Company and McKayle

It is somewhat of a puzzle that Donald McKayle managed to obscure his own dancing in his performance last week. This happened, in part, because he is willing to share the stage with a spectacular dancer, Gus Solomons, Jr., and with his guest artist, Carmen de Lavallade. Solomons, the tallest member of the company and very long-limbed, is an eye catching performer. His body takes any motion McKayle choreographs, and moves it through a greater are--not distorting the motion, but displaying it at its fullest.

Solomons was most striking in "Nocturne." The entire company excelled in this piece, which enabled the dancers to demonstrate their perfect ease and technical skill, landing without a sound from even the grandest leaps. Their erotic dance, unencumbered by Message, showed the most imaginative choreography of the evening.

The rest of the program tried, rather ineptly, to talk about slavery ("Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder"), modes of Christian religion ("Blood of the Lamb"), and the occasional horror of growing up in the streets ("Games."). All these themes could be powerfully interpreted in dance, but McKayle's choreography was weak. He seemed to rely on, rather than dominate, the attendant mime and singing. Instead of the dance patterns the viewer remembers the "Two little babies lyin' in bed; one plain sick, the other plain dead. Called the doctor, the doctor said: give them babies some shortnen' bread."

"Blood of the Lamb" suffered in the same way. The piece is a rather heavy parody in which the Elder (Gus Solomons) tries to overcome his lust for a Sister (Miss de Lavallade) who has also aroused a prospective brother (McKayle). As the fetishistic Elder rips layers off the Sister's dress, McKayle staggers before Christ's altar, crying, "He's all aroun'; but Ah cain't see Him." Meanwhile the Deacons implore him to "Take mah han'," jogging their bodies like jerky rock 'n' rollers. In one of his epileptic fits (de rigeur for any prospective member of a Pentecostal church), McKayle writhes rather unimaginatively on the floor. One would think that fits contained endless possibilities, choreographically, but perhaps not.

In the piece about slavery, the longing dreams of a chain gang led by McKayle served as a vehicle for Carmen de Lavallade and her exquisite dances as wife, sweetheart, and mother. But another vehicle might have been chosen which did not end in the melodrama of a slave's murder. In this episode a dancer expresses impotent rage--a very profound emotion-- by running downstage, screwing up his face, and making a punching motion across his body. McKayle should be commended for trying to treat serious themes and not resting content, as some masters do, to play prima donna. But he could make his message much more powerful by expressing them with stronger choreography.