasional hits, like the company premiere of Mark Morris's ''Maelstrom,'' but more major misses, including ''Below Down Under,'' an Australian Aboriginal-flavored contortionist number by company member Laszlo Berdo. The fledgling choreographer needs to make small-scale, workshop pieces before sharing the stage with a titan like Morris.
The biggest disaster of the Ballet year was Ben Stevenson's ''Dracula,'' a melodramatic dud with almost no real dancing. ''Dracula'' and Christopher Wheeldon's new ''Firebird,'' also short on dance opportunities, suggest that the Ballet is trying hard to sell tickets through works with high name recognition, no matter how crude the choreography. Trouble is, when the company does program something worthwhile, like its Balanchine evening, the dancers aren't up to it. The company doesn't lack for fine performers. But in order to maintain their skills, dancers need constant chances to perform top-notch repertory, chances and challenges Boston Ballet dancers just aren't getting.
Ballet officials say, as they have for years, that they're working on the company's two biggest handicaps to artistic progress: lack of touring dates and lack of a proper opera house to perform in at home. But the repertory this year has been so dismal you wonder why any presenter would want to import the Boston troupe. This year the Ballet also managed to lose its only male principal of true star stature, Patrick Armand, who departed after disagreements over artistic matters, including the dive in the level of the company's dancing. While signing on Wheeldon, a young British choreographer, as its new resident dance-maker, the Ballet also deaccessioned the most talented resident choreographer in its 36-year history, Daniel Pelzig.
The 1999-2000 Boston dance season is the first in over a decade when the Mark Morris Dance Group won't be visiting the city, partly because of a divorce between the Morris company and Dance Umbrella, Morris's longtime local presenter. This past February, though, BankBoston Celebrity Series stepped in to fill the gap, presenting Morris in a dazzling program with Yo-Yo Ma and Mikhail Baryshnikov, a joint venture with the Wang Center, in association with the Umbrella. The Celebrity Series and the Wang also presented a mint program by the Paul Taylor Dance Company, works set to Bach, Debussy, and tango. Some were recent, but there was nothing groundbreaking here. It was Taylor being Taylor - which means great.
Out in the Berkshires, the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival staged a spectacularly successful season, presenting companies ranging from Trisha Brown to the Peruvian mime and puppetry duo Hugo & Ines to the 15 youngsters from New York and Portugal who make up Batoto Yetu. The Pillow's affiliation with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, a Berkshire institution that celebrated its inaugural season this year, is heartening; this first season's collaborative programming included a new work by Trisha Brown and visual artist Terry Winters. MASS MoCA is also possessed
Globe correspondents Karen Campbell, Debra Cash, and Thea Singer contributed to this report.
of an admirably equipped black-box theater.
The strength of the local choreographic community was demonstrated in Dance Umbrella's ''Boston Moves'' program at the Emerson Majestic, with notably strong works by Carol Somers, Celeste Miller, Daniel McCusker, and the Prometheus Dance team of Diane Arvanites-Noya and Tommy Neblett. Somers's works were also a high point of the East-West Dance Project staged at Mount Holyoke College and then at Green Street Studios. There were other fine performances in the two Cambridge venues that have developed into the region's most hospitable homes for small-scale, low-budget productions, Green Street and its Central Square neighbor the Dance Complex. Green Street, for instance, recently hosted a delightful display of the earnest, informal choreography of Caitlin Corbett, and a showing of Bridget Murnane's excellent film ''Four Dancers.''
The Museum of Our National Heritage in Lexington was where, on National Tap Day in May, Californian Fred Strickler broke the stereotype of tap as a thunderous medium, performing a delicate pianissimo solo, ''Tacit Understanding.''
The Boston area is short on suitable venues for dance, so the opening of the lovely new Dance/Performance Space at Concord Academy in Concord was welcome news. Concord's dance directors, Amy Spencer and Richard Colton, invited New York performers Heidi Latsky and Lawrence Goldhuber to inaugurate the space with an informal ''Meet the Artist'' presentation that was among the most enjoyable events of the dance year.
