Case has done some very nice productions of Hawkins’ dances. That’s not surprising considering that the Dance Program Director at Case, Karen Potter, maintains strong ties with the remains of the Hawkins dance company. The dance in question, Daughters of Okeanos, is a 10-minute segment of a 5-part work, “Greek Dreams, With Flute” (1973).
One may see the title as an oblique reference to anal and oral sex if one wishes. Hawkins’ occasionally raunchy sense of humor and his interest in the explicitly sexual could be an annoyance in the studio but it’s one of the things that recommends his choreography to us. In Greek Dreams’ title, we see Hawkins cracking open the proverbial closet door. The rest of the dance is distinctly highbrow rather than camp and mostly serious but it’s definitely an unexpurgated look at classic civilization, Hawkins’ undergraduate major.
The first time we (Victor actually) saw Daughters was in, probably, 1975. Hawkins was doing a studio showing for a big donor and it behooved Victor, as a company hopeful and studio hanger-on, to attend. In Daughters, 4 women in diaphanous white gowns carry a large tusk onto the stage, dance, and then leave with the tusk. When Victor asked what Daughters was about, the 4 women did some eye rolling before one replied dismissively, “phallus worship.” That explained the many earnest talks that Hawkins gave the 4 daughters and their understudies, talks Victor was never privileged to overhear but which probably tried the patience of 20-something feminists to the limit. Whatever was said, the entrance establishes an aura around the tusk that informs the entire dance.
Okay. So the daughters walk in and put the tusk down. Just as it comes to rest on the floor, the solo flute (composition credited to Matsudaira and ably performed for Case’s production by Sean Snapp) abruptly reaches a crescendo and the women variously draw back or fall forward and momentarily freeze. We were reminded of the children’s game, drop-the- handkerchief.
In the dance that follows the 4 women grapple with a series of technical problems in loose succession rather than in unison. First, they stand in a line facing the audience and flick their front foot, causing their white gowns to billow, suggestive, perhaps, of ocean waves breaking onto shore. Then they each execute a phrase that involves balancing on half pointe before lowering with control and stepping forward; in the Case performance, one of the women lost control slightly and came down on her heel with a thump, reminding us of what a subtly difficult dance Daughters is and prompting us to reflect how Hawkins could be expected to nag for 40 minutes over an error like that.
If there were any more errors we were not aware of them. The daughters wove their spell and departed and we reflected, as we did in the 70’s, on how very balletic the dance was in its vertical spinal axis and its use of the arms and legs. And yet how different the energy of Daughters of Okeanos is from the energy one ordinarily sees in ballet dancing!
Also worth mentioning is the uncommon beauty of the daughters’ white gowns, without which this would be an entirely different dance. Friday’s performance used the original costumes by Raya, just arrived from the Library of Congress. Thursday’s performance had used copies by Potter after the original designs.
The concert included 4 other dances, all of which were well conceived and clearly executed. Amateur dancers from the university and the community were well rehearsed and showed their love of dance. Members of the university’s dance program distinguished themselves.
Several aspects of one dance, “Light/Darkness A Moment in the Realm”, particularly struck us. Choreographer De Witt? Cooper III managed to develop considerable atmosphere and she provided soloist Mingming Liu with a marvelous cloak that seemed equipped with a built-in wind machine. Liu, tall and supple, showed beautiful adagio lines.
From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas vicnelsaATearthlink.net (:divend:)