Word: mallardi
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Between the beginning and the end of this student-choreographed piece, Claire Mallardi would say, "falls the shadow" of imperfection that Eliot spoke of in his poem, The Hollow Men." Mallardi, who is director of the University's dance program, has spent the last two years as artistic advisor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dance Company trying to help her students realize their intentions in movement. "I want to erase the discrepancy between what the students think they are showing and what the audience actually sees," Mallardi said in a recent interview. All but one of the six works performed...
...teacher doesn't think of the final version of a dance as preordained; she aims to develop the germinal idea in phases. Mallardi welcomes unpredictability in her students and shies away from learning by rote; still her dancers must justify every urge. "Currents Cast," the first piece in the program, transforms the contradictions and releases basic to every modern Graham class into the rhythm of ebb and flow near the ocean's floor. But while the reflected images swim beautifully and smoothly overlap, they are inpalpable, slipping like water from the hand...
...visual simile. "Cresence" has a direct line of development which draws the bodies of the dancers, like the four phases of a waxing moon, more tightly together against an invisible night sky. "Dancers should make us feel strongly what's missing rather than just what's there," according to Mallardi. Visually, then, a horizontal line always implies a vertical; a contradiction, a release; a leap, a fall. Conceptually, the underlying idea for the dance emerges with an atmosphere that is greater than the dancers, and that they can only hint...
...appropriately simple stage bares the essential primitivism of "Winter Places." Mallardi wants her students to understand what goes into a theatrical setting by realizing that "lights, color, and costume" all play a role. "And if they choose not to use them, then that is a decision too." But can artistic choice really explain all the technical simplicities of the company's production? Mallardi herself says that the uneven cello and piano accompaniment to "Cresence" might have been re-recorded, but the group didn't have the money...
This year the non-credit dance program operated on a $5000 University gift. As of now there is no money for next year in sight. In such a situation, Mallardi says, it is hard to ask students to give their time. Dancer Lise Newcomer's statement that "in order to perform you have to give something up" becomes more practical than inspiring...