Word: ballets
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...Choreographer George Balanchine, the dancers of the Japanese Imperial Household, who made an American tour three years ago, offered more than an unfamiliar art form. They gave him a novel idea: Why not apply the technique of the classic Western ballet to the spirit and music of Bugaku, the Japanese court dance? Bugaku's 1,200-year-old tradition of "noble music" left Balanchine unawed, and Composer Toshiro Mayuzumi was asked to write "some Japanese-flavored music" that Balanchine could set to dancing. Last week, with the New York City Ballet's premiere of the new Bugaku, Balanchine...
...attendants and stripped of their outer robes. In bikini and tights, they dance a pulsing pas de deux that ends in a crouching embrace. Their attendants return, tug them apart and restore their robes, but the partnered dance that follows suggests the first steps of the love duet. The ballet ends-a courtly, exotic, unresolved sexual fantasy...
...Spirit. Mayuzumi, 34, has already written some highly admired symphonic music (The Nirvana Symphony, Bacchanale) and some chamber work, but Bugaku is his first ballet score. His music, which retains Oriental overtones in an instrumentation for Western musicians (who don't play the hichiriki or the sho), slips in and out of tonality, but Mayuzumi is uncertain about the effect on Western ears. "I cannot say that my music is really Japanese-flavored," he says. "But I am a Buddhist and very interested in Zen philosophy, so I hope some kind of Japanese spirit reflects in my music...
...their best: four tunes, all of them good, all of them played slickly and excitingly. Their closing session--two songs from West Side Story--wasn't bad, but those Johnny Richards arrangements, especially Maria, are a little too much for the band at this point. A jazz ballet by Ciji Ware and Dean Stolber, accompanied by Berger's band, closed the concert. The dancing was competent enough, but the choreography was no great shakes, and the performance was much too short for the dancers to really get started...
...jazz concert Friday will feature Gary Berger's Big Band with vocalist Liz Fillo, the Blue Notes, and the Peter Loeb Trio. It will also include a jazz ballet to Stan Kenton's arrangement of "West Side Story" danced by Ciji Ware '64 and Dean Stolber...