While the Barclay Center opened down the street last Saturday evening, the Brooklyn Academy of Music featured performances of two Garth Fagan / Wynton Marsalis collaborations— "Griot New York" and "Lighthouse / Lightning Rod." I know very little of dance, but was curious to see these works. Tightly choreographed movement seems in many ways anathema to a musical form based on improvisation. The results are stunning: The visual tableaux created by Fagan's dancers have a lightness and joyfulness that seem to complement, though not imitate, the complex harmonics and rhythms of Marsalis's score. Minimalist sets are accented by individual sculptural elements, and the costumes (sometimes in bright lustrous color, other times in soft nocturnal hues) always amplify, rarely detract. In the end, the focus is always on "people dancing" as Fagan pointed out in the post-performance chat, "not dancers performing people." The last section featured the cast dressed in black with shiny elements seemingly lightly pinned to their leotards, frolicking under a pair of lightning bolts that could easily be aluminum foil molded over cardboard shapes, all set to the fugue-like polyphony of the Wynton Marsalis Septet playing unseen beneath the canopy of the stage. It was a wonderful reminder that great art— despite its pretensions to sophistication, complexity, and subtlety— can still be rooted in our child-like desires to play.
